Candidate Comparison Guide

Wisconsin voters will choose their parties' nominees for governor in the August 11 primary. While comprehensive voter guides cover the full range of issues facing the state, this WRDI brief asks a narrower question:

What have the candidates publicly said about women's rights and related policy issues?

The tables below summarize documented public positions in plain English. They are not endorsements, ratings, or comprehensive summaries of each candidate's platform.

About This Guide

This guide summarizes only the women's rights and related policy issues that WRDI regularly tracks. We reviewed the following candidate information as of August 3, including:

• Official campaign websites and policy pages
• League of Women Voters Vote411 responses (when submitted)
• Wisconsin Public Radio's 2026 voter guide and candidate coverage
• Selected Wisconsin news reporting and candidate questionnaires

A dash (—) indicates we did not identify a documented public position on that issue in the sources reviewed. It does not necessarily mean the candidate has no position.

Democratic Primary

Shared Direction
The Democratic candidates show broad agreement on the direction of women's rights policy. Rather than debating whether protections should be expanded, they generally differ in where they would focus their attention first.

Different Priorities
Women's rights are central to the campaigns of Hong and Roys, while Brennan and Crowley more often frame these issues within broader conversations about affordability, healthcare, and state government. The distinction is less about policy direction than about campaign emphasis.

The Bottom Line
For Democratic primary voters, this race is largely a choice between leadership styles and policy priorities—not fundamentally different directions for women's rights.

Republican Primary

Shared Direction
The Republican candidates discuss a relatively narrow set of the women's rights issues tracked by WRDI. Their public statements focus primarily on abortion, gender identity, election administration, and selected affordability issues, with comparatively little discussion of reproductive healthcare, caregiving, or workplace policies.

Different Priorities
When proposing changes, the candidates generally emphasize maintaining, limiting, redefining, or shifting responsibility for existing policies rather than creating new statewide programs. Where they discuss expanding access or affordability, their proposals more often rely on reducing regulations or encouraging employer- and private-sector solutions than on expanding state programs.

The Bottom Line
The Republican candidates present a focused women's rights agenda centered on a relatively small number of policy areas. Across the sources reviewed by WRDI, the proposals generally seek to preserve or reshape existing policies rather than create new statewide rights, protections, or public programs.

Note - Tom Tiffany did not submit responses to the League of Women Voters Vote411 questionnaire. WRDI therefore relied more heavily on his campaign website, public statements, Wisconsin Public Radio coverage, and other publicly available campaign materials when preparing this comparison.

Explore Further

For readers seeking more detailed information about the candidates and the election:

• League of Women Voters Vote411
• Wisconsin Public Radio's 2026 Partisan Primary Voter Guide
• Official campaign websites for each candidate
  • Joel Brennan
  • David Crowley
  • Francesca Hong
  • Andy Manske
  • Kelda Roys
  • Tom Tiffany
• WRDI's 2026 Election Hub

Looking Ahead

Following the primary, WRDI plans to update this comparison for the general election. Future guides may also include legislative voting records for nominees who have previously served in elected office.