Tom Tiffany conceded at 9:45 Tuesday night, as he has done in public life: plainly, without excuses, and with respect for the people of this state. With about 98% of the vote counted, David Crowley beat him 54.1% to 45.9%, a margin of roughly 217,000 votes.
That is a beating. But anyone who reads it as a verdict on Tom Tiffany’s message is drawing the wrong conclusion. Tiffany didn’t lose Wisconsin. Washington did.
Tiffany ran as a sitting member of Congress in a year when Washington was the last thing voters wanted to see. By the end of October, Trump’s approval was 38% in the NBC News average. Here at home it was worse. The final Marquette poll had Trump at 37% approval in Wisconsin, a record low across both of his terms.
No candidate for governor outruns that. Tiffany could not vote his way out of it, campaign his way out of it, or explain his way out of it. Every voter angry at Washington had one Republican on the statewide ballot with a congressional voting record: Tom.
In 2024, Republicans ran on a message of supporting the common man and put Donald Trump back in the White House, and for a while they felt remembered. Then the tariff bill came due, and they paid it.
Ask the farmers. The final Marquette poll found 70% of Wisconsin voters said tariffs are hurting Wisconsin farmers. Only 8% said they were helping.
The soybean growers know why. China once took the lion’s share of American soybean exports, and Wisconsin growers have watched that market unravel while equipment prices climbed on steel tariffs and Canadian potash became more expensive. One Outagamie County grower said China was buying only about half as many of his soybeans as before. These folks rely on international markets to make money, and Trump’s tariffs made that impossible.
The factories felt it too. Wisconsin manufacturers have been splitting tariff costs with customers just to keep orders moving. A Milwaukee mattress company watched a Canadian supply deal fall through when 50% tariffs hit, while shipping and insurance costs for one container nearly doubled.
Then there’s the meat counter. When Republicans won in November 2024, a pound of ground beef cost about $5.63. By August this year, it hit $6.92, the highest price on record since the government started tracking it in 1984. A month before the election, it was still $6.79 a pound, up more than 20 percent in less than two years. A family in Waukesha or Wausau doesn’t need a Marquette poll to know what that means. They feel it every week at Pick ‘n Save, buying hamburger for tacos and chuck roast for Sunday dinner. For many, a steak was out of the question. This let Democrats seize the cost-of-living message at the doors and in the ads.
Every one of those costs eventually lands on a family’s kitchen table. Conservatives used to understand that a tax by any other name is still a tax. The other promise was simpler: no new wars. America First meant we would stop spending American blood and treasure on someone else’s fight. Then came Iran.
By the Pentagon’s own count, the war has cost $47.1 billion, most of it to replace munitions we fired, and that number leaves out repairs to bases Iran hit. It also hit every driver in this state. Wisconsin gas was $4.33 a gallon the week before the election, up more than a dollar and a half from a year earlier.
The country noticed. Pew found 65% disapproved of how the war was being handled, and the slide came from Republicans, not Democrats. AP-NORC found 69% said it was not worth fighting, up five points since July.
The voters who put Donald Trump back in the White House were promised lower prices and no new wars. They got neither, and on Tuesday they said so.
If this were about Tom Tiffany, it would have stopped at the Wisconsin line. It didn’t. James Talarico won a Senate seat in Texas. Rob Sand took the governorship in Iowa, Amy Acton won Ohio, and Katie Hobbs held Arizona. When Iowa and Ohio go the same way as Madison, the problem is not the candidate in Wisconsin.
The damage down the ballot here was just as real. Democrats flipped the state Senate 18-15 and the Assembly 53-46, giving them full control of state government for the first time since 2010. Bryan Steil lost to Berman, and Derrick Van Orden lost to Cooke. Our House delegation now splits 4-4. Josh Kaul beat Eric Toney 54 to 46 for attorney general, and Democrats took the rest of the statewide offices.
Republicans owe it to voters to hold Democrats accountable for every far-left idea, every tax increase, and every DEI initiative they try to shove down Wisconsin’s throat. Make them own it all and show voters why one party should never hold this much power in Madison. It will be worse than we can imagine. Show the voters that and Wisconsin comes back.
Tom Tiffany deserved a better year. Wisconsin Republicans owe him thanks for taking the fight when it was hardest. The future of this party belongs to the next Republican who steps up to run for governor, Congress, or an Assembly seat in the swing districts they lost this time. That candidate will have plenty to run against: a Democratic trifecta that will spend two years trying to repeal Act 10, end school choice, and raise taxes. That’s a winnable fight. But he can’t win it carrying an unpopular war, a tariff bill, and a $7 hamburger he had no say in. Wisconsin Republicans can do the work at home.
