5 key fact checks on Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and GOP challenger Tim Michels

In a race described as the most expensive general election in the country with $55 million spent on TV ad buys, the battle between Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and challenger Tim Michels, a Republican, is shaping up as a neck-and-neck contest that could have an impact on deciding the outcome of the next presidential race.

The election is Nov. 8, 2022. Here is a look at 10 key fact-checks we have done in the race:

Five claims by or about Tony Evers:

1. Tony Evers says “Wisconsin's archaic abortion ban is older than 20 states."

At the center of the abortion debate in Wisconsin is a 173-year-old law – one that nearly dates to the state’s inception — that criminalizes abortion except in cases where it is necessary to save the mother’s life.

The campaign of Evers, an abortion-rights supporter, used a novel way to compare how old the law is in a June 13, 2022, email to supporters. Indeed, 20 states were accepted after 1849, including California, Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii.

We rated this claim True.

2. Michels says Evers is “a career politician.”

We took a look at Evers' resume and found he has worked at a number of non-political jobs, including as a young adult working scraping mold off of cheese at a cheese factory in Plymouth and as an orderly at Rocky Knoll, where his father was the director of the Sheboygan County hospital and sanitorium.

Evers's career was primarily as a teacher and administrator in various districts, then as a deputy state superintendent of public instruction. He served as state superintendent, an elected position, from 2009 until 2018. That year he won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and went on to unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker. That was the first time he ran for a partisan office — but his sixth attempt at statewide office.

In his 48-year working career, one could say he has held an elected office for 17 years, or spent four years as a partisan politician. To label him a "career politician" ignores 31 years, or more than half his work life. But we also can’t ignore the fact he is on his seventh statewide election.

That means we have a statement that "contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."

Thus, we rated the claim Mostly False.

3. Evers says he has issued more pardons than “any Wisconsin governor in contemporary history.”

During his eight years in office, Walker did not issue a single pardon. In contrast, Evers touts every one he grants.

Pardons, of course, can restore certain civil rights and privileges and relieve some legal issues. They differ from clemency or sentence commutations, which would allow a person to leave prison early. They are also different from parole, which has become a central issue in the race.

Pardons under Evers have included low-level drug dealers, long-ago drunk driving cases, mistakes made as youth and more. Among other things, a pardon can make it easier for people to get jobs.

As of Feb. 7, 2022 when we checked this claim, Evers had issued 416 pardons. In the previous 40 years, only Doyle came close to granting the same number of pardons — 326. To find a governor who issued more, you’d have to go back to Julius Heil, whose term ended 79 years ago.

We rated his claim True.

4. Evers says “Michels wants to defund public education — calling it ‘the definition of insanity’ to continue to fund public schools.”

Here’s what Michels really said during a July 24, 2022 debate leading up to the August primary election, hosted by WTMJ-TV:

"The problem … is we’re already throwing so much money at education. That’s been the fix, if you will, for the last 10, or 20, or 30 years, more money on education, more money on education. And it’s not working — the definition of insanity."

Michels was calling it the definition of insanity to increase funding to public schools without better results — but the Evers campaign email makes it sound like he was saying it’s insane to continue funding them at all.

So the quote is a stretch of Michels’ position. As a proponent of expanding school choice, however, Michels could oversee cuts to public schools as a result of a major expansion of the private-school voucher program (which he supports), especially if the funding system stays the way it is now.

We rated the claim Mostly False.

5. Evers says "We are number one in the country as far as our spending (COVID-19 relief) money on businesses as it relates to the percentage of federal funds that we receive."

The data came from the Center on Budget and Policy, which did an analysis focused on money distributed through the American Rescue Plan Act — and Evers accurately described the study. But before ARPA, there was the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (known as CARES), a bipartisan $2 trillion package signed in March 2020 by then-President Donald Trump. The state got some $2 billion through that package.

The center has not done a comparable state-by state analysis of the CARES Act — and Evers’ own staff said it is unaware of any analysis that takes a comprehensive look at the combined COVID-related grant money.

Based on the available information, the claim appears to be on target, with a few caveats. Among them: The data does not include CARES and the figures were only for money distributed through March, so the final picture could change.

For a statement that is "partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context," our rating was Half True.

More:Takeaways from the only debate between Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and challenger Tim Michels

More:Where Tony Evers and Tim Michels stand on abortion, crime, marijuana and education

Five claims by or about Tim Michels:

1. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin says “Michels doesn’t think gay people should be out in public.”

In a June 15, 2022, interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Michels said he believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. It’s the same opinion he held in 2004 when he ran for one of Wisconsin’s Senate seats.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin seized on a related comment from Michels during his Senate run, which he made in an Oct. 16, 2004, debate against then-incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold.

When asked how the candidates would protect the rights of LGBTQ Wisconsinites, Michels responded that every American "deserves to be treated as an American, but I think when you bring it out of your house, and onto the public street, that's where I differ. I believe in family values."

