U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany easily defeated challenger Andy Manske in the GOP primary for governor. The AP called the race at 8:21p.m. With 45% of the ballots counted, Tiffany was leading 92.4% to Manske’s 3.8%.
Tiffany’s victory was a foregone conclusion. He was endorsed by the Republican Party after President Donald Trump endorsed Tiffany and two other GOP hopefuls who had launched campaigns dropped out.
Manske, a 27-year-old medical service technician from suburban Milwaukee, has said he entered the race to ensure GOP voters had a choice. On his website he said he was campaigning “to challenge a political system that’s stopped working for everyday Wisconsinites and to fight for a state that works for all of us.”
Tiffany’s running mate will be David Varnam, who defeated Will Martin, a former staffer in the administrations of Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker during their terms as governor, in a surprise upset. Martin had been endorsed by the state party.
David Varnam was mayor of Lancaster, Wisconsin, from 2016 to 2022 and previously a Common Council member. He has worked as a congressional aide and as a policy analyst for the Christian organization Focus on the Family. He ran in the 2022 Republican primary for lieutenant governor, finishing seventh.
Varnam defeated Martin 54.1% to 45.5%, with 69% of the vote counted. AP called the race at 9:36 p.m.
With both Martin and Tiffany having the Republican Party’s endorsement, the two campaigned together. Tiffany was a guest on the weekly radio show Martin hosts on Milwaukee radio station WNOV, and the two appeared jointly during the summer in community parades.
Ahead of Election Day, Democratic candidates had been discussing uniting following the primary to defeat Tiffany.
Democrats, including Lt. Gov. candidate Sara Godlewski, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, plan to meet for a unity breakfast Wednesday morning in the Madison area, seeking to move past the divisiveness of the primary with less than three months until the general election.
Originally published on wisconsinexaminer.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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