Here & Now

Here & Now for August 14, 2026

Announcer:
The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Gwen Moore:
Keep your TVs up going all night long.

Zac Schultz:
A nail biter election night leads to the closest race of its kind in 80 years, as David Crowley pulls off a comeback for the ages to become the Democratic nominee for governor.
Good evening. I’m Zac Schultz filling in for Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now,” we’ll take you through another action-packed election night in Wisconsin and talk with our political experts about what it means for November. A closer look at why vote tallies were delayed again from Milwaukee Central Count and Reverend Al Sharpton points a national spotlight on the funeral of Cory Ruiz. It’s “Here & Now” for August 14.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:
The race that once looked like a runaway turned into a photo finish, as David Crowley narrowly defeated Francesca Hong to win the Democratic nomination. Now that Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election is set, the candidates are already turning the page from the primary to the general. “Here & Now” reporter Steven Potter has the story.

David Crowley:
You know, we’re not going to win this race focusing on ideology alone. It’s about focusing on Wisconsin values.

Tom Tiffany:
This is an election about the very soul of the state of Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
After more than a few twists for the Democrats in the primary, Wisconsin voters now know which two candidates they’ll choose from in the election for governor this fall. On the Democratic side, it will be Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and on the Republican side, it will be U.S. Congressman Tom Tiffany.

Tom Tiffany:
You are the reason our common-sense message is being delivered in every corner of the state of Wisconsin. Yes.

Person in crowd:
You betcha.

Tom Tiffany:
And you are the reason why we are going to turn the governorship red in November, aren’t you? Yeah. Yes.

Steven Potter:
From the moment he entered the race, Tom Tiffany, who hails from northern Wisconsin, has been the Republican frontrunner. With only nominal opposition from a relatively unknown Republican in the primary, Tiffany pulled in more than 95% of the Republican vote on Tuesday. At his election night party, he thanked supporters and pinpointed his stance on issues he thinks will help him win in November.

Tom Tiffany:
Taxes keep rising. An opportunity becomes harder to find because at the heart of this election is a fundamental difference in how we see Wisconsin’s future.

Steven Potter:
It was far more difficult for David Crowley to secure his win in the Democratic primary. His path to victory was not only a stunning upset but also an unexpected comeback. Crowley dropped out of the race in early July but jumped back in after the campaign of Sara Rodriguez imploded and Mandela Barnes made a sudden exit. When he got back into the race, he did so with an endorsement from the state’s top Democrat.

David Crowley:
We kind of had a secret weapon, particularly when it came down to our great governor here, Governor Tony Evers.

Steven Potter:
In every poll, Crowley was trailing democratic socialist and state Representative Francesca Hong by double digits. But as Hong tried to weather negative press in the final days of the election, it seemed more possible that Crowley could be a true contender. As election results rolled in late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Crowley gradually took the lead and won just barely. In all, Crowley earned 39.8% of the Democratic vote, beating Hong by half of a percentage point. At a press conference, Crowley thanked his supporters and spoke about what sets him apart from his new Republican opponent.

David Crowley:
But we all want safe communities, strong schools, affordable health care, good paying jobs and a brighter future for all of our children. And every one of us has something much bigger to unite around. And that is keeping MAGA extremism from bringing the chaos we see in Washington into our neighborhoods right here in the state of Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
Both candidates now turn their attention toward attracting the undecided voter.

Tom Tiffany:
Whatever your political label – Republican, independent, politically homeless, or a Democrat – there’s a place for you in the common-sense movement.

David Crowley:
We deserve better than politicians who divide us for their own political gain. We deserve leaders who wake up every single morning asking one simple question. How can I make life better for the people we serve?

Steven Potter:
Now, with the table finally set for the November 3rd general election, Crowley and Tiffany have less than 90 days to make their case and prove to voters why they should serve as governor the next four years. Reporting from Middleton, I’m Steven Potter for “Here & Now.”

