To put this in baseball terms (and let’s look ahead instead of looking back to an ugly end to the Packers’ season) it’s about the third inning in the Wisconsin governor’s race and there’s finally a score to look at.
The bottom line is that it’s a close game with no clear favorite right now. The score is provided by the first campaign finance reports, which came in at the end of last week. Here’s how they stack up on the Democratic side:
David Crowley: $800,000
Sara Rodriguez: $618,000
Joel Brennan: $566,000
Mandela Barnes: $555,000
Missy Hughes: $465,000
Francesca Hong: $368,000
Kelda Roys: $355,000
There are caveats galore with these numbers, though. Crowley’s total is bolstered by $130,000 transferred from his County Executive account, Barnes’ total includes $50,000 from a PAC he controls and each of the candidates entered the race at different times, so their totals were produced over varying lengths of time.
Also, while there’s an almost half million dollar spread between Crowley and Roys, Roys’ total still makes her competitive. Nobody will be nocked out of the race by these numbers.
All of which is to say that the score here early in the ballgame isn’t telling us a whole lot about the ultimate winner. So, go ahead and leave your seat to get a hot dog and a beer if you want. But let me make a few observations.
Crowley surprised me. I didn’t expect his candidacy to get very far. I didn’t think he’d be leading the fundraising game at all, much less right out of the box. Sure, the $130k from his existing account helps, but he’d still lead with the $670,000 he raised over and above that.
Rodriguez is solid and there’s more where that came from. She’s been in the race the longest (since July) and so you have to take that into account, but still, coming in second is a solid performance for her. Also, keep in mind that you can add $2 million to her total because the national Democratic Lieutenant Governors’ Association plans that much in independent expenditures on her behalf.
Talk about more where that came from, watch out for Brennan. He raised over $500,000 even though he was the latest entry, joining the race in December. Also, he’ll be backed by his brother-in-law, Kevin Conroy, who just sold Exact Sciences, makers of the Cologuard stool sampling kit, for something like a trillion dollars. No shit.
Barnes is lagging. I expected Barnes to be the leader at this point, even if he got in officially relatively late. He’s essentially been running from the moment Tony Evers announced he wouldn’t go for a third term and really he’s been preparing for this for four years. He also has the best lists, developed in his unsuccessful 2022 bid for U.S. Senate. And you have to discount even this total by the $50k he already had in the bank. Dem Party activists have been telling me for months that they’re soured on Barnes for blowing what they thought should have been an easy win over Ron Johnson. I was skeptical, but now I’m thinking maybe they’re right.
I still don’t know what to make of Hughes. She did okay, but not spectacularly, in this first report. With some degree of personal wealth and connections in the business community, it would seem she has potential to raise a lot of money. This is a middling, but not embarrassing, performance. I still don’t get her argument. The party is not in the mood for a pro-business Democrat.
Hong did better than I expected. When she announced I thought hers would be a brief, quixotic candidacy. But over $300k is real money and she did not finish last, which is what I had expected.
Roys did worse than I expected. I didn’t expect her to come in last, albeit by only thirteen thousand dollars. She did well in her 2018 bid for governor and she’s running a mainstream liberal campaign focussed on identity and abortion rights, which I thought would appeal to activist Dem donors. Don’t count her out, but this is a relatively poor showing.
On the Republican side, Tom Tiffany has the equivalent of a five run lead. He’s raised $2.1 million to Josh Schoemann’s $535,000 during the same fundraising period, though Schoemann has raised almost a million dollars since he entered the race in May. It looks like Tiffany’s game to lose, though Schoemann is putting up a respectable fight.
The primaries are August 11th, which we’ll call the sixth inning, and the game ends with the general election on November 3rd.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
I would call the Primary the 7th inning stretch because not all of these candidates will make the ballot and a more clear frontrunner could emerge based on polling and fundraising. By the time we hit Primary, this picture might get more focus, unlike when the Dems stupidly bailed on 2022 Primary and got behind Mandela. Your analysis of Sara Rodriguez is a little confusing. She claims $600k “on hand” yet has $40k in incurred obligations and an outstanding loan of $150k, all while spending $174k. Why is a four year statewide office holder spending so much this early unless they are not tracking well with name recognition? early AFSCME endorsement was a clear signal for me to lose interest. You mentioned Brennan’s support via Kevin Conroy, but what about Jennifer and Chris Abele sending the max to Missy Hughes? That’s at least worth mentioning given their capacity to do 3rd party in the Primary and General. Also worth mentioning about Missy Hughes is that she comes from probably the best part of the state for this cycle, given the outside money pouring in against Van Orden’s Congressional seat, and the fact that western Wisconsin is the epitome of purple voters. If Dems want 2026 to be successful they must outperform in the 3rd CD. FYI I have not decided who to support, so I am not spinning things one way or another to favor any individual.
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You dug into this more deeply than I did, so thanks for the additional analysis. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I just want the Dem with the best chance of winning in November.
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