MADISON, Wis. — Five years after MAGA Republicans’ violent and criminal attack on our Capitol and democracy, some right-wing candidates in Wisconsin’s biggest elections of 2026 are still haunted by their involvement in the events of January 6 and the close company they keep with those at the center of the plot.
Republican Congressman and candidate for governor Tom Tiffany, for instance, voted against certifying the 2020 election results and years later was caught still refusing to acknowledge the truth that Donald Trump lost that election. Tiffany also supported a related lawsuit that even the MAGA majority on the U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t take up.
“Tom Tiffany was willing to throw out the votes of millions of Wisconsinites in 2020 because he didn’t like the results and bought into debunked conspiracy theories,” said Lucy Ripp, communications director at A Better Wisconsin Together. “Perhaps that’s what helped him earn the title of Wisconsin’s most conservative Congressman, but he broke trust with the voters of Wisconsin when he put his political self interest first instead of respecting our freedom to choose our leaders.”
As for the right-wing candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, conservative judge Maria Lazar has proudly embraced support from election deniers who faced criminal charges and legal discipline for their actions related to January 6.
Most recently, Lazar (along with Tiffany) was caught at an event with election denier Michael Flynn, but her connections to Wisconsin’s most infamous election deniers go back years.
On the campaign trail in 2022, Lazar featured the support of:
- Michael Gableman, who recently had to surrender his law license and wasted more than $1 million taxpayer dollars leading Robin Vos’ fruitless “investigation” into the 2020 presidential election;
- Former Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis, who is facing felony charges tied to his attempt to throw out the presidential election votes of 220,000 voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties; and
- Wisconsin Elections Commission member Bob Spindell, who was one of Wisconsin Republicans’ fraudulent electors and who praised ads by the Republican Party meant to suppress BIPOC voters in Milwaukee.
As noted by the Appleton Post-Crescent, Gableman, Troupis, and Spindell ‘have all been tied to calls to decertify the 2020 election,’ and in a 2023 court settlement, Wisconsin’s fake electors admitted that their actions were part of ‘an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.’
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court is an essential line of defense against attacks on our constitutional rights and freedoms,” said Ripp. “Wisconsinites deserve a justice we can trust will do so, and based on her endorsements, Lazar cares more about advancing a right-wing agenda than working on behalf of constituents.”