Zac Schultz:
This week’s “Inside Wisconsin Politics” dug further into the governor’s primary, including the heightened national attention on Francesca Hong and the democratic socialist movement.

Shawn Johnson:
I know a lot of political observers nationally were looking to Wisconsin for a lesson in terms of whether democratic socialism that has played well in other states can play in a Midwest swing state. What lesson can they take away from our race?

Rich Kremer:
The obvious takeaway is it didn’t. It didn’t work this time. But all the caveats being the coordinated effort by establishment Democrats, moderate Democrats to make sure that it doesn’t happen, so I would say at face value, yeah, I guess it didn’t work out. And it came pretty close in the effort to stop the far-left progressive candidate in the Senate race in Michigan. The closeness of that, plus this, maybe it changed the conversation. I’ve seen some pundits online talking about well, Hong’s campaign collapsed at the very final moments because of the way she handled those media interviews at the national level.

Zac Schultz:
She hit the marks that all the polling said she had along the way. The difference is the people that hadn’t made up their minds chose elsewhere. I think those were about electability concerns. I think there are legitimate questions about how she answered those questions when the national spotlight was on her, and whether the people in Wisconsin that had been paying attention were starting to think more about electability than about policy. But I don’t know if collapse is the right word when she still got 40% of the vote or thereabouts and that’s a really strong showing from any candidate, especially someone from her background who doesn’t have a long track record of politics in Wisconsin and hasn’t spent a long time developing those relations around the state. So she had a very impressive showing for that context. We talked on this podcast about Francesca Hong’s Thanksgiving tweets and some of the things that were coming up out of her past. Give me your impression of Crowley’s ascent with everyone rallying behind him, including the money and then the way Francesca Hong handled the amount of national attention she was getting.

Shawn Johnson:
Well, I mean, the national window for our race was just so brief. National media was paying attention to Michigan before us, and then all of a sudden, we were the next big thing. I think it’s fair to argue about whether or not people should focus on a tweet from 2020, but they did. I was visiting my dad the weekend before the election. He lives in Illinois. He watches all the Sunday shows religiously, and every one of them talked about that Thanksgiving tweet. My dad doesn’t know who Francesca Hong is or David Crowley or much about the governor’s race in Wisconsin, but he got an earful about that tweet that weekend. And if he’d been watching those shows in Wisconsin, he would have been seeing ads in between saying to vote for David Crowley. So that stuff matters and the timing matters. But it’s how elections are won and lost. And so in a race that was won in this case by David Crowley by 4,000 votes, a little less, stuff like that can matter.

Zac Schultz:
In other closely watched races, Michael Alfonso won the Republican primary in the 7th Congressional District in northern Wisconsin. He’s the Trump-endorsed son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The 7th has a strong Republican lean, and if elected, the 26-year-old Alfonso will become the youngest member of Congress. He faces former state legislator Fred Clark, who won the Democratic primary.
In the 3rd Congressional District in western Wisconsin, Rebecca Cooke won the Democratic primary with more than 60% of the vote, setting up a rematch with Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden. Plenty to talk about with our political panelists, Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross. Thanks to both of you for being here.

Bill McCoshen:
Thanks for having us.

Zac Schultz:
First, we have to talk about Crowley’s win on Tuesday. Scot, how improbable was it to see a candidate drop out and then come back in less than a month and win the nomination?

Scot Ross:
Oh, it’s something we haven’t seen before but, you know, David Crowley has a long record of delivering for the people of Wisconsin as the county executive of the largest county. He’s cut property taxes. He’s invested in small businesses. He’s invested in community health, and he’s invested in the things that really drive the economy and move things forward. So he’s a formidable candidate against a very flawed candidate in Tom Tiffany, who has a ten-year record in the state legislature of making it harder for Wisconsinites. And he decided to go after to Congress on the next thing. And he spent five years making it harder for everybody else.

Zac Schultz:
So, Bill, Tom Tiffany Republicans seemed very eager to face Francesca Hong. Will it be a shift for them to pivot to Crowley?

