David Crowley wants to run the whole state. Milwaukee County already has the bill.
David Crowley raised Milwaukee County’s sales tax and property-tax levy, is soft on crime, and aligned with the DSA.
What Repealing Act 10 Would Cost You!
David Crowley wants to repeal Act 10. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty estimates that would raise taxes by $2.27 billion in the first year. At 5% inflation, the cost could exceed $100 billion over 20 years.
See for yourself:
Who is the REAL David Crowley?
Crowley is A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: the DSA Hong-Overlap:
At a July 23, 2026 town hall in La Crosse, Crowley was asked whether he’d actually implement any of Francesca Hong’s policies.
Translation: same agenda, better haircut, and please stop asking.
Then, after he beat her, CNN put the actual list in front of him: a state-run public bank, state-run grocery stores, free taxpayer-funded childcare, a state version of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE. Crowley managed to utter, “We don’t agree on all of those different positions,” and then declined to name a single one. In August he was asked which part of the national DSA platform he rejects. He said he hadn’t looked at it. The man who just spent a primary running against a DSA member somehow never got around to reading what she stands for.
He hasn’t publicly broken with any of Hong’s positions. He just won’t say which ones he opposes. That’s not moderation. That’s a wolf hoping you won’t notice the sheep costume until after November.
Even worse, before the primary he told Axios that “people don’t like socialists” and that they “didn’t poll very good,” arguing Hong could not win a general election in a swing state. The problem, in other words, was never the policies. It was the label. Socialism polls badly, so swap the name and hope Wisconsin doesn’t notice.
The Candidate of “Inclusivity” Was Once “Dirt McGirk”
Before David Crowley was County Executive, he was Dirt McGirk. The X account was @No_pork_plz. It ran from 2010 to 2014. His campaign says Crowley registered it with his own email and wrote some of the posts. The crude ones, he claims, were the other 10 to 12 people who had the password. The posts did not read like a committee.
One introduced the account as “DC aka David,” also known as “Dirty.” Another asked the sexy ladies to slide into the DMs. One was a confession that he had never “boinked” a white woman, and wondered if that was bad. Others rated women, sex, and “drunk chicks.” One said he does not call police pigs. He calls them cows. It’s a beef thing. Others used racial slurs and a crack about “gay thoughts.” Other posts contained racial and derogatory LGBTQ references.
Crowley now says he does not condone that language. He has not said which posts he wrote. He has not named the other authors. The account was his. The alibi is a group project.
Wisconsin’s “inclusive” candidate used to post as Dirt McGirk. See for yourself.
Is Crowley a “Systemic Racist” While Claiming Wisconsin Culture Is Racist?
In a December 2021 post about Milwaukee County parks, Crowley argued that golf, marinas and beer gardens are activities “traditionally and predominately supported by white users,” attributing that disparity to what he called “systemic racism & injustice.”
That makes his appearance raising a glass at the Juneau Beer Garden this past May rather ironic—particularly given that the gathering was largely made up of white attendees.
Wisconsin is roughly 80% white. Golf, beer gardens and summer nights at the marina aren’t fringe activities in Wisconsin. They’re part of everyday life.
Wisconsin's parks stay open in part because visitors actually use them and pay for them.
Calling that success a product of systemic injustice does not fix anything. It just tells working families their habits are suspect.
Revenue that keeps green-spaces maintained should be celebrated, not treated like evidence of original sin. When public officials start sorting recreation by skin color, they stop seeing neighbors and start seeing categories.
Kamala Crawling Crowley
You are who you eat with, especially if it’s the “liberals of lunch.”
On September 28, David Crowley was in Santa Monica for a fundraiser featuring former Vice President Kamala Harris and actor Sean Penn. The checks matched the trip. Campaign finance records cited by the Tiffany campaign show maximum $20,000 contributions from:
• Quinn Delaney, the California donor whose Akonadi Foundation has argued police departments should be defunded and backed abolishing the Oakland school district police
• Todor Markov, a San Francisco AI researcher who has worked at OpenAI and Anthropic
• Chris Stolte, the Seattle tech billionaire and Tableau co-founder
Tom Tiffany, said Crowley wants “the California playbook” in Wisconsin: higher taxes, more crime, higher prices. Crowley talks about affordability at home. The check he went to collect was written in California.
