Socialist Francesca Hong Underperforms the Polls, Fights to Hang On in Wisconsin Gubernatorial Primary
The race between Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley to serve as the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin governor remained too close to call late Tuesday evening.
Heading into Election Day, polls widely favored Hong, a controversial ultra-progressive chef and state lawmaker who previously called for abolishing the police and Thanksgiving. However, Hong underperformed in early returns on Tuesday evening, creating a closer-than-expected race. By 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday evening, both candidates had received roughly 39.9 percent of the vote each, with an estimated 82 percent of votes counted.
The winner of the Democratic primary will take on Congressman Tom Tiffany, a Trump-backed Republican, in the race to replace retiring Democratic Governor Tony Evers.
If Hong prevails, she would face an uphill battle to win over the support of general election voters in the swing state. Evers, who announced last year that he would not run for a third-term, won reelection in 2022 by a narrow margin of just 3.4 percentage points against Republican challenger Tim Michels.
As Wisconsinites headed to the polls on Tuesday, strategists expected Hong would be boosted thanks to the disorganization of establishment Democrats who failed to quickly coalesce behind a more moderate candidate. Primary voters were asked to choose between four candidates on the ballot, despite two of the candidates having suspended their campaigns ahead of Election Day. Political observers believed that both candidates withdrew too late to offer any significant advantage to Crowley, Hong’s only real competitor.
Hong also benefitted from Republican ad spending. GOP-allied groups funded pro-Hong spots in an effort to secure her primary election win, believing that her radical views would make her an easier opponent in the general. Hong was on the receiving end of $3.5 million in spending from the Republican Governors Association alone. Her total campaign fundraising amounted to less than a third of that.
Both Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — two of the country’s most prominent Democratic Socialists — declined to endorse her. Ocasio Cortez demurred when asked about Hong’s past comments during an appearance on ABC’s This Week.
My “understanding is that… Francesca Hong has made clear her present stances to her electorate” and “moved away from” her prior comments, she said. “And I have a local city councilman that has this… saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy. And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now.”
Hong was born and raised in Madison, Wis., one of the most liberal cities in the country. She briefly attended UW-Madison before dropping out and working her way up in the restaurant industry to become an executive chef. She later opened her own ramen restaurant with her then-husband, though the restaurant has since closed.
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She entered politics in 2020, successfully running for the open 76th state assembly district as a Democratic Socialist. She won only 28 percent of the vote, but secured a plurality in the crowded field nonetheless.
Her platform at the time included police abolition: “Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option,” she claimed.
However, Hong has since backtracked on her stated desire to abolish the police, the U.S. Senate, and prisons.
One of Hong’s most controversial statements came in late 2020, when she tweeted: “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indigenous folx and women so be it.”
Still, given the opportunity to denounce her Thanksgiving comments just last week, she failed to give a convincing rebuke.
“I’m a chef, and one of the first meals I made that was for the community, when I was 16, was a Thanksgiving meal,” she told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “I always think, my hospitality background in owning a restaurant for seven, eight years, that bringing folks around the table to share conversation and build community is always a good thing. But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s very painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve. And the position that I’m running for right now, and my background as a chef, will actually help me become a better governor that’s able to bring more people to the table.”
After receiving widespread backlash over her lackluster response, she told Politico, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving . . . yup. I don’t want to cancel it, I actually love it.”
The Democratic Socialists of America are hoping the Wisconsin race can be the latest in a string of wins for the movement, which has seen successes in primary elections across several states, including Pennsylvania, New York, Colorado and Michigan and is coming off the earlier high of electing Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani to the New York City mayor’s office last year.
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