Tom Tiffany: Republican for Wisconsin Governor

Tom Tiffany is a hard-right member of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation, who stood firmly on rejecting the results of the 2020 election and now represents his party in the race for governor.

Worst moments:

• Signed an amicus brief supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania, a case that sought to overturn results in states won by Biden, including his own.
• Voted against accepting electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania mere hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th seeking exactly that outcome.
• Cast doubt on mail-in voting as he campaigns to govern a swing state where hundreds of thousands of voters vote by mail.

History of election denial

Following the 2020 election, Tom Tiffany was among the House Republicans who voted against certifying the electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania, objections the House rejected 121-303 and 138-282. Those votes came in the hours after violent Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A month earlier, in December 2020, he was one of 126 House Republicans to sign the amicus brief supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania, the lawsuit seeking to discard the results in four states Biden won, which the Supreme Court rejected for lack of standing. He was the only Wisconsin Republican to sign that Texas brief, which sought to overturn results including in his own state.

Tiffany made his intent explicit in advance. On January 5, 2021, he announced his plan to object, vowing to challenge Wisconsin's own results too. Though that planned objection to Wisconsin was called off after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, he later said he would have voted to overturn Wisconsin's result if given the chance. In a newsletter days after January 6 he continued to claim there were irregularities in the election, and on January 9 he appeared at a closed-door Wausau rally where he said he didn't believe Trump had any role in inciting the insurrection and stood by as a right-wing radio host called for “war.” This put him at the extreme end even of his own state's delegation: fellow Wisconsin Republicans Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil, and Mike Gallagher voted to affirm Biden's win, and Grothman called the overturn attempt “absurd and dangerous.” Tiffany has not recanted these false claims and has defended his 2020 votes, asserting that “unscrupulous” election officials in Dane and Milwaukee counties allowed “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes to be cast and counted.” He continues to stand by his positions as a candidate for governor, refusing to admit in 2026 that Biden won the 2020 election.

Influence on election administration

If elected governor, Tiffany would cement Republicans’ control over Wisconsin election law. Democratic Governor Tony Evers has used his veto power to block the Republican-controlled legislature's agenda, including on election bills: in April 2026 Evers vetoed AB 595, which would have required the Elections Commission to purge ineligible voters from the rolls, directed an audit of the rolls to flag potential noncitizens, and mandated data-sharing to match voter records against driver's license and death records. A Governor Tiffany, paired with a Republican legislature, would end that veto wall, meaning election bills Evers has repeatedly blocked could become law. Most strikingly on mail voting, Tiffany told a podcast, “I don't believe we should be doing mail-in voting,” and argued that mail voting produces “questions around elections.” More than 1.5 million Wisconsinites voted absentee in 2024, roughly 600,000 by mail. Democrats warn that it would be dangerous for Tiffany to be overseeing elections in 2028 in a swing state likely to affect the outcome of the presidential election.