The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got the latest David Crowley campaign memo and turned it into a headline for the campaign to use in fundraising emails.
On Wednesday, reporter Mary Spicuzza and Eva Wen published a piece titled “3 billionaires put Tom Tiffany in a big cash lead over David Crowley.” The first sentence did the rest of the work: three billionaires, the paper said, are “responsible for about two-thirds of the campaign cash raised so far” by the Republican nominee.
That reads less like any real journalism and more like the Democrat Party of Wisconsin’s fundraising copy, printed as a headline.
WisDems has run the same line for weeks, thinking anti-Trump sentiment will carry them across the finish line this November as it did in 2018. For weeks, the Democrat Party has repeatedly posted on social media about 3 MAGA billionaires. Crowley himself has been running the same playbook, accompanied by a “Donate Now” button.
Wednesday morning, Wisconsin’s paper of record put that pitch above the fold and tweeted it to more than 12,000 views before lunch. Crowley did not have to write a fundraising appeal. Spicuzza wrote it for him.
The three names are not mystery oligarchs like the left’s George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, JB Pritzker, and Epstein Island frequent flyer Reid Hoffman. Tiffany is supported by self-made business owners like Diane Hendricks of Beloit, who built ABC Supply into a national roofing giant, and Richard and Liz Uihlein of Pleasant Prairie, who built Uline into a shipping-supply company that employs thousands in Wisconsin. They give to the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
What the Journal Sentinel left out of the headline is just as important as what it included.
Crowley’s largest checks are from his own deep-pocketed supporters. In July alone, he took the $86,000 maximum from the Wisconsin Laborers District Council and from the IBEW PAC, plus $84,000 from Operating Engineers Local 139 and $81,000 from the Wisconsin Pipe Trades. Those are the same building-trades PACs that have lobbied Crowley for data-center construction. The paper that just spent a full story moralizing about three Wisconsin business owners has been far gentler about union money that arrives in stacks of the legal maximum.
Crowley also took $20,000 from former Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, $20,000 from Milwaukee’s Joan Lubar, and $20,000 from a Palo Alto, California, donor. He transferred more than $142,000 from his county executive account into the governor’s race, a move that drew a campaign-finance complaint. He has been in Washington raising money while telling voters that Washington is the problem. The Democratic Governors Association’s front group, Protect Our Wisconsin, has been on television attacking Tiffany as a “MAGA extremist” and a “legislative terrorist,” with millions reserved after the primary. None of that made the headline.
The reaction was faster than the paper’s editors. Readers immediately noticed the double standard: a full story on Tiffany’s Wisconsin donors, and little curiosity about the out-of-state money, union max-outs, and Washington fundraising behind Crowley. The obvious follow-up never made the headline.
Campaign finance reports show Tiffany with millions more on hand than Crowley since midsummer, and ad-tracking data show Republicans outspending Democrats on the air. A fair article would say a Northern Wisconsin congressman with grassroots donors in all 72 counties also has the backing of two of the state’s most successful private employers and that Crowley’s side is running with the backing of big labor PACs, a D.C. governors association, and a “people power” brand that still requires a donate link.
Instead, readers got a three-word scare label in the headline and a fraction that matches the party’s mail piece. “Billionaires” does the emotional work. “Two-thirds” does the math theater. “Cash lead over David Crowley” does the underdog ask. All that is missing is the ActBlue button.
Mary Spicuzza and her editors did not expose a secret. They amplified a talking point that WisDems and the Crowley campaign have been shouting since summer, then left Crowley’s own donors, transfers, and outside allies in the fine print, if they appeared at all.