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any question about that but to your original question, I think it’s unprecedented what happened on Tuesday night. I mean, we’ve never seen a candidate get out of the race and then get back into the race, get the sitting governor’s endorsement. The sitting governor travels around the state with him and literally brings him across the finish line. For your poker players and poker enthusiasts that are watching this show, this is like a royal flush. For that to happen, every star had to line up perfectly and I give Governor Evers credit. I mean, he leaned in to David Crowley and did everything he could. He put his legacy on the line and it worked. That, coupled with $4 million of ads at the end, that trade unions were very much involved in, they get credit for that as well. And there was some — finally, some contrast in the race. David Crowley ran some contrast, and it was on the biggest flaw that Francesca Hong made the entire campaign, which was the issue of Thanksgiving. She said she had old tweets that said, “Cancel Thanksgiving.” She went on both Fox News and CNN and had some unfortunate comments that lasted a whole week nationally. It was a bad — it was the worst unforced error I’ve ever seen in statewide politics that played into this as well. But it was an unbelievable comeback for David Crowley.

Zac Schultz:
Would you ever thought Thanksgiving was going to be the deciding issue?

Scot Ross:
Well, I always joke that like, you know, Donald Trump hates Thanksgiving too because it means he has to spend more time with Donald, Jr. and Eric. I don’t know if he spends any time with the second one from the second marriage or the, you know, anchor baby from the third. But that’s, you know, I mean, again, this race now goes on to Donald Trump. This is about Donald Trump and Tom Tiffany. Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump lie about everything. He has a long record of failing Wisconsin, whether it’s cutting $300 billion from rural health care, whether it’s a nationwide abortion ban, which he supports. When he was in the state Legislature, he cut public education by the largest in history. This case now will be about Donald Trump, whose, you know, rating is in the toilet and the fact that Tom Tiffany votes with him, not 80% of the time, not 90% of the time, 100% of the time. My God, if, you know, we usually see candidates out there on busses, if Donald Trump says so, Tom Tiffany is going to be riding around in a, you know, in one of those catering carts.

Zac Schultz:
Well, Donald — Tom Tiffany was asked, would you like to see Donald Trump in Wisconsin? And he hedged. He said, “Oh, he’s very busy.”

Bill McCoshen:
Well, let me just be very clear about this. No one in history has gotten more votes in the state of Wisconsin than Donald Trump. If Donald Trump can turn out that 1.7 million voters for Tom Tiffany, Tom Tiffany will easily be the next governor of the state of Wisconsin. So, yes, there is a role for Donald Trump in this election. And whether that’s town hall meetings like he did for Michael Alfonso, or it’s mail or it’s phone banks or whatever it may be, and maybe it’s public appearances. We’ll see. But there’s absolutely a role for Donald Trump.

Zac Schultz:
The rap on Tom Tiffany a year ago, when he was first being floated as a candidate for governor, was can you raise any money? Well, he’s had billionaires that have transferred money through the party to him. He’s funded a lot of ads. He’s already on the air right now. Will he have enough or do you think maybe the billionaire faucet gets turned off if they don’t view this as as winnable a race with Crowley versus Hong?

Bill McCoshen:
Oh, I think he’s going to raise more money than any candidate in history. And that includes the self-funders that we’ve had in the last couple of cycles on the Republican side. I don’t think money’s going to be an issue for Tom Tiffany. I think they’re going to do even more on the low dollar side. That’s out there. It’s called low hanging fruit in politics. They can easily go get that. But Tom Tiffany will not have a resource issue.

Zac Schultz:
Will Democrats have enough money? Ben Wikler is not there at the Democratic Party to bring in all that money.

Bill McCoshen:
He’s helping with this.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, I think he’ll be helping out. You know, yeah, the Democratic strategy is to raise a lot of money, right? I mean, they’ve done a very good job using things like the loopholes created by Robin Vos.

Bill McCoshen:
We’ve never been in on the grift.

