Tom Tiffany’s 2020 Election Objection Returns as Relevant Experience

FICTIONAL PARODY INSPIRED BY A REAL EVENT.

MADISON — Wisconsin’s Office of Executive Hiring announced Tuesday that it had received an unusually compelling work sample from Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany: his past effort to challenge the state’s 2020 presidential election result.

“Normally, we look for experience running a large organization, balancing priorities, and understanding that the position remains filled after someone else gets it,” said fictional state hiring director Marge Klink, holding Tiffany’s application at arm’s length with the caution generally reserved for a raccoon in a ceiling tile. “But Mr. Tiffany has demonstrated extraordinary familiarity with the emotional aftermath of an election. That is not nothing in this line of work.”

Tiffany is facing Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who could become Wisconsin’s first Black governor. Crowley’s campaign had expected to spend Election Day discussing affordability, schools and the perennial Wisconsin question of whether a pothole is infrastructure or an inherited family member. Instead, it found itself competing against an application packet featuring a section titled Leadership Under Results I Did Not Personally Order.

The state’s fictional panel initially marked the material “concerning,” then upgraded it to “highly transferable” after realizing governors spend much of their time receiving phone calls from people who believe a spreadsheet has betrayed them.

“There is no doubt Mr. Tiffany understands how to remain engaged after the process has concluded,” Klink said. “Some applicants stop caring once they lose. He appears to regard that as merely the beginning of his professional relationship with the outcome.”

Crowley responded by submitting a portfolio labeled History, But the Good Kind, including his record as Milwaukee County executive and a one-page memo explaining that becoming the first Black governor in state history would not, in fact, require anyone to mail Wisconsin back to a previous version of itself.

That created an immediate compliance problem. The Office of Executive Hiring had never before been asked to distinguish between making history and attempting to reopen it from the customer-service desk.

“Our rubric was designed for ordinary leadership traits,” said fictional panel member Dennis Jorstad, a retired county administrator who has spent 19 years trying to make a municipal recycling calendar fit on one side of a refrigerator. “We have categories for judgment, temperament and experience. We did not have a category for ‘candidate may regard the final answer as an opening offer.’”

The panel’s first solution was to conduct a mock gubernatorial interview. Crowley was asked how he would govern a state divided between Milwaukee, Madison, the Fox Valley, the Northwoods and whichever gas-station parking lot is currently hosting a statewide controversy. Tiffany was asked how he would respond if the interview committee selected someone else.

According to people familiar with the fictional exercise, Tiffany requested a recount of the questions, an audit of the chairs and a list of all committee members who had ever received a complimentary tote bag from Meta.

That answer earned him a perfect score in “follow-through,” though the panel deducted points after he asked whether the job could be held in escrow until every county clerk confirmed the existence of the interview.

By late afternoon, Wisconsin’s famously tight political culture had taken over. The hiring panel could not certify its own recommendation until it knew whether the recommendation itself had been observed fairly by both campaigns. Crowley aides demanded that the panel stop treating democracy like a malfunctioning vending machine. Tiffany aides demanded to know why nobody had yet checked the vending machine’s hard drive.

Then came the reveal that ended the process entirely: Wisconsin already has a governor-hiring system, and it is called an election. The discovery stunned several consultants, who had spent months treating the state as a focus group with dairy-based weather patterns.

In an emergency statement, the Office of Executive Hiring said it would defer to voters while retaining the right to issue a post-election satisfaction survey asking whether the public felt sufficiently consulted by arithmetic.

Klink said the office had learned valuable lessons from the episode. “The next governor should understand public service, statewide responsibility and the basic principle that an election is not a hotel minibar: you cannot reject the final total just because you expected more.”

She then sealed both applications in a folder marked DO NOT REOPEN UNLESS AMERICA FORGETS HOW HIRING WORKS.