Farming is starting to define the Wisconsin governor’s race. That’s probably a good thing for Tom Tiffany because he actually grew up on one, in contrast to, say, Mandela Barnes, who is cosplaying the role. Wearing a blue buttoned-down shirt and dress pants amid the manure and heifers kind of gave that away. Barnes looked like he was on his way to a job at OfficeMax.

If we’re talking about farming a lot, it means the Democrats are playing on Tiffany’s playing field. Tiffany enjoys scolding Democrats for their abysmal lack of farm knowledge (they’re too busy staging anti or abolish police rallies to research cows apparently), and it wasn’t only the Wisconsin Democrat Party thinking bulls produce milk.

“These are not dairy cows,” Tiffany smugly informed socialist Francesca Hong when she posted the obligatory post about cheese and dairy month, standing next to non dairy cows in a tan Lois Lane trench coat.

Even Democrat Missy Hughes started posting about manure and bullsh*t (get it? how clever) and even put up a photo of a cow smelling her teal beaded bracelets (or hand). And I’m not even exaggerating.

Tiffany’s retort? “The craziest part about this comment from @MissyforWI is that she served in the Evers administration while Wisconsin dairy farms were disappearing.

2019: 8,110 dairy herds
2024: 5,661 dairy herds

That’s a loss of more than 30% of Wisconsin’s dairy herds under Evers and Missy.”

The Democrats are trying to out farm Tiffany and, just like that, while not posting about Pride Month, they’re trampling around dairy farms. Mandela navigated from the farm to a Pride parade, which he participated in wearing a backwards pink baseball cap, rainbow sunglasses, and a tight white T-shirt that showed his tattoos. Say what you want about Tom Tiffany, but you won’t catch him wearing a backwards pink baseball cap and rainbow shades. Sara Rodriguez strutted in a Pride parade with her rainbow shawl aflutter in the breeze.

Then Tiffany stood next to Congressman Bryan Steil and declared in a video, “Milk cows, not taxpayers.” Sounds good to me, although growing up in rural Rusk County, my mom used to make me drink a glass of milk every day. Yuck. Good for the bones, she said. But I never liked the taste of milk. She still owns a now non-working farm there, by the way. It used to have sheep, not cows. And, yes, you can milk them.

By the next day, Tom was flipping pancakes at a Rock County farm breakfast, wearing a red T-shirt with the new slogan, and, you know, if you’re not following the news, you’d probably just think he was the farmer. This is a political strength. He’s a rural Wisconsin guy comfortable in a Carhartt jacket. One left-wing reader on my page sniped that he was getting sick of the “hokey” stuff from Tiffany’s campaign. Since he’s a left-wing reader, he’s probably sick of it because it’s working; it’s working because it’s authentically who Tiffany is (yes, I do have some left-wing readers. With the exception of Matt Brisher and a couple others, they usually slink onto my page to rant about “p*do protectors” and call names.)

Was Tom Tiffany really raised on a farm? Yes, but he was a boy from Elmwood, not Elroy. It was a 50-cow dairy farm, and he was raised there with 7 siblings. He also has a degree in ag. I learned all of this from a publication called Dairy Star, which quoted him as saying, “Three things led me to the decision to throw my hat in the ring to run for public office. One, I remember my dad would sometimes talk about politics when we were milking cows. I was about 10 years old, but I’ll never forget that. I didn’t understand much of it back then, but I certainly remember it.”

I am partial to farmers. My mom had a lovely neighbor named Bill who still milked cows into his 90s. He wore striped overalls and had the strongest handshake I’ve ever experienced. He met his wife while delivering milk to a creamery and also drove school bus. They had 10 kids. Guys like Bill are the backbone of America, and it would be wonderful to have someone like that as governor. As opposed to, you know, the guy who thinks releasing prison populations is sexy.

Look, in the age of Trump, Republicans have traded some privileged white women in the ‘burbs for rural, sometimes disenfranchised folks who Trump brought out of the woodwork. Rather than chase the frothing-at-the-mouth angry WOW County women’s vote, Tiffany is clearly trying to reignite the Trump rural coalition, which ran through counties like Rusk. The issue has been that a lot of these folks only vote for Trump. Tiffany needs them. And so they brought in the guy himself for a big rally at, you guessed it, a Chippewa Valley farm. This was brilliantly staged (probably by Wisconsin’s John Hiller, a Wisconsinite who was a long time ally of Scott Walker and who stages all of Trump’s big events. He even staged that Putin-Trump summit in Alaska.) Trump held an ag round table standing in front of green tractors in a pole barn.

He also stood next to former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden, who he was really there for, and who is running against a former liberal fundraiser and political operative who worked for loudmouth Kirk Bangstad. For good measure, they also brought out Kewaskum Olympic hero Jordan Stolz.

The former Bangstad operative, Rebecca Cooke, is basically running on a message of…I grew up on a farm that failed (because of rising milk prices) and then I ran a store that failed and in between that, I called Eau Claire racist. She said the rising milk prices thing to WEAU TV 13.

Van Orden jumped all over that. “‘These damn milk prices are too high! Sell the herd!’ Said no dairy farmer ever,” he wrote on social media.

“Just another example of @RebeccaforWI being a total and complete fraud. She should stick to political consulting and fundraising. You know, the job she has been doing for over a decade.”

A bunch of protesters at the well-attended Trump farm rally screeched about gas prices and fertilizer costs and tariffs, but all that got lost. Trump knows the lesson of Reagan. Images matter. Trump understands that he wins when the media are talking about what he wants them to talk about. Tiffany knows that lesson too.

Farms.

When we’re talking about farms and dairy breakfasts and cows and flipping pancakes, you’re on Tom Tiffany’s home turf. And that’s exactly where he wants them. Mandela Barnes, Sara Rodriguez and Joel Brennan are never going to out-farm Tom Tiffany. They should stop trying because they’re playing right into his hands.