How Republicans Helped Elect Crowley

County Executive David Crowley. Photo by Sophie Bolich.

By late February, very early in the Democratic primary for governor, it was clear that state Rep. Francesca Hong was going to do much better than anyone expected. Republicans saw a golden opportunity to win a race they thought they had little or no chance of winning. Their candidate, Tom Tiffany, had high negatives, a history of taking extreme positions and the backing of President Donald Trump, whose ever-rising disapproval rate could sink Tiffany’s chances in the November election. But Hong was a socialist with very leftist positions and would create a race between two candidates at the extreme ends of their party.

Republicans and conservatives set out to help Hong win the primary. In early May they “leaked” a memo to the Journal Sentinel that was allegedly written by a campaign consultant saying that the Tiffany campaign was most fearful of a race against Hong, hoping this would help persuade Democrats to vote for her. But the newspaper’s story on this alleged report was ridiculed even by a conservative commentator like James Wigderson.

In July, the Republican Governors Association launched an ad that looked like an attack on Hong, declaring she was “too liberal for Wisconsin” and wants Wisconsin to return to its “progressive roots.” It was an ingenious ad that, on the one hand, let hard-core Republicans know how liberal Hong was while selling her to Democrats who wanted someone with views like Hong. The group booked a $2.2 million ad buy, which was far more than any Democratic candidate for governor had spent on TV.

But that was just the beginning of the GOP skulduggery. Ultimately, the group spent nearly $3.6 million through its Right Direction Wisconsin PAC on advertising involving Hong, according to the Associated Press. Also, a group called Middle Class Priorities spent nearly $1.3 million on TV and mail backing Hong. “While the ads carried traditional Dem talking points, the group and its backers carried all the hallmarks of another GOP attempt at meddling in a primary,” WisPolitics reported.

“The total spent on Fran’s behalf by the GOP was $9 million,” a veteran Democratic consultant estimated in an email to Urban Milwaukee. “There was a ton of mail and digital that is not in the broadcast buy and multiple other groups that are GOP backed that are not in the media totals that have been reported.”

The Hong campaign had a strong ground game, driven by impassioned socialist volunteers who helped canvass the state. But it had little money to spend on media messaging. “Hong reported just $300,598 on media-related expenses through the end of the pre-primary period July 27 with just $150,200 of that on online ads,” WisPolitics noted.

That ground game, combined with massive spending by Republican and conservative groups, left Hong with what appeared to be an insurmountable lead. The final Marquette Law School Poll, released two weeks before the election, showed Hong with 38% of the vote, Mandela Barnes at 16%, Crowley at 7% and state Sen. Kelda Roys and former Greater Milwaukee Committee leader Joel Brennan tied at 2%.

But Barnes had by then dropped out of the race, which seemingly left Crowley with the best chance of catching Hong, though he had also dropped out, only to jump back in after Sara Rodriguez shut down her the campaign. Even after he was endorsed by Gov. Tony Evers, many observers, including some Democrats, scoffed at Crowley’s chances of winning the primary.

But then the Republicans got cocky. Someone’s opposition research (was it a GOP operative?) had uncovered the fact that Hong had called for abolishing Thanksgiving. You could hardly find an issue that more Americans supported: 91% celebrate the holiday, according to a survey by Pew Research. It was a godsend, a simple issue no voter could possibly misunderstand and no Democrat could possibly explain away. It would make Hong look un-American and wildly radical. But instead of saving this juicy issue for the general election, Republicans couldn’t resist jumping all over it.

Tiffany tweeted about it several times. “Just so everyone knows where I stand, I won’t cancel Thanksgiving as governor. Figured it was worth mentioning again,” one of his posts declared. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said this proved that Democrats want to cancel American holidays.

Hong had already faced controversy for past comments suggesting the police should be abolished, yet her support continued to grow. But ending Thanksgiving was a bridge too far. An earlier Marquette poll had shown that 67% of Democrats said winning the November general election was “extremely important” to them; they now had to be wondering if Hong had made herself unelectable.

The result was unprecedented: David Crowley, a candidate who dropped out of the race, then got back in with less than four weeks left and, just two weeks before the election, looked far too behind to win, had somehow succeeded. Former legislator and emeritus political science professor Mordecai Lee, who prides himself on knowledge of Wisconsin elections, could think of no campaign even close to it.

“No, I can’t think of any Wisconsin election that was comparable to this one,” he told Urban Milwaukee. “Just plain amazing, almost other-worldly. Particularly in such a compressed time-frame.”

Pundits and historians will be searching to explain Crowley’s astounding upset over Hong for years to come. Crowley appears to have run the table, grabbing nearly every undecided voter and every supporter of Barnes who hadn’t voted early for him. Roys and Brennan between them may have grabbed a tiny portion of the undecideds and Barnes supporters, but Hong appears to have grabbed none of those votes.

“Hong squeezed every last vote out of the socialist wing of the party’s electorate. She hit an ideological ceiling and couldn’t break above it,” Lee says.

The fact that Roys and Brennan stayed in the race could have been a factor, except that they canceled each other out: Roys’ support was mostly in Madison and probably took votes from Hong; Brennan was a Milwaukee-based moderate Democrat who took votes from Crowley.

The Evers endorsement proved critical to Crowley: it may have been the biggest factor explaining his historic win. But the other factor was electability. “I heard from many, many people that they switched their votes on Election Day because they just needed to win in November,” says the consultant.

And it was Tiffany and the Republicans who helped spread the view that Hong was too radical to win. They may come to regret this.