MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s race for governor is hitting the airwaves more than a year before voting begins.
Republican candidate Bill Berrien announced the purchase of about $400,000 in cable TV, radio and online ads Monday. The buy comes 13 months before the Aug. 11, 2026, primary. Berrien is the first candidate to purchase ads of any kind in the race.
Berrien and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann have announced bids as Republicans. It is the first campaign for each of them. Several other Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, two-time losing U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde and state Senate President Mary Felzkowski are all considering running.
Schoemann has been traveling the state and meeting with voters since he launched his campaign in May, but he has yet to spend any money on ads like Berrien is doing.
“Money buys ads, but as we’ve seen far too often in Wisconsin, it can’t buy wins,” Schoemann adviser Ben Voelkel said. “It takes hard work and authenticity to earn voters’ support, not just slick ads.”
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers hasn’t said whether he will seek a third term. He has suggested that he will announce his decision within weeks. A spokesperson for Evers had no immediate comment on the Berrien ads.
Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesperson Phil Shulman accused Berrien of trying to “buy himself Trump’s affections.”
“Sadly, for Bill Berrien, he’s going to learn the hard way that money can’t buy you an election in Wisconsin,” Shulman said.
Berrien’s ads are slated to begin airing Tuesday, less than a week after he launched his campaign. The ads lean into Berrien’s support for President Donald Trump, which has been questioned by influential conservative talk radio hosts.
Berrien criticized Trump’s handling of the COVD-19 pandemic and said during an August 2020 interview with Fox Business that he hadn’t decided whether to support Trump for president that year. In 2024, Berrien supported former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s run for president in the GOP primary and donated more than $30,000 to her campaign.
Berrien was also a member of the bipartisan group Democracy Found, which advocates for using ranked-choice voting and making primaries nonpartisan. But Berrien told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week that he no longer supports those ideas.
Berrien is positioning himself as a staunch Trump backer in his first ads of the race. They are airing statewide, but with an emphasis on Milwaukee and Green Bay, his campaign said. The largest number of Republican voters in the state are in the Milwaukee media market, and Green Bay is a critical GOP area, especially in primaries.
In the ads, Berrien calls himself “an outsider and a businessman just like President Trump.” Berrien says he’s running for governor to ”advance the Trump agenda, shake up Madison and put Wisconsin citizens first.”
Berrien, 56, served nine years as a Navy SEAL and has been owner and CEO of Pindel Global Precision and Liberty Precision, manufacturers of precision-machined components in New Berlin, a Milwaukee suburb, for the past 13 years.
