Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley has defeated Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in the battleground state of Wisconsin, the Fox News Decision Desk projects. The win makes Crowley the first Black politician elected governor of Wisconsin, and he will succeed two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is retiring.
Throughout his campaign, Crowley repeatedly linked Tiffany to President Donald Trump and his policies, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, tariffs and the war in Iran. Tiffany, a three-term congressman from a large agriculture-dominant district in northern Wisconsin, is a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and a Trump ally on Capitol Hill. The two men met in a single debate two weeks before the election, where the race's central arguments were laid out in direct terms.
During that debate, Crowley said Tiffany talked about affordability but had voted for the GOP's signature 2025 tax cut and spending bill, which he argued helped some of the state's highest earners while reducing funding for healthcare and food assistance programs in many states. « We don’t need what is happening in Washington, D.C., coming into the state of Wisconsin », Crowley said, adding that Tiffany was working for Trump and the billionaires funding his campaign.
Tiffany responded that while Crowley was consistently focused on being against Trump, he was focused on Wisconsin. He said he preferred putting more money in taxpayers’ pockets over creating programs that would tax residents more. He also pointed to Crowley's remark that there was very little difference between him and state Rep. Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. « That sounds like a socialist to me », Tiffany argued, a charge he had repeated throughout the general election campaign.
The path to the general election ran through a crowded Democratic field. Crowley pulled off a major upset in the August Democratic gubernatorial primary, coming from behind to narrowly edge out Hong. His victory there set up a matchup in which both parties' nominees were already well known in the state's political circles, and the debate became the main venue for the candidates to draw sharp contrasts.
Tiffany also drew national attention in September, when he survived an emergency water landing after the single-engine plane he was riding in lost power and crashed into a lake. The incident made headlines well before voters went to the polls, and he continued his campaign afterward.
Wisconsin is a key Midwestern battleground that has repeatedly drawn national focus. Trump narrowly carried the state in his 2016 and 2024 presidential victories, while former President Joe Biden won it by a razor-thin margin in 2020, when he took the White House. Crowley's victory gives Democrats control of the state's top executive office in a state where margins have consistently been small, and it marks a historic milestone for the state's politics.