David Crowley might be the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin. You would not know it from his calendar. On Monday, he was in Santa Monica at a fundraiser hosted by Kamala Harris and Sean Penn as heavy hitters brought in to breathe life support into his flailing campaign. VIP was $20,000. Host was $10,000. Get-in-the-door access stood at $500. Unlike Tom Tiffany, hosting tavern talks and roundtables across the state, Crowley is granting access only by check.
The money chase would be less embarrassing if Crowley were also showing up at home. He is not. His campaign website has no public events page. The old one was rerouted. In two weeks, he has crisscrossed the country from Washington, D.C., to California, but only to find financiers. Francesca Hong, the socialist he barely beat in August, is the one holding a statewide tour: Milwaukee, Beloit, Stevens Point, Menomonie, Green Bay, Oshkosh, Madison, Ashland. Hong is clearly doing more public events in Wisconsin than the man who won the primary. Crowley has outsourced the grassroots efforts to his primary opponent.
That is the “basement campaign.” Stay light on unscripted events. Fly to the donors. Let someone else work the rooms you cannot fill.
Liberal influencers are starting to say the quiet part. On Instagram, the account Mom Glow posted (language warning) what many Hong voters are actually thinking. The 300,000 people who voted for Fran, the post said, “need to get on board and vote for David Crowley, but most of them are p****d the f*** off. And rightfully so.” The writer called the situation “the f*** a** mess Dems created,” said it is “not not his problem to solve,” and promised to push for “accountability.” That is not a GOP attack on Crowley. That is a left-wing organizer admitting the nominee has a base problem and is not fixing it by standing next to Sean Penn.
Harris is the worst possible closer for that job. She blew through more than a billion dollars in 2024 and still lost Wisconsin. Now she is hosting a $20,000 plate in California for a Milwaukee County executive who already trails Tiffany badly on cash. Crowley has painted himself into a corner with contradiction every working-class pitch cannot survive: Crowley acts like a man of the people, then sells access at twenty grand a head with a Hollywood socialist who spent years defending Hugo Chávez and a failed presidential candidate.
Tiffany is also knocking doors in Wisconsin and putting events on a calendar voters can find. He’s doing the basic blocking and tackling campaigns need to do to win. Crowley is asking Hong’s angry, disaffected voters to fall in line while he is 2,000 miles away with the last failed presidential nominee and an actor. If the nominee will not show up, why should Hong’s primary voters?
A campaign that cannot list a public event in its own state is hoping to run out the clock, hide from voters, and coast on national sentiment. Harris and Penn can write checks. They cannot make Crowley look like he’s campaigning for the job in Wisconsin. Hong’s people already noticed, and with a little over a month until election day, Crowley needs to make an effort to win them over.
