Democrats' Pick In Wisconsin Shows A Shift In Priorities

In 2018, when Wisconsin Democrats needed a candidate for a must-win gubernatorial election, they turned to Tony Evers, a then-66-year-old veteran education administrator who was in his third term as the state’s schools superintendent. Evers, soft-spoken and cautious, was considered a safe bet for what would be a bruising election against incumbent Gov. Scott Walker (R).

In 2026, when now-Gov. Evers needed a candidate for a must-win gubernatorial election, he turned to someone much different: David Crowley, the 40-year-old Milwaukee County executive with a background in community organizing who could be the first Black person elected governor in the state.

Democratic voters in the state eventually agreed Crowley was the man for the job.

During his primary battle against Assemblywoman Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who many in the party feared would lose in November because of her left-wing views, Crowley was mostly flattened into Evers’ pick for the race — someone safe, whom state Democrats could count on to deliver a trifecta and complete a yearslong political comeback.

But the transition from Evers to Crowley shows how the Democratic Party’s definition of “safe” has shifted over the past eight years. The party is more willing to trust nonwhite candidates in key races, and Evers’ age would be questioned as a potential liability following the political failures of former President Joe Biden. The party’s voters are demanding more ambition, even if they are not always sold on the left-wing policies favored by Hong’s ideological cohort.

“What Wisconsin proved in 2026 is that electability isn’t a fixed thing — it reflects who steps up to lead, who voters trust to understand their lives, and who has delivered for their community,” said Denise Feriozzi, a Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist and co-founder and executive director of The Pipeline Fund. “David Crowley didn’t come out of nowhere. He grew up in Milwaukee, organized his community, served in the Assembly, and ran the county.”

In an interview with HuffPost on Thursday, Crowley said the possibility of having total control of state government would allow Democrats to “go on offense.”

“We need to make sure we’re being bold and pushing policies that allow us to really take on the affordability crisis,” Crowley said, pointing to increasing state funding for schools, repealing Act 10 — the Walker-passed law that gutted the state’s public sector unions — and expanding the state’s BadgerCare healthcare program.

Crowley spent much of the campaign downplaying the ideological divide between him and Hong, comments his GOP opponent, Rep. Tom Tiffany, is now using to portray him as left-wing. Crowley seems determined to avoid the types of cultural “divisions and distractions” Republicans may deploy.

Asked about guns, he reminisced about going duck hunting with his dad and said he would support “common-sense” gun laws. Asked about allowing transgender participation in women’s sports, he said he would leave the decision up to the state’s high school athletics association.

“We don’t have to throw out our morals, our ethics, our values in order to negotiate better, thriving communities,” he insisted. “We don’t have to capitulate and get involved in these cultural wars Republicans try to throw out there because they don’t have anything to run on.”

Most notable is Crowley’s background. He is the son of an IBEW master electrician, and his parents struggled with drug addiction when he was a child. He moved repeatedly throughout Milwaukee, getting evicted twice before he graduated high school. He went to college, but dropped out and got involved in community organizing. He finally got his bachelor’s degree in 2024, well into his time as county executive.

“I’m always going to use my background and my experience as a foundation of how I lead,” he said. “I’ve been evicted, right?” He said the experience helped shape his approach to affordable housing, where he worked with suburban county executives and lowered Milwaukee’s unsheltered homelessness rate to one of the lowest in the country.

Crowley also sounded optimistic he could improve Democrats’ performance in the state’s largest city. Even with then-Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes running for U.S. Senate in 2022, turnout in Milwaukee’s Black neighborhoods was poor. Things weren’t much better in 2024.

“We will be able to coalesce individuals all across southeastern Wisconsin and the state in order to get the type of turnout that we need,” he said, noting his strong performance in the city’s Latino neighborhoods when he ran for reelection in 2022, just two years before President Donald Trump flipped many of them to the GOP. “As far as the momentum that we have seen in the past few weeks, a lot of that has happened in communities of color, and so I’m not going to take that for granted.”

Heading into the November election, Crowley seemed eager to contrast his background and accomplishments with Tiffany’s record as a member of an unpopular legislature and top ally of an unpopular president.

“There’s a lack of spine coming from Congress,” Crowley said.