On Feb. 9, Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Tom Tiffany published a social media post criticizing a Feb. 12 student drag show at Madison East High school as “unacceptable.”

“We need to refocus our schools on education, not indoctrination, especially when 7 in 10 Wisconsin kids can’t read at grade level,” Tiffany wrote, referencing Wisconsin’s results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress benchmark.

The post went viral on Facebook. Within hours, emails were flooding into principal Patrice Hutchins’ inbox, according to emails obtained by Isthmus through an open records request.

“You should be in an insane asylum. Stop this today!” wrote one person.

“Woke garbage teachers and principles [sic], obvious potential pedophiles, should be terminated from their jobs and reported to the police!!!” wrote another.

“The Dept. of Education has already been notified and will be taking appropriate action. Pedophile Faggots and groomers should be kept as far from children as possible AND you should be fired for allowing this,” wrote another.

Tiffany posted to X and Facebook, on both campaign and official government accounts; the posts on X quoted Dan O’Donnell, a conservative radio host. Two hours after Tiffany's post on X, conservative influencer Libs of TikTok also posted about the event including Hutchins' contact details. Tiffany later boosted that post.

It’s not the first time Tiffany has meddled in school district politics.

Stephanie Farrar, president of the Eau Claire school board, told The Milwaukee Courier in October that Tiffany had attempted “incite an online mob against a school board member” by reposting a Libs of TikTok post targeting her. But in his gubernatorial campaign, he’s largely stayed away from the culture war issues that have been the bread and butter of past statewide GOP candidates.

Tiffany’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment. Edell Fiedler, senior executive director of communications for the Madison school district, declined to comment.

Isthmus’ open records request asked for any emails related to the drag show Hutchins received within two days of Tiffany’s post. The request yielded more than 50 emails, most of which accused school officials of pedophilia or grooming. Some contained language that could be perceived as threatening.

“What in the fuck is wrong with you? You sick piece of shit scum, evil person. This will not be tolerated,” one person wrote.

Another referenced the Bible, implying that, in a just world, Hutchins would be drowned.

“In Luke 2:18 it states, ‘It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.’ That is you...God says that it would [sic] better if you were cast to see [sic] with a millstone hung around your neck, than to cause children to sin!” the self-described “concerned citizen” wrote on Feb. 11.

It is unclear how many of these emails came from Wisconsin residents; the Madison school district redacted all senders’ names. Emails sent to Hutchins by other school district employees also indicate at least two complaint calls were made to other school district staff. Another call, according to the emails, was placed with the Madison Police Department.

In a Feb. 9 email, Hutchins blamed Tiffany for provoking the hostile response to the show. 

“It was posted on Facebook and was picked up by a right-wing politician, Tom Tiffany. I have received nine emails in the last hour about this event, and Gina shared that MPD got a call about it,” Hutchins wrote to Gina Aguglia and Sedric Morris, co-directors of the school district’s Office of School Safety, and Jay Affeldt, assistant superintendent of high schools. “I am hoping that people are just spamming my email, and they are likely not in our community, but I'm wondering if there is anything more that I should be doing about this right now? Just monitor? No threats have been made yet.”

The event went on as scheduled, according to emails and social media posts. But on Feb. 10, two days before the show, Harris emailed Madison Police Department to request that two police officers attend the event to provide “support.”

Though the school board voted in 2020 to remove school resource officers from schools, the school district does still hire officers on an as-needed basis for “for routine events such as homecoming events, dances and athletic events, and in times where we partner in response to an incident,” according to its Office of School Safety. Funds for the officers would come out of East High’s budget, Harris wrote in the email.

Because Fiedler did not respond to questions from Isthmus, it is unclear whether administrators reported any threats to the police or whether police officers had been hired to provide security in prior years. In 2023, Madison East postponed the show by a month after social media posts by conservative influencers led to a flood of harassment, according to The Capital Times.

Tiffany has been a reliable conservative vote in the state Legislature and Congress; the six-year U.S. representative was given an A+ rating from anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America for his most recent term. Still, Tiffany’s campaign hasn’t “talked a lot” about social issues, says Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse. Even in the post related to Madison East, Chergosky notes that Tiffany tied a hot-button social issue to something more palatable to the wider Wisconsin electorate: school achievement.

“He's speaking the language of the Republican base by talking about indoctrination, and then he's pivoting to an issue that resonates with a broad audience, which is concerns about student achievement and the standards that schools are meeting,” says Chergosky.

Tiffany’s reluctance to heavily message around cultural concerns likely comes down to polling, Chergosky says. In a Sept. 30 Marquette Law School Poll survey, 45% of voters said that “inflation and the cost of living” was their top issue, followed by “illegal immigration and border security” at 11%. Cultural issues do not appear on the list.

“The priority for voters is the cost of living and inflation,” says Chergosky. “So, to the extent that a candidate is talking about other issues, they might seem out of touch with the major concerns of voters.”

And Tiffany had no significant challenger during the GOP primary, which is when conservative candidates tend to buckle down on cultural issues to differentiate themselves and “show their loyalty to social conservative causes,” Chergosky says.

“Tiffany didn't have any of those pressures,” says Chergosky. “Tiffany has been able to run a general election style campaign for the near entirety of the calendar year.”

In Chergosky’s view, Crowley doesn’t have a “long paper trail” on cultural issues for Tiffany to attack; such efforts would also risk turning off the moderate voters Tiffany is looking to court. Had democratic socialist Francesca Hong ended up the nominee, Chergosky says you would “unquestionably” see more messaging from Tiffany on culture war issues. But with Crowley the nominee, Tiffany has decided to focus attacks on “taxes, immigration and mismanagement of local office.”

Adds Chergosky: “It kind of reflects the point that Republicans have really had to scramble to find effective lines of attack against Crowley, because they had been planning to be facing Francesca Hong as the Democratic nominee.”