Not surprisingly, Illinois Governor and billionaire J.B. Pritzker gave $1 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, continuing a pattern of major contributions from billionaire Democratic donors, including George Soros and Epstein Island visitor Reid Hoffman. David Crowley also received a donation from Jonathan Soros, who advocates for abolishing the Electoral College and is the son of Leftist billionaire George Soros.
You are who you eat with.
What's at Stake?
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On July 29, 2026, after an appeals court upheld Act 10, Crowley issued a statement: “As governor, I will repeal Act 10.” He also listed “Repeal Act 10” as the first item in a March 26, 2026 post on his first 30 days. Homeowners would get the bill.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty estimates the cost at $2.27 billion in higher taxes the first year. At 5 percent inflation, that could exceed $100 billion over 20 years. On a $500,000 home in Whitefish Bay, that is about $530 more the first year and about $27,500 more over 20 years. The bill does not stop at one suburb.
Crowley calls this affordability. A $2.27 billion tax increase in year one is the opposite. Run the number for your own home: WILL Act 10 Calculator.
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He celebrated the tax hike with cake.
Crowley signed the near-doubling of Milwaukee County’s sales tax, from 0.5 percent to 0.9 percent, after the County Board approved it under Act 12. Sales taxes hit groceries, clothes, and school supplies the same way they hit a luxury purchase. He marked it with County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson, cake, and a camera.
Wisconsin Watch’s fact check is plain: Milwaukee County sales and property taxes have increased under Crowley. The property-tax levy fell once, in the 2024 budget, after the new sales tax arrived. It has been climbing since.
The Tiffany campaign’s tally: an 80 percent increase in the county sales tax, repeated property-tax levy hikes, and Assembly votes against middle-class income-tax relief. The opposition site crowleylovestaxes.com puts the adopted 2026 levy increase at $10.4 million, 3.48 percent, the largest since at least 2010, and flags a projected $50.8 million gap in 2027.
His October 1, 2027 budget proposal raises the levy again, about 2.5 to 2.6 percent, while arguing the rate on a typical home falls because values rose. Families do not pay the rate. They pay the bill. A regressive sales tax. A levy that keeps coming back. Cake for the people who passed it.
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The margin was about half a point, 39.8 to 39.3, after a race in which prediction markets had Hong as the heavy favorite hours before polls closed. Critics, including reporting in The Federalist, have questioned how Milwaukee counted the vote. What is not in dispute: Crowley is the nominee because of a few thousand votes in a contest his own party did not expect him to win. Wisconsin does not need another Madison-and-Milwaukee insider who was selected to stop a different Democrat. It needs a governor who will not raise the cost of living.
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Milwaukee’s results. Wisconsin’s next budget.
Crowley has said he will not expand Wisconsin’s voucher programs. He wants new money in district schools first, higher special-education reimbursement, and more “accountability” rules on choice schools. Choice advocates read that as a freeze today and a cap tomorrow. The MacIver Institute’s frame is the one parents already know: more money, fewer students, worse results.
Milwaukee is the evidence.
• City Forward Collective’s north-side brief and Heartland Post’s review of state testing show Milwaukee Public Schools losing ground in reading — about another grade level and a half over a decade.
• The Badger Institute has documented teachers leaving Wisconsin classrooms. Milwaukee’s vacancy and discipline problems are part of why.
• Young America’s Foundation reported that Milwaukee Public Schools told teachers to “decenter whiteness” in the classroom. Heartland Post has tracked how DPI pushed DEI frameworks into districts without a new statute.
Crowley was a plaintiff in the stop-and-frisk lawsuit against the Milwaukee Police Department that ended in a 2018 settlement, including outside oversight of department policy. He has treated public safety and public schools as equity projects. Parents are treating them as places their children have to survive.
He says an overnight end to vouchers would overwhelm buildings that already cannot staff or house the students they have. That is an argument for fixing the district. It is not an argument for trapping the families who already left it.turned down federal money for those options. Crowley would likely do the same.
Many parents want a way out of weak public schools. Crowley would close that door.
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Tablets for the jail. A shrug for the victims.
On March 29, 2022, Milwaukee County signed a contract with Inmate Calling Solutions for phones, video, and tablets in the jail and the Community Reintegration Center. The program was extended in 2025 through 2028. Crowley’s 2024 budget added about $1.9 million in tax-levy spending for more free phone and video time.
Judges have spent the years since dealing with what those devices were used for.
• Thomas S. Zollicoffer, charged in a triple homicide, used a tablet to message a witness to “stop lying” and wrote, “Mark my words, I’ll be out even if it’s only for a short time; they will pay.” Judge David Borowski revoked the access and said there is no constitutional right to a tablet. He called it a weapon.