Scot Ross:
Mayhap another instance of being hoisted on your own petard. And they have $5 million left to spend, of course, because the Republicans, what they wanted to accomplish was that Fran Hong not be the next governor of the great state of Wisconsin and with their $5 million of spending, have achieved their goal. So I’m sure they’re popping champagne bottles over that one. It’s, you know, this is going to be a wide-open race. Clearly, as you pointed out, Tom Tiffany has raised $10 million in — of his money in 2026 from three billionaires. You know, the two Uihleins and Diane Hendricks. And on the day he got his last transfer, he promised on the radio he was not going to raise taxes on billionaires. So that was a nice timing for that.

Bill McCoshen:
This is a loophole that Democrats have used successfully under Ben Wikler for ten straight years.

Zac Schultz:
Both parties…

Bill McCoshen:
Republicans finally figured it out. Yeah, we’re leveling the playing field.

Zac Schultz:
The irony of this is it was less than a year ago that Tom Tiffany was calling this the billionaire loophole that Democrats abused, even though he was part of the process of creating it. But now he’s taking advantage of it.

Bill McCoshen:
Well, why wouldn’t you? It’s a legal mechanism for raising money in the state of Wisconsin, and Republicans have failed to use it in the past. Tiffany is not going to make that mistake.

Scot Ross:
He can spend all the money he wants, but he can’t erase his record. He did scrub his website after right before he got in saying, like, you know, all the really radically extreme policies but then again yesterday he was photographed with his lit in his back pocket, which says MAGA extremist Tom Tiffany. So, you know, we’ll have to see how he explains that one away.

Bill McCoshen:
Gubernatorial races are all about the future. What are you going to do for me? What’s in it for me as a voter if I vote for you? Scot Ross or Bill McCoshen, or in this case, Tom Tiffany or David Crowley. Tom Tiffany is already out with positive ads talking about his agenda for the future of the state of Wisconsin. And I think it’s very, very positive. You’re also going to see sharp contrast between him and David Crowley, which you did not see until the very end of the Democratic primary. And I think that was a mistake for all the other candidates who ran against Francesca Hong. David Crowley figured it out at the right time, and it worked.

Zac Schultz:
Switching to congressional races, we’ve got a rematch in the 3rd with incumbent Republican Derrick Van Orden against Rebecca Cooke. Scot, does this race follow the national environment or the top of the ticket, or does it stand out on its own, particularly for Democrats and independents in the 3rd?

Scot Ross:
Well, I would say that because Tom Tiffany, you know, supports the $2 billion slush fund for terrorist insurrectionists, that he is the biggest January 6th terrorist insurrectionist in Wisconsin but we actually have a January 6th terrorist insurrectionist as the candidate and current congressperson from the 3rd Congressional District, Derrick Van Orden. He is unhinged. You know, people criticize me sometimes about my speaking online, but this guy is totally unhinged. And Rebecca Cooke brings a real experience of what people in the state, what people in the 3rd Congressional District have to deal with: affordability, gas prices, you know, working two jobs. And I think that translates much better for what the public’s going to want in this election, especially given the record that Trump has in the state, whether it’s with Tom Tiffany or Derrick Van Orden of really hurting people in Wisconsin.

Bill McCoshen:
Even in midterms, which are historically bad for the party in power. And in this case, it’s Republicans. 87% of incumbent congresspeople get re-elected. So the advantage is going to be to Derrick Van Orden. Rebecca Cooke has already lost that seat twice. I think she’s going to lose the rematch. It’s going to be a hat trick of losses for her, but it will be a competitive race right down to the end. And that’s one where we may see Donald Trump in La Crosse or Eau Claire.

Zac Schultz:
Does Derrick Van Orden need to adjust his behavior? Already on Twitter this week, he was saying Democrats stole the primary election or is he just be who he is?

