A startling aviation incident has put Wisconsin politics in the national spotlight this weekend, as Republican gubernatorial nominee and sitting U.S. Congressman Tom Tiffany walked away with only minor injuries after a small plane he was traveling on suffered an in-flight mechanical failure and made an emergency landing in Lake Wausau.
Marathon County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the accident unfolded Saturday evening as Tiffany and the plane’s lone pilot were returning from a campaign-related dinner in La Crosse County, en route to Wausau Downtown Airport. According to Tiffany’s public account of the incident, the single-engine Beechcraft K35 Bonanza, an aircraft certified to carry up to five passengers, suffered sudden total power loss while on final approach to the runway. With no time to reach a safe landing strip, the pilot was forced to ditch the plane in the adjacent lake.
Within minutes of the water landing, Tiffany and the pilot exited the rapidly submerging aircraft, swam to shallow water, and placed an emergency 911 call for help. Local emergency dispatch received the first report of the crash at 20:49 local time, and a Wausau Fire Department airboat reached the stranded pair just 16 minutes later, pulling them from the water at 21:05 local time.
Both Tiffany and the pilot suffered only non-life-threatening minor injuries in the ditching. Tiffany’s campaign confirmed the congressman received a small laceration above his right eye and was evaluated at a local hospital, where he released a statement reflecting on the close call. “God was watching over us tonight, and I am incredibly grateful to be here in the hospital with my wife, Chris, by my side,” Tiffany wrote in a social media post shared shortly after the incident. “An experience like this reminds you just how precious life is.”
Investigation into the root cause of the mechanical failure is still in its early stages, with no immediate conclusions released by authorities. The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that two federal aviation regulators, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, have been called in to lead the official probe into the incident. As of Monday, the downed aircraft remains submerged in Lake Wausau, where specialized recovery crews are working to extract it from the water without causing additional environmental or ecological damage.
The incident comes as Tiffany campaigns for Wisconsin’s governor seat in the upcoming 2026 U.S. midterm elections, adding an unplanned variable to the high-states statewide race.