• Amier Jones Jr., held on domestic-violence charges, made more than 1,500 contact attempts toward a victim; about 300 messages got through a no-contact order. He also messaged a Milwaukee police officer that the officer was already “on my hit.”
• Another prisoner used a device to intimidate witnesses and access child pornography, the fact pattern Judge Borowski put on the record.
Crowley’s office said he would ask the sheriff to find the vulnerabilities. The contract is still in place until 2028.
The money he will take, and the money he will not spend.
The same week he was raising money in California, his campaign deposited the maximum from Quinn Delaney, whose foundation’s record includes the push to abolish Oakland’s school police.
His proposed 2027 budget does not renew the county’s Flock camera contract. He said he would not fund a program that carries a risk of misuse, and redirected the money toward an eviction program. The sheriff’s office has been carrying overtime because it cannot fill shifts. Public safety is where his budgets find a principle.
He has also endorsed judges whose release decisions became campaign material, including a Heartland Post report on a Crowley-endorsed judge ordering release for a man accused of shooting up a police station.
And the party he is running with kept a convicted child sex offender, Prado, inside the Democratic Latino caucus apparatus until Heartland Post reported it and the party cut him loose. Crowley did not build that caucus. He is asking to lead the party that tolerated it.
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The county is the résumé. Read it.
The airport. Critics of his parks and facilities record, including Freedom Eden’s August 2026 account, point to Mitchell International’s condition on his watch: deferred maintenance, a county that finds money for new programs and not for the building travelers actually use.
The pension and the pipes. Act 12 and the sales-tax increase were sold as the fix for a pension hole that was eating the levy. Crowley has since said the sales tax was not going to fix all of the county’s problems. The structural gap is still there. So is the backlog in buildings, including the sewer and facilities work the county has been promising for years.
If he cannot maintain one airport, he should not manage more than 100,000 state employees.
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Hand picked Crowley by Gov. Evers points to Crowley supporting his boss's steadfast stance prohibiting biological males from participating in Wisconsin girls sports. Men and women should compete on a fair playing field. Crowley will likely not defend that.
He co-authored the bills. Twice.
In 2017 and again in 2019, David Crowley co-authored legislation requiring free tampons and sanitary napkins in all restrooms in state and local government buildings. The wording was not limited to women’s rooms. The bills said “all of the restroom facilities.” (AB 682, introduced November 29, 2017; AB 381, introduced August 28, 2019.)
The same requirement covered buildings used by public school districts, independent charter schools, and private schools in the parental choice programs. Products at no charge, in every restroom used for instruction.
He also backed writing gender identity and gender expression into Wisconsin nondiscrimination law, in 2017 and 2019. The bills covered employment, housing, public accommodations, education, insurance, jury service, and certain mental-health and vocational-rehabilitation services. Crowley co-authored the Assembly bills and co-sponsored the Senate companions. (AB 418 and SB 328, 2017–18; AB 319 and SB 308, 2019–20.)
Neither package became law. The record is still his. Tampons in every government and school restroom. Gender identity written into state nondiscrimination law. -
Crowley wants a new law. Tiffany will keep the one Wisconsin already has.
On October 6, David Crowley said that as governor he would push a constitutional amendment making abortion a right in the Wisconsin Constitution. Asked if he would sign a bill repealing the state’s 20-week limit, he would not say yes or no. He said the decision belongs to “a woman and a health care provider.”
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin has already endorsed him. The group’s own page credits him with co-sponsoring bills that called abortion health care and with pledging to write abortion access into Wisconsin law. Its agenda is to strip the limits still on the books and leave the decision with the patient and the provider, with no line drawn by the state. That is abortion with no cutoff, including until birth. Crowley has adopted the same line.
Tom Tiffany voted for the 20-week law when he was in the state Senate. It is the law now. His position in this race is to leave it there. “I stand by that law, and I’ll uphold it.” Asked about a five- or six-week ban, he said the 20-week line was the compromise Wisconsinites settled on, and that he would uphold the law currently in place.
Crowley is already calling Tiffany an extremist who wants a nationwide ban at six weeks, or at “zero weeks.” That is not the position Tiffany is running on. Tiffany is not campaigning to rewrite the statute. Crowley would likely change the term limit to full birth as Crowley is campaigning to put abortion in the constitution, with Planned Parenthood’s endorsement behind him.