HARTLAND, Wis. – A johnny-come-lately to the Wisconsin Republican race for governor, Tim Michels, may not be much of a Wisconsinite. For years, records show, he’s lived mostly in New York and Connecticut. The revelation was reported first by the Wisconsin Right Now conservative website. Michels then took the air Monday to rebuff the assertions but fumbled badly on the facts. Meanwhile, the billionaire construction contractor has blanketed the state with television ads that are loaded with hot-button right-wing cliches but in scatter-gun non-sequiturs that neither make much sense nor add up. What are the facts about Michel’s residency? On Dan O’donnell’s WISN radio talk show in Milwaukee, Michels said he:

> Regards Hartland, a Milwaukee exurb, as home.

> Is in Wisconsin at least 183 days a year– exactly six months plus one.

> Pays taxes to Wisconsin and votes in Wisconsin, although usually absentee.

Among inconvenient facts reported by Wisconsin Right Now:

> After winning a $200 million subway construction contract in New York in 2015, Michels bought a $17 million home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a $9 million penthouse in Manhattan.

> He moved his family to New York and put his kids in New York schools and stayed there so as not to disrupt their schooling. His daughter, however, graduated high school in 2019 and his son in 2021.

> When his 2015 subway project was completed, he sought and won another New York contract, for a $100 million Brooklyn project.

Earlier: Contractor Michels has hat in GOP ring

Screenshot from TV ad. Co-owns the family business, Michels Corporation, in a small farm town where he grew up. In $1 million a week television ad campaign he’s sometimes in a rough hunting jacket. sometimes in an open-neck shirt.. Claims he will “turn Madison upside down.” Emphasizes a life devoted to God, family and flag. Derides “lefties” in almost poetical terms: Says he took the Pledge pf Allegiance every day at school as a kid and in the service took an oath, “but today, people take a knee.” The “radical left” destroys “everything we love about America,” he says.

Verbatim

Michels: “Anybody who is trying to portray my family as being anything other than genuine Wisconsin hardworking people — it’s just plain politics.”