Bill McCoshen:
I think he is who he is. I wouldn’t have said that. I don’t think that’s accurate. I don’t think we should care how your primary played out. At the end of the day, Francesca Hong didn’t care. She had the ability to ask for a recount. She chose not to. Spoke volumes about her character, I think. So we should focus on the future. That’s what voters want us to talk about is what are you going to do to help us balance our checkbook every month here?

Zac Schultz:
So in the 7th congressional, Michael Alfonso used his father-in-law’s money and the Trump endorsement to cruise to the nomination. Ordinarily, the 7th isn’t in play. Could it be with someone of his particular reputation and this being an open seat?

Scot Ross:
If ever the sauce was there to be sampled by the Democratic voters, it might be there because this is a guy who has absolutely no experience. He’s a carpetbagger. You know, he got there by, you know, essentially financed by Sean Duffy’s corruption. So, yes, I think that if Fred Clark can get the resources to be able to articulate that, then I say it’s entirely possible whether or not he’ll be able to get it, it’s going to be tough because again, Republican failure all over the country, the Democrats are all over the place in terms of being able to spend in races they might not otherwise have been able to get. And very clearly, Democrats will have the control of the Congress come after this election.

Zac Schultz:
This is Tom Tiffany’s home place, and there’s a lot of legacy.

Bill McCoshen:
And Sean Duffy’s before that.

Zac Schultz:
Yeah.

Bill McCoshen:
There’s legacy. Listen, Michael Alfonso and his family moved to Land O’ Lakes when he was three years old. I know this because I coached him in hockey when he was ten years old for a team out of Minocqua. He then — they moved to Wausau when he was in middle school, which is where he met Sean Duffy’s daughter. He’s a Wisconsinite through and through. I like the notion of having someone young on our side, finally, running for a major office, and I think he’s going to do well. He surprised me by how much he won a highly competitive primary by.

Zac Schultz:
That was an impressive win considering the amount of money that was spent in that district. All right, that is all the time we have. Bill McCoshen, Scot Ross. Thanks again.

Scot Ross:
Thanks.

Zac Schultz:
Issues continue to crop up in Milwaukee’s late night ballot counting process, this time further delaying the results of the election for a national audience. How Milwaukee counts its ballots has been the subject of scrutiny for years. As the largest county in the state, it has the most absentee ballots to process before those totals are reported, often leading to what people call a late-night ballot dump and adding fuel to election conspiracy fires. In a press release, the Milwaukee Election Commission reiterated that what caused the delay had no impact on the results. Alexander Shur, a reporter with Votebeat, watched the scene unfold and he joins us now. Thanks for your time today.

Alexander Shur:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
So the issue occurred at the Central Count, but this wasn’t with how they count the ballots. This was at the end of the night getting the results. So kind of walk us through what went wrong and what you were seeing as it happened.

Alexander Shur:
Yeah. So I’d say broadly, what happened on Tuesday was 15 hours of nearly flawless processing and counting in a way that actually was more efficient than past elections, being capped off by a really simple and regrettable error. So essentially, all these ballots are counted. I think Milwaukee counted about 28,000 by the end of the night. And then the last step before you send results to the counties, you need to extract those results from the tabulators that count all the ballots. So on Election Day, there were nine tabulators. And typically an election official goes to each tabulator and they follow a checklist, or at least they had in the past in Milwaukee. And it takes about ten minutes per tabulator. It adds a lot of time at the end of the night, but it also ensures uniformity. And what we saw on Tuesday was it took about ten minutes to download results from the first tabulator. Took maybe five or six minutes from the second, and then all of a sudden, it was taking two to three minutes to download results from a tabulator. And it wasn’t just one election official doing it, they were dividing up into teams. So it went from what I had gotten used to as somewhat of a slow, tedious process, it got really quick. And in hindsight, it just simply takes more than two or three minutes to download results from a tabulator. The reason that it went from 10 minutes to three minutes was they were clicking the wrong button. They were not downloading election results from five of the nine tabulators at the city absentee ballot processing center.

