Tom Tiffany Has Disqualified Himself for Governor

Tom Tiffany. (Public Domain).

Last week, a bipartisan group of Wisconsin business leaders released a digital ad declaring that Tom Tiffany has disqualified himself for consideration as governor of Wisconsin because he won’t respect the democratic electoral process. The group asked Democratic candidate David Crowley and Republican candidate Tiffany to sign a pledge to respect “basic principles of democracy.”

This included questions such as:

Will you accept the results of this election?

Will you protect our election workers?

Will you accept every eligible voter’s right to cast a ballot?

“David Crowley signed a pledge saying yes to all the questions,” the ad notes. “Tom Tiffany refused to sign.”

In the 2020 election, “recounts, audits and courts all confirmed Wisconsin’s results. Tom Tiffany tried to throw out your results anyway,” the ad charges. “He repeated a lie that sent a mob to our Capitol.”

Indeed, Tiffany was one of the leading election deniers in the nation. He was one of only two Wisconsin members of Congress voting to overturn Biden’s presidential victory in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and the only one from Wisconsin to join 120 Republicans in signing onto a lawsuit supported by President Donald Trump to challenge the election results in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. The suit, which made unsupported allegations of fraud and election irregularities, was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tiffany falsely claimed that “unscrupulous” officials in Dane County and Milwaukee County allowed “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes to be cast and counted” and accused the Wisconsin Supreme Court of failing to uphold the law for not overturning the election.

A January 2024 report by the Congressional Integrity Project named Tiffany as one of the key “election deniers and insurrection apologists” in Congress whose claims helped cause the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Yet Tiffany has never disclaimed any of his false accusations about the 2020 election.

Since returning to office, Trump has cast doubt on U.S. elections on 460 days, 70% of the days in his second term, the New York Times has reported. He has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen”; that Democrats tried to steal the 2024 election and failed; and that the 2026 midterm election will be rigged. “Democrats are trying to steal our seats everywhere,” he has charged.

Meanwhile, over a period of nearly six years, Tiffany never retracted his lies about the 2020 election or offered any statement taking issue with Trump’s claims. “He has always been at my side,” Trump declared in his statement endorsing Tiffany’s campaign for governor.

In May 2026, Tiffany supported an FBI investigation of the 2020 election in Wisconsin that the Trump administration wanted, again pushing the false idea that fraud occurred. He also supported the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund Trump sought to create that could have rewarded the Jan. 6 rioters who tried to overthrow the U.S. government. “I would want to take a look at what was the harm that was done to those victims?” Tiffany said. “If it’s significant enough, perhaps they should receive compensation.”

Only in early October, a month before this election, did Tiffany offer a tepid statement, admitting that “Joe Biden won” the election and promising that as governor he would certify the results of the 2028 presidential election.

But Tiffany offered no apologies for his false claims about the election, and in his debate with Crowley, claimed he objected to the results because of money donated by Mark Zuckerberg to Wisconsin to help local governments administer the election. Yet Tiffany never offered this as a reason for voting against certifying the election back in 2021 and offered no evidence this funding resulted in any voter fraud.

Tiffany has also warned he might try to overturn the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, but has refused to say whom he would trust to administer elections once the commission is gone. And he has never addressed whether he will pardon the Republicans involved in the fake electors scheme to overturn the 2020 election.

Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who has endorsed Crowley, has questioned whether Tiffany has really changed his views on the 2020 election.

“I don’t believe it,” he has said. Tiffany’s vote to overturn the election result makes him unfit for the office of governor, Evers has charged. “It is out of bounds, period. And he should never be governor of the state of Wisconsin.”

The ad by business leaders cited Tiffany’s unwillingness to apologize for trying to overturn the 2020 election as an indelible stain on his record.

“Today he says he has no regrets,” the ad noted. “That is disqualifying.

“We see no bigger risks to Wisconsin’s economy than having an election denier in the governor’s office.”