Wisconsin voters do not like data centers. In July polling, 76% said the costs outweigh the benefits — up from 55% last October.
So it makes sense that Tom Tiffany, the Republican running for governor, has spent weeks cutting up clips of Democrat David Crowley talking about data centers and posting them online. It's the popular position, and Tiffany found a way to be on it.
There is a problem with the pose. It's in his campaign finance report.
The $5,000
On June 3, Tiffany for Wisconsin received $5,000 from Robert Marchant, the Milwaukee Courier reported.
Marchant is the only registered lobbyist for the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, according to the group's own registration form.
The coalition describes its mission as championing "Wisconsin's role in the data center economy" and "advocating for smart growth." In February, it circulated a study claiming data centers don't raise electricity rates.
That's the group. Now here's what its lobbyist's client actually lobbied for.
The two things Tiffany says he wants — and the coalition fought both
Tiffany has said he wants to ban non-disclosure agreements for data centers, and to end the sales tax exemption they get in Wisconsin. In June he put it flatly: "I would end all subsidies for data centers in Wisconsin."
Both of those were live bills in the state legislature. The coalition took a position on each:
- SB 969, which would prohibit NDAs meant to conceal information about a data center from the public — the coalition was against it, in February.
- AB 245 and SB 244, modifying the sales and use tax exemption for qualified data centers — the coalition supported them, in November.
So the sole lobbyist for a group that fought the NDA ban and pushed the tax break wrote Tiffany a $5,000 check in June. And Tiffany's public position is that he wants the NDA ban and wants the tax break gone.
One of those two things is not being said in earnest. The check does not appear to have been written by someone worried about it.
The votes he already cast
Tiffany doesn't have to speculate about where he stands on AI infrastructure. He was in Congress. He voted.
He voted for the SPEED Act, written to speed up the build-out of the infrastructure that artificial intelligence runs on. The bill was backed by tech giants including OpenAI, Micron and Microsoft.
And he was one of the 218 votes that passed Trump's budget bill on July 3, 2025 — a bill that, as written in the House, included a 10-year ban on state and local governments enforcing any AI regulation. That's the opposite of "communities should decide." It's a decade-long federal gag order on exactly the local rules Wisconsin towns are now asking for.
The Senate stripped that provision 99 to 1 before the bill became law. Ninety-nine senators, of both parties, looked at a ten-year ban on state AI rules and voted it down. Tiffany had already voted for it.
Crowley's campaign summarized the record this way:
"He has never introduced legislation regulating data centers in Congress, has never backed a moratorium, and is pushing to keep aging coal plants online to help power the very data centers he claims to be tough on."
Crowley addresses data centers on his campaign website. Tiffany's website does not.
"Toxic Tom" is not a new nickname
Tiffany's response, through his campaign, is that he doesn't share Crowley's vision of "turning Wisconsin into a data center hub for the 'entire globe,'" and that "no new data centers should move forward without standards that protect Wisconsin's land, water, and environment."
That is a striking sentence from this particular politician.
Tiffany earned the nickname "Toxic Tom" as a state legislator for an anti-DNR, pro-mining record — at one point admitting the legislation he authored was harmful to the environment. The Bad River Chippewa Tribe spoke out against it, because its reservation and its wild rice beds sit a few miles downstream from the proposed mine.
He has since told a tavern crowd he is open to splitting up the Department of Natural Resources — the agency that would enforce the water and land standards he now says data centers must meet. A former DNR secretary's read on that idea: it gives Republicans "one agency they can feed and one they can starve."
And over his congressional career he has taken $135,765 from the energy and natural resources sector, according to OpenSecrets.
We have seen this exact move before
The pattern here is not unique to Wisconsin. It is, at this point, the standard Republican play on data centers: run against them in public while the industry funds you.
- Pennsylvania's Stacy Garrity spent two years saying the state should deregulate to attract data centers, then demanded a "pause" once the polling turned.
- Marsha Blackburn promised to "hold Big Tech accountable" right after Big Tech gave her $100,000.
- Ohio's Jon Husted says he'll protect your electric bill while the companies raising it fund his campaign.
Three states, three Republicans, the same script. Tiffany's version is just unusually well documented, because the industry's entire Wisconsin lobbying operation is one man and that man's name is on the report.
What to ask him
Tiffany says he'd end all data center subsidies in Wisconsin. Two questions follow naturally:
- Will he return the $5,000 from the lobbyist whose client fought the NDA ban and pushed the tax exemption he says he opposes?
- If a ten-year federal ban on state AI regulation was worth voting for in July 2025, what changed by August 2026 besides the polling?
Neither question requires new reporting to answer. They require Tiffany to answer them.
Source
Drake Bentley, The Milwaukee Courier: "'Toxic Tom' Tiffany accepted campaign contribution from data center lobbyist, voted for more AI infrastructure." Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images.
