PLATTEVILLE, Sept. 16 — Gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R–Hazelhurst) made worldwide headlines after he left Platteville Saturday.
Tiffany and his pilot survived a forced landing of their airplane onto Lake Wausau, a wide spot in the Wisconsin River, and swam in 30-foot-deep water in the dark on their way to being rescued.
Tiffany was part of a Republican full-court press in Platteville Saturday. Also campaigning were lieutenant governor candidate and former Lancaster mayor David Varnam, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R–Prairie du Chien), state Sen. Howard Marklein (R–Spring Green) and state Rep. Travis Tranel (R–Town of Hazel Green).
“Wisconsin is kind of muddling along at this point, and I think we’re really at an inflection point where we’re going to decide are we going to go in the direction of Minnesota and Illinois, which are really going in the wrong direction — high taxes, excessively regulated — or are we going to be one of the states that is going to grow, that is going to have prosperity,” said Tiffany. “It’s not just Florida and Texas; it’s Tennessee, Ohio, states like that — they’re doing much better. So I’m running because I know we can unlock Wisconsin’s potential — good people, wonderful state, and I’ve been traveling all corners of the state delivering the message that we’re going to make our state more affordable, we’re going to make it more accountable, and we’re going to bring common sense to Madison.”
The “corners of state” that followed the Dairy Days parade, a Save Wisconsin canvass and appearing at the UW–Platteville football game were the Richland County Fair in Richland Center, Coon Valley Dairy Supply’s 80th anniversary celebration, the Mississippi Mayhem Vintage Motor Festival in West Salem and the La Crosse County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner before his flight to Wausau, according to the Tiffany campaign.
Tiffany believes all of the $3 billion budget surplus should go back to Wisconsin residents. He said he will end the 400-year property-tax-increase authorization from Gov. Tony Evers’ state budget veto, which was upheld by the state Supreme Court.
Tiffany said he will reduce utility rates by appointing members to the state Public Service Commission who will “make sure that they focus on reliability and affordability.”
He also proposes audits of all statewide agencies “to make sure we root out fraud and waste.” He claimed Minnesota state government has $9 billion in fraud “and counting; some of that is happening in Wisconsin also.”
Tiffany sought to appeal to Democrats by saying that Democratic nominee David Crowley “voted not once but twice against a middle class income tax cut. I voted for it when I was in the Legislature; Crowley voted against it; Tony Evers signed it into law. I voted to put the largest increase in the 2019 budget in K–12 funding in a decade. David Crowley voted against that; Tony Evers signed it into law.
“There’s things you can’t control, some of the things on the international level, things like that. But the things a governor can control, like property taxes and utility rates, they need to make sure that they focus on those things and that’s what I’ll do.”
Tiffany believes local governments and school districts can get more money by stopping the trend of the state taking shared revenue away.
“We can cut taxes and return the surplus and still put more money ito things like education, transportation and infrastructure,” he said. “The state went from $99 billion in the previous budget to $114 billion this budget. … The state does not lack for money. We can help those local municipalities out by that shared revenue.
“The budget went up $15 billion from the previous budget to this budget. The amount we’re going to return in the surplus is $3 billion; that’s only 20 percent of that. There’s plenty of money sloshing around in Madison that we can return to local governments. It’s just a matter of prioritization — are you going to have a governor that just continues to expand state government, or are you going to have a state government that works with local municipalities including schools to make sure they can do their jobs and that they’re properly funded.”
Tiffany favors getting rid of the subsidy for data centers because “these are some of the richest companies in the world; they do not need subsidies from you or I or the taxpayers of Wisconsin.” He also favors bans on electric rate increases for data centers, nondisclosure agreements, and “conversion of our productive farmland” for data centers or wind or solar projects.
“Local people should have input; there should be some local control with this,” he said.
Tiffany’s running mate, Varnam, didn’t get the party’s endorsement at the GOP state convention, but beat Will Martin of Milwaukee to get the nomination.
“We just kept working hard, and I went to a lot of the rural counties, shook hands, went to dairy breakfasts,” said Varnam. “And we had a lot of radio ads in the southeast corner, the eastern side of our state, and that strategy paid off for us.
“We are very much together on almost all issues. We both are from rural parts of our state, and we have those rural Wisconsin common-sense values. We want to see lower taxes; we want to protect our prime farmland. We want to be the party for family, faith and freedom, and that’s what we’re working to protect here in the state of Wisconsin.”
Varnam echoed Tiffany’s belief in returning all of the $3 billion surplus to taxpayers.
“We need to give money back to the taxpayers, and we also need to make sure that we are more competitive when it comes to tax policy here in our state and in the Midwest,” said Varnam. “Because we have neighbors that have lower taxes than we do, and we need to be able to compete to keep our businesses, our young people and our families here in the state of Wisconsin.”
Varnam said a Tiffany administration “will definitely look at increasing education funds, but I think we also need to be looking at accountability and improving education. That doesn’t always mean more money; we need to look at the process, we need to look at education here in the state of Wisconsin to improve it.”
