David Crowley was elected governor of Wisconsin on Tuesday, defeating Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany by roughly nine points in the most expensive governor’s race in state history. Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, becomes the first Black governor in Wisconsin’s 178 years of statehood. At 40, he will also be the youngest governor in the country and the youngest Wisconsin governor in almost a century.
He succeeds Gov. Tony Evers, who chose not to seek a third term and endorsed him. He is only the third governor born in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, and Democrats around him won both houses of the Legislature, giving the party full control of state government for the first time in 16 years.
The campaign that nearly ended in July
Four months ago, this result looked impossible. Crowley suspended his campaign in July, then reversed himself and re-entered 24 days before the August 11 primary, trailing state Rep. Francesca Hong by double digits in every public poll. He won that primary by about 3,200 votes, four-tenths of a point, sealed by Milwaukee’s late-counted absentee ballots. In the fall he was massively outspent by Republicans, and he won the battleground state anyway, by a margin Wisconsin races rarely produce.
Close finishes are his pattern. He first won the county executive’s office in 2020 by about 1,000 votes.
A Milwaukee rise
Crowley is a Milwaukee native and a graduate of Bay View High School, a city public school. He won a seat in the Wisconsin Assembly in 2016 and served from 2017 to 2020, then was elected Milwaukee County executive in 2020, at 33 the youngest person and the first Black person to hold the job since the county was founded in 1835. Voters reelected him in 2024. His run for governor drew early backing from Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, the first Black person elected mayor of the city, and Gov. Evers stood behind him from the start.
On election night, Marvin Pratt, who served as Milwaukee’s first Black acting mayor, followed the returns from his home on the city’s north side, watching a barrier he once approached finally fall.
A night that rewrote the governors’ map
Crowley was one of four Black candidates to win a governor’s race on Tuesday. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor of any state. In Florida, Byron Donalds became that state’s first Black governor, and Maryland’s Wes Moore won a second term. Before Tuesday, only three Black candidates had ever won a governor’s race in American history. When the new governors take office in January, several will serve at the same time, which has never happened before.
Wisconsin waited 178 years for a Black governor. It chose the county executive who quit the race in July, came back in August, and never trailed again.
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