Democrats Start Attack Ads Against Tiffany

Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, at Gov. Tony Evers’ first State of the State address in Madison, Wisconsin, at the State Capitol building on Jan. 22, 2019. Emily Hamer/Wisconsin Watch

Last week, a national Democratic group launched two attack ads against Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, the party’s anointed candidate for governor in Wisconsin. Ever since President Donald Trump endorsed Tiffany in late January and Waukesha County Executive Josh Schoemann withdrew from the Republican primary, Tiffany has been sailing along while attacking Democrats with little return fire. Comments by Urban Milwaukee readers have expressed frustration, calling for attack ads against Tiffany.

“Allowing $4 million of unanswered Tiffany spending was a mistake, but it was a mistake made because they [the state Democratic Party] didn’t have the money to answer,” explained a Democratic consultant to Urban Milwaukee.

Well, the attack has finally begun. On July 8, Protect Our Wisconsin, a group backed by the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), announced it was launching two ads attacking Tiffany, one targeting his stand on abortion and the other criticizing him for working to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The ads, which are airing on both TV and streaming platforms, are short, simple and punchy, the first telling us that Tiffany “backed a bill to criminalize abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest. He even voted against protecting access to birth control for women.” The second warns that Tiffany “supported Jan. 6 rioters, voted to shield violent QAnon radicals, and wanted to overturn the Wisconsin election results for Trump.”

Both ads begin by calling Tiffany a “MAGA extremist” and end with “Tom Tiffany‘s agenda is too extreme.”

The Democratic Governors Association seems to be awash with money. In February, it announced it had raised $112 million in contributions, “nearly 50% more than what the DGA raised in 2021 — the last comparable year. Contributions came from nearly half a million unique grassroots donors in 2025, 59% of whom were first-time donors. This marks a 69% increase in unique donors from 2021,” the group noted.

“This fundraising success allowed the DGA to be the largest outside spender in both Virginia and New Jersey last year, with the DGA investing over $10 million in Virginia and the DGA’s affiliated Independent Expenditure Greater Garden State investing over $30 million in New Jersey,” the release noted. In another release about its “winning playbook,” the group’s chair, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, “named Iowa, Georgia and Nevada as three of the 36 governor races next year that the DGA plans to prioritize flipping.”

The Republican Governors Association has been less informative about its operations, but a Pro Publica analysis suggests it has fallen well behind in this ever-more obscene money war. The RGA raised $72.4 million in 2025, Pro Publica found.

How much the DGA (or RGA) plans to spend in Wisconsin was not disclosed. But the Wisconsin governor’s race was considered one of the top three nationally by both groups in 2022, Politico reported. And the fact that the DGA is spending here ahead of the primary campaign has to cheer state Democrats.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s Democratic primary has been turned upside down by an announcement by candidate Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez who has fired a top aide after discovering major financial mismanagement. Many Democrats were convinced the primary had come down to a three-person race between Rodriguez, former Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes and Rep. Francesca Hong, a socialist Democrat. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was so convinced of this he had withdrawn from the race and endorsed Rodriguez.  On Tuesday she had launched a new ad, titled “Call a Nurse,” with “a statewide paid media campaign backed by more than $1 million,” only to learn by Sunday that she doesn’t have anywhere near that amount of money to spend. It appears the ad is not running.

But the $1 million buy was such a bombshell that one day later, on Wednesday, the Barnes campaign announced a new ad titled “The Wisconsin Way” and a six-figure paid media campaign for the ad. Was the campaign waiting to see if and when Rodriguez would announce a major ad buy, or was this a coincidence? Certainly the ad would have taken more than a day to prepare. The campaign ad offers Barnes as just a regular guy at the bar, promising to help the customers with their concerns about the cost of living, but doesn’t convey any gubernatorial gravitas.

Though it’s not the only pro-Barnes ad being released. His campaign also touted a $500,000 TV ad campaign and six-figure digital campaign for an ad by an outside group called Impossible Until It’s Done, which is backing Barnes. Entitled “Know Me,” the ad is far better, an energetic introductory piece that effectively mixes color and black-and-white footage and conveys excitement about his candidacy.

The most recent real poll we’ve seen was an internal one released by the Rodriguez campaign which showed Barnes at 26%, Hong at 22% and Rodriguez at 15%. Rodriguez’s financial mismanagement will help Barnes and Hong to retain their front-runner positions, but may also open the door to the two candidates further back in the field, Greater Milwaukee Committee executive Joel Brennan and state Sen. Kelda Roys. It’s made this Democratic primary even harder to predict.

Meantime, Tiffany continues to hurt himself with unforced errors in this campaign. The latest was reported by Spectrum News: Tiffany has said he supports federal bipartisan legislation that seeks to increase the supply of housing and lower average costs, but he repeatedly failed to vote for the landmark bill, skipping votes on Feb. 9, May 20 and June 23. The rise in the cost of housing has emerged as a key issue in the midterm elections, yet Tiffany failed to vote on it three times because of “scheduling conflicts,” his spokesperson said.

Emily Stuckey, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Tiffany “had three chances to do what’s right for Wisconsin families struggling with the high cost of housing, and he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the vote.”

Add one more issue tailor-made for an attack ad against Tiffany.