But that portion of Michels’ debate statement was rather ambiguous — prompting Feingold to say he was "confused" by the remark and did not understand what his opponent was trying to say, according to an Oct. 17, 2004, story by The Associated Press.

That article also includes a key clarification that the Democrats ignored: that Michels "later clarified that he did not mean (LGBTQ people) should not bring their sexuality into public, but people shouldn’t have ‘gay values’ imposed upon them."

A spokesperson for Michels’ campaign also pointed to a June 28, 2022, radio interview Michels did in which he said the issue of gay marriage was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court seven years ago and that it’s not a priority given other issues he’d want to focus on as governor.

The Democratic Party's claim takes his 2004 comment to an extreme and leaves out the clearer position he has taken in this campaign.

We rated the claim Mostly False.

2. Michels says “My company was building the Keystone Pipeline when (President Joe) Biden canceled it.”

On his first day in office, Biden put the final nail in the coffin of the Keystone XL pipeline when he revoked its construction permit via an executive order. Several months later in June 2021, TC Energy Corporation announced the termination of the project, bringing an end to more than a decade of debate and legislative back-and-forth on it.

The Keystone XL pipeline would have been an extension to the Keystone pipeline, an already existing structure that brings tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to storage and distribution facilities in Cushing, Oklahoma and eventually to refineries in Texas. The extension would have boosted this by carrying an additional 830,000 barrels per day from Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska.

The way the claim was stated could leave readers thinking Michels' company was fully responsible for the pipeline. And some of the pump stations his campaign and company cited apparently are tied to the existing portion of the pipeline. So, there was a lack of precision there.

But Michels is right that his company had a significant role in the pipeline project.

We rated the claim Mostly True.

3. Michels and his position on exceptions to Wisconsin’s abortion ban.

Michels has long had a consistent opinion on Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion: He supports it the way it was written. But Michels changed his tune during a September conversation on WISN radio with conservative talk show host Dan O’Donnell.

"I am pro-life and make no apologies for that," Michels said. "But I also understand that this is a representative democracy. And if the people — in this case, the Legislature — brought a bill before me, as you just stated, I would sign that."

That was a big reversal for Michels, who said a few weeks earlier that he was being pressured to soften his stance on the abortion ban but declared he would not do so.

That’s a clear and complete change in position.

We rated it a Full Flop.

4. Michels says “You know how many convicted felons Scott Walker let out during his eight years early on parole? Zero. Tony Evers is approaching 1,000 of these that he’s let out early."

Michels mangled a basic concept — the difference between pardons and parole. In doing so, he erred dramatically on the numbers, suggesting Walker was hypervigilant on paroles, issuing zero, while Evers flung the prison doors open.

Beyond that, it’s important to note that many of the paroles in question were required by law. That is, the parole commission — under Evers or Walker — did not have discretion on whether to allow them. (Michels has said he wants Evers to halt all paroles but that clearly is not possible.) And the parole numbers were even higher under previous governors, of both parties.

What’s more, when it came to paroles, some 895 felons have been released during Evers’ tenure — not 1,000. And when just discretionary releases are considered, since Evers took office in 2019 discretionary parole grants by the commission represented 51.5% of the total number. Under Walker, the percentage was 47.5% of the total.

Since Michels made the statement repeatedly, and continued to lump the two together in attacks even after being alerted to the difference, it’s clear this was not a semantic error. For us, that made this claim false and ridiculous.

That’s why we rated it Pants on Fire!

5. Alliance for Common Sense/Democratic Governors’ Association says Michels' family foundation "funded an organization that tracks women when they get near abortion clinics … he wants to treat women like they're the criminals."

An ad from the group — which is backed by the Democratic Governors’ Association — paints a dramatic picture of Michels’ views on abortion. It starts with an image of an ankle bracelet, and notes bracelets are "a way for police to track dangerous criminals." Then it says: "Tim Michels has the same idea, only his idea is about tracking women."

The ad with its reference to ankle monitors, is framed around the women coming and going from abortion clinics, not women doctors who are performing the procedure — and under the state's decades old abortion law, only doctors could be prosecuted.

Michels’ parents’ foundation, which he was a trustee of until 2019, gave $20,000 to the Milwaukee-based Veritas Society, the Journal Sentinel reported Aug. 31.

But the location-tracking the Veritas Society does is for targeted advertising, not to turn over to law enforcement as evidence of a crime. And the 1849 law is focused on those who provide abortions, not those who receive them. So, any women whose locations are being tracked by the Veritas Society in or around the state’s Planned Parenthood locations today aren’t committing a crime by being there.

We rated the claim Mostly False.

To see how Evers, Michels and other candidates and lawmakers fared on fact checks, see https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Fact checks on Tony Evers, Tim Michels race for Wisconsin governor