The Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation has put the candidates for governor of Wisconsin on television, in front of the whole state, every cycle since 1990. It announced this year's October debate back in April.
On September 9, it canceled.
The reason is not a scheduling accident. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor, would not accept the invitation. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, the Democratic nominee, was planning to participate. The foundation needed both.
"Based on legal precedent, for the foundation to air a debate, multiple candidates must participate. Two invitations were sent and both had to be accepted in order to have a debate. That did not happen."
That is the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association's own statement, reported by the Wisconsin Examiner. A statewide tradition running since 1990 ended because one candidate did not send an acceptance.
What Tiffany said about it
Tiffany explained himself on Tuesday, on conservative radio host Dan O'Donnell's show. Here is the explanation:
"I had no time. There was lots of negotiations going on behind the scenes," he said. "One debate is sufficient to be able to cover the issues that need to be covered."
He is doing one debate — an October 21 event hosted by WISN-12 that Crowley has also agreed to. Tiffany said he had watched the station's reporters and thought they were fair. "It's only going to take one debate to get the information out there for the people of Wisconsin," he said.
One debate. For the office of governor — the job that signs or vetoes every bill that passes in Madison.
Crowley's answer was to say he had looked forward to "continuing the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association's more than 30-year tradition of putting candidates directly before voters statewide." The Cap Times editorial board asked the obvious question — why is Tiffany avoiding multiple debates? — and noted that Jill Geisler, the veteran broadcast journalist slated to moderate the canceled debate, called the decision "truly disappointing."
The same week, he wouldn't answer a question about your ballot
Tiffany's reluctance to appear is not limited to debate stages.
The same Tuesday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked him about President Trump's highly publicized push to restrict mail-in voting — an effort that would affect Tiffany's own race for governor. Tiffany said he did not know enough about it to say whether he supported it.
He is the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin. The proposal in question would change how the voters in his election cast their ballots. It has been national news for weeks.
And "election security" is one of the announced topics for the single debate he agreed to.
Why fewer appearances is the strategy
Tiffany has a record in Congress, and it is not a record that gets easier to defend the more often he has to talk about it.
Forty-five thousand Wisconsinites have already lost health coverage, and Tiffany called the budget bill's new Medicaid work requirements a "common-sense requirement" — requirements that do not take effect until January 2027, after the election he is running in. He has called union leaders "kingpins" while voting against workers. He has missed votes on housing legislation.
The Cap Times editorial board's read is that Tiffany would rather let television advertising do the talking, funded by out-of-state donors, than stand next to his opponent and answer questions. A candidate who is confident in his answers takes more debates, not fewer.
He is not the only one
This is a pattern across the Republicans on this site, not a Wisconsin quirk. In Virginia's 9th District, Morgan Griffith hasn't held an in-person town hall in over ten years and now won't debate his opponent. In Ohio, the Dayton Daily News asked Mike Turner whether he'd debate or hold a town hall and got an answer to a different question. In Arkansas, Sarah Sanders skipped the debate entirely.
The common thread is that a debate is the one campaign event a candidate cannot script. Everything else — the ad, the radio hit with a friendly host, the press release — they control.
The short version
The Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation has aired a governor's debate every cycle since 1990. It canceled this year's after Tom Tiffany declined to accept an invitation his Democratic opponent had planned to accept. Tiffany's reason was that "one debate is sufficient," and the one he agreed to is on October 21. On the same day he said that, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he did not know enough about Trump's effort to restrict mail-in voting in his own election to say whether he supports it.
Source
Wisconsin Examiner, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association cancels debate for first time in over 30 years, by Baylor Spears. Photos by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.