Zac Schultz:
So just to clarify, there’s no evidence of malfeasance or tampering or fraud but that didn’t stop the conspiracy theorists from immediately jumping all over this on the social media, right?

Alexander Shur:
That’s exactly right. And I think they saw it as, you know, a way for the city or the state to rig the gubernatorial primary against Francesca Hong, no matter that Crowley was on top, you know, before this so-called ballot dump, no matter that their, you know, ballot images and audit logs and a paper trail tracking every single one of these ballots. You know, I’ve been saying, for better or worse, what happened was evidence that elections are run by humans and sometimes they make mistakes when you know they’re on a lack of sleep, or there’s not the checklist that should be guiding them in front of them.

Zac Schultz:
So many have been calling for a change in state law that would allow Milwaukee and other central count operations to start counting those absentee ballots and processing them on Monday before the election so we’re not waiting until late in the night. One of the champions of that has been a Republican who has pushed to try and get that bill through. It got killed in the state Senate, unfortunately. But even he has concerns and wants to hear testimony, right. So how will this unfold as people ask more questions?

Alexander Shur:
I mean, I think a really common rebuttal for past legislative efforts to pass this Monday processing bill, was this talking point about among Republican legislators that we can’t trust Milwaukee with an extra day if they’re only making errors on, you know, they only have one day and they’re already making errors. Why should we let them do this on Monday? However, you see the logic of that talking point every time they make an error sort of undermines this mission to pass Monday count. So as you pointed out, you have Scott Krug, who’s a very staunch supporter of this Monday processing bill. And every time he sees Milwaukee make a mistake like this past Tuesday, just — he knows that is — that makes his case significantly harder because now you have this state legislators looking at the city as a flawed election jurisdiction at the same time that the city is asking for more time to count and process ballots.

Zac Schultz:
Yeah, and just a few seconds left. But give me a sense of what it’s going to look like in November, because I know this is the city of Milwaukee, but people are going to conflate David Crowley as the Milwaukee County executive, any late-night balloting totals coming in are going to have even more scrutiny in the fall, right?

Alexander Shur:
It’s possible. I mean, every — I think no matter what Milwaukee does, even if they run a flawless operation, they’re going to be scrutinized. If they make a single mistake and they know this, it’s going to just lead to an absolute blow up in conspiracy theories, especially if Crowley emerges as the candidate. So I think all of the pressure is on them to run this flawlessly in November.

Zac Schultz:
All right. Alexander Shur with Votebeat. Thanks for your time today.

Alexander Shur:
Of course. Thanks for having me.

Zac Schultz:
The fatal shooting of 38-year-old Corey Ruiz by a Madison police officer also garnered national attention. This week the Wisconsin Department of Justice released the name of the officer, Kiel Baitinger-Peterson, who has more than ten years of experience, was injured by Ruiz with a knife before the officer opened fire. The investigation is ongoing and there was no information on whether the officer will be referred for charges. He remains on administrative leave. The funeral for Ruiz was held at the Fountain of Life Church today and was attended by his family, civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the Reverend Al Sharpton.

Elsa Ruiz:
He touched a lot of people in and out of the streets of Madison, city of Madison, and every single one is affected by the loss of my son. I am angered at the people that took him from me. They had no right. Though I have three beautiful grown children left to love and cherish, a piece of my heart has been torn from my chest. I love you, my first-born boy. You’re beautiful. You’re handsome. As you are now with the angels and not in pain, I leave you in the hands of God to watch over you.

Al Sharpton:
From the tape I saw, I don’t think that officer thought if they discharged their gun, that people would stand up. I don’t think the officer thought that people like Crump would come and help the legal team. I don’t think they thought people like me would come and do his funeral, but I want them to understand that we come in the name of someone that tell us, no matter who they are and what rank they are, we going to stop and stand up for justice for this young man Corey Ruiz because he could have been one of our children.

Zac Schultz:
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at PBSWisconsin.org and then click on the news tab. That is our program for tonight. I’m Zac Schultz. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:
Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.