WAUSAU, WIS. — Representative Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin, has described the past seventy-two hours as, in his words, “not deterring” him, and a new poll of people who were in the room when he said it finds that this was the single most important thing he said.
The congressman, who is running for a second job in a state he describes as “the best place to live,” was returning from a La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the small plane he was traveling in lost power as it approached the Wausau Downtown Airport, as the congressman recounted. What happened next has been described by witnesses to the event as a swim, by the congressman as a “transition,” and by the pilot, in the one detail everyone is now repeating, as the moment the pilot said, “we are going down.”
The two of them got out through the passenger door, called 911 from on top of the slowly sinking aircraft, and then, at the point where the plane had become, in the words of one official, “mostly a boat,” they swam roughly one hundred and fifty feet to a spot where their feet could touch the bottom. Tiffany sustained minor injuries. The congressman described the swim as “short enough,” and the lake, sources say, sustained a congressman.
The line matters, campaign aides insist, because of where it was said and what it was said near. Tiffany launched his gubernatorial campaign in Wausau about a year ago. The plane, per the people who now have a very detailed account of the plane, went down in Lake Wausau, which is the kind of coincidence that the campaign is describing as “confirming” and the opposition is describing as, per one Democrat, “a whole thing.”
A political analyst who has covered Wisconsin races for three of the last five administrations put the moment another way. “A candidate is tested every day on whether he can get from point A to point B,” the analyst said. “Most of them do it on a schedule. He did it on his own. There is a word for that, and it is not ‘swim.’”
The state’s emergency responders, who arrived to find a congressman standing in the shallows with a minor injury and a story, said the rescue was “unremarkable,” which is the most reassuring word in the Wisconsin emergency manual and the one the campaign immediately called “proof.”
THE SURVIVAL RECORD: A CANDIDATE'S FITNESS, DOCUMENTED
- Where the campaign began: Wausau, roughly one year ago
- Where the plane went down: Lake Wausau, same city, same lake, a fact the campaign is "grateful" about
- The 911 call: Placed from on top of the sinking aircraft, which is, per the operator, "a valid location" for a call
- The swim: One hundred and fifty feet to the bottom, a distance Tiffany has described as "short enough"
- Injuries: Minor, on both the congressman and, per one fisherman who saw it, "the plane"
- Campaign status: Undeterred, a word that now appears in every statement and will, per the schedule, appear in the next one
Not everyone is framing it as a strength. A state political scientist who has studied every near-miss a candidate has survived since 2016 noted that each one tends to add a chapter to the legend and subtract from the schedule. “The legend is now the campaign,” he said. “The campaign is now a lake. At some point someone has to decide which of the two is doing the rowing.”
The governor’s race in Wisconsin is, for the moment, a race between a man who swam and the people who were watching him swim. Both sides are confident. The lake, which has hosted no press conferences, has not commented.
At press time, Tiffany was back on the road, the plane was being towed out of the water, and the 911 center had, per a spokesperson, “added a new field to the intake form” so that the next caller from on top of an aircraft could check a box that said, in the specific, “I have a story.”