Data Center David Crowley is a name that might stick, as Tom Tiffany is now calling him. It has the same ring as “Diamond Jim Doyle.” You have to be old enough to remember the casino debate and Wisconsin’s lackluster Democrat governor Doyle to remember that moniker. But it stuck.
I guess it didn’t stick enough to cost Doyle the race. Then again, Doyle was a pretty boring AG and DA before he was elected; he wasn’t a guy from Milwaukee who almost ran a major county into bankruptcy.
Crowley, now the Democratic establishment’s coronated nominee, made his first campaign blunder. That didn’t take long!
The Milwaukee County Executive with the charisma of Urkel had a chance to differentiate himself from Tiffany on an issue that is a fiery one and crosses political lines besides, but he punted. In case you’re upset by the Urkel reference, I don’t think Tiffany is charismatic either.
Maybe you don’t think I’m charismatic, but I am not running for governor, so who cares.
Tiffany has the charisma of the nice guy who helps people find the right bolts at Ace Hardware. But who cares? That’s what we want in a governor. Just fix sh*t and give us the tools to have better lives.
David Crowley Doesn’t Want to Ban Data Centers
Unlike Fran Hong, Crowley doesn’t want to ban data centers. It’s in his OWN press release. And words.
Now, in all candor, neither do Donald Trump or Tiffany, who wants to stop government subsidies, not ban them completely. That’s because they bring jobs and have put the state’s manufacturing sector on fire. Tiffany articulated his position more clearly than Crowley did, though.
“Well it sounds like David Crowley will give a blank check to data centers,” Tiffany told the Examiner. “They do not need to be subsidized by us, the taxpayers, and we’re gonna make sure that people’s electricity rates do not go up. We’re going to make sure that we have full transparency.”
Crowley chose a curious thing to separate himself from Hong on when he chose data centers.
Asked which issue he disagreed with her over on national TV, he didn’t mention abolishing police or freaking out over old white people in Culvers. Those would have been the easy answers, alerting voters that he’s “not the nutty socialist” – even though he previously stated that his policies aren’t really different from hers and Tiffany wants to turn him into Hong Lite in the public imagination.
He differs with her on data centers, he revealed instead. Great choice there, Dirt McGirk.
Data Center Dave focused on Hong’s singular most popular issue – her stalwart opposition to data centers – and then went the other way. Like flock cameras (which are the new data centers), the logical arguments for them (stopping criminals, competing with China on AI), are getting lost amid the emotional opposition, which crosses political lines.
I knew there was real citizenry anger there when people were storming Port Washington city meetings to rail at the mayor.
And, well, there are very real issues surrounding data centers like generational farmland and water usage juxtaposed against promises of job creation that people worry will never come. We all remember FoxConn.
AI Has Come Upon Us Too Fast
The bottom line is that AI has come upon us too fast and officials have little explained this. It has emerged like Godzilla poised to snatch all our jobs and break them to tiny bits in its big technological jaw. As a writer, I share this angst. All my life, being able to write has given me an edge, and now people just use Chat GPT.
Young people already fretting over being locked down during high school and purchasing a new house with escalating rent and high interest rates don’t particularly appreciate their future jobs evaporating into promises of new ones that could never come.
Any politician who doesn’t get this should beware. Minimally, show some empathy for it. They’ve got video of a cornered Tiffany telling young people to focus on the jobs that will be there. He’s not wrong, but the delivery felt like castor oil.
Tiffany has not been a data center purist either. The problem for Crowley is that he just lost a chance to differentiate himself on a core issue. I’ll presume that he’s saying what he believes, so then it’s good he’s not willing to pander. But it still removes a hot issue from his quiver. He didn’t have to volunteer it.
Data Center Dave Lacks a Clear Message
Worse, Crowley doesn’t have a clear message on any of this. He seemed almost as unprepared as wild-eyed Hong in the national media spotlight. Why volunteer data centers as the big differential point? He couldn’t come up with something that wouldn’t hurt his campaign, like cancelling Thanksgiving? Plus, it’s confusing where he stands on data centers, other than it’s clear he supports not getting rid of them.
Crowley was for guardrails one time; he wanted the state to keep its hands off and let local communities decide at another. He was for turning Wisconsin into a global data center hub in one video. In another statement, he also wanted data centers to pay their own way. Then he settled on banning non-disclosure agreements.
This is esoteric and legalistic and misses the pulse of the people. They want data centers gone, not non-disclosure agreements. Telling people, “don’t worry you will now get to learn a big data center is going up in your backyard!” doesn’t sound very strong.
Kamala Crowley
Crowley has been called Kamala Crowley. Not by me; a historic black #Milwaukee newspaper asked him about this label, which it reported was floating around. It’s a paper that’s been tilting pro-Crowley, like all the time. So they put the label out there.
His penchant for word salads may be a reason this isn’t fully a cheap shot. So, too, is his elevation to Democratic nominee on the backs of a multi-million dollar GOTV effort funded by powerbrokers, and not merit. He left the race and came back, but he hasn’t really been tested yet. They plucked a guy sitting at 3% from obscurity over more electable candidates with less baggage. At least if he wins, Maggie and Britt will probably get to keep their jobs.
Crowley was elevated to this lofty perch; he didn’t claw his way there. He was coronated. He was coronated on the backs of a racist attack against Mandela Barnes that forced Mandela Barnes out of the race.
Thus, it’s not surprising that Crowley seems unprepared for the glare.
A Known Trope
I say racist – and I don’t use that word lightly – because focusing on a black man and shall we say his romantic history is a known racial trope. There’s lots of academic literature on this.
When all was said and done, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel s*x patrol reporters Mary Spicuzza and Molly Beck rushed to print the – gasp! – shocking revelation that Mandela once had consensual s*x at a convention with an adult woman they wouldn’t even name.
When he was a bachelor. With no accusation of abuse or criminality. It was shameful. And then after he quit, everyone acted like none of it happened. Mandela vaporized and fell down a trap door.
Where is Mandela? One imagines him on a Cancun beach with a margarita – after friends probably said just get out of town – trying to figure out what just happened to him. That’s just satire. I don’t know where the guy is.
Two prominent national black reporters wrote me and thanked me for the being the only person to make this point (about the trope). They were deeply disturbed by how the media and Democratic establishment got Barnes out of the way. The white journos and prominent
Democrats don’t seem to care. Literally no one is talking about the most racist political attack in the history of Wisconsin, but I’m sure the media will bring up Willie Horton the second Tiffany starts talking about crime. Which he will. Milwaukee will be the albatross around Crowley’s neck.
Crowley crawled over the back of Barnes to get this nomination. That’s the bottom line. More like he was lifted by a Democratic hang glider off the field and above everyone else and dropped at the finish line.
He’s not ready. And his word salads on data centers prove it. This is a huge issue. A candidate should be able to say where they stand in one clear sentence – not a hodge podge of muddled paragraphs.
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