Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong squandered double-digit poll leads and lost the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary to David Crowley by a razor-thin margin, after prominent progressives refused to back her.
Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, edged Hong by just over 3,200 votes out of more than 787,000 ballots cast, a margin of 0.41 percentage points, the Daily Caller reported. The result upended a race that polls had shown Hong leading comfortably heading into Tuesday night's vote, and it hands the Democratic nomination to a candidate who ran as a moderate alternative in a state that will be one of November's premier battlegrounds.
Crowley will face Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany on November 3 in the race to succeed outgoing Gov. Tony Evers. If Crowley wins, he would become Wisconsin's first Black governor.
Hong, a state legislator backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, entered the primary as the progressive favorite. She carried endorsements from Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, California Rep. Ro Khanna, and a roster of DSA-aligned lawmakers. But her past statements became a weight she could not shed.
Hong had previously called to abolish prisons and the police. She also called to "cancel Thanksgiving," describing the holiday as "colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indigenous folx." When those remarks resurfaced, Hong faced sustained backlash and attempted to walk them back in several media appearances.
Her defense was not exactly a profile in conviction. Hong compared her old posts to bad sports takes on social media:
"I was actually trying to become a sports journalist when I first went to college, so I learned then you have some hot takes, sometimes bad takes, on Twitter. And I let my feelings out into the world."
Dismissing calls to abolish the police as the political equivalent of a bad fantasy football prediction is a tough sell in a general-election swing state. Wisconsin voters appeared to notice.
Perhaps the most telling signal came not from Hong's opponents but from the progressive leaders who declined to stand beside her. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the two most prominent figures in the Democratic Party's left wing, both refrained from endorsing Hong, even as they campaigned for other progressive candidates in races across the country, including Michigan gubernatorial nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
When reporters pressed Ocasio-Cortez about Hong's past remarks calling to abolish prisons and the police, she laughed off the questions. Her only public comment on the matter, as Fox News reported, was a dismissive quip: "Woke 1 was crazy!" The remark was revealing, not because it rebutted Hong's positions, but because it signaled that even the Democratic Party's most visible progressives saw Hong's record as a liability they did not want to carry.
That some of the left's most prominent voices were willing to back socialist insurgents elsewhere but not in Wisconsin tells you how toxic Hong's brand had become.
Crowley's path to the nomination was anything but smooth. The primary field was chaotic. Two major Democratic candidates, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and Mandela Barnes, dropped out amid scandals. Crowley himself briefly exited the race before re-entering with the endorsement of Gov. Evers, AP News reported.
Evers threw his full weight behind Crowley. "I am so proud of David, he's the future of our Party, and I can't wait for him to be our next governor," the outgoing governor said. That endorsement gave Crowley the institutional backing he needed to consolidate moderate Democratic voters against Hong in the final stretch.
Crowley drew a direct contrast with Hong's ideology. "She is a self-proclaimed socialist," Crowley told voters. "There are a lot of people worried about not just this party, but this country moving in that direction." His campaign manager, Garren Randolph, framed the victory as a return to pragmatism, National Review noted:
"Now, David is focused on bringing people together, earning the support of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and anyone who believes Wisconsin is at its best when we work together and deliver results."
One of the primary's stranger dynamics: Republican-aligned groups, including the Republican Governors Association, spent $3.5 million on pro-Hong advertising. The strategy was transparent, GOP operatives viewed Hong's radical record as a gift in a general election and wanted her on the November ballot. That investment failed, but it underscored just how far outside the mainstream Hong's positions sat. When your opponents are spending millions to help you win a primary, it is not because they admire your platform.
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod, hardly a conservative voice, had urged Wisconsin Democrats to reject Hong before the vote. He described her bluntly, as the New York Post reported: "She is a font of zany liberal, faculty lounge exotica."
When a senior Democratic strategist who helped elect Barack Obama twice is warning his own party that a candidate sounds like a faculty seminar gone wrong, the candidate has a problem that no amount of Twitter enthusiasm can fix.
The Wisconsin result is significant beyond a single state. Hong's loss halts a string of DSA-backed primary victories that had rattled the Democratic establishment across multiple states. Socialist candidates had won primaries in Pennsylvania, New York, Colorado, and Michigan, a run that included Zohran Mamdani's successful campaign for New York City mayor.
That streak created momentum and a sense of inevitability for the party's socialist wing. Wisconsin broke it. The question now is whether Hong's defeat is a one-off driven by an unusually weak candidate, or whether it marks the point at which the DSA's primary insurgency hit a ceiling in competitive general-election territory.
Hong, for her part, was defiant in defeat. "We have built something that will change politics forever," she told supporters on primary night. It was the kind of line that plays well in a Brooklyn coffee shop. Whether it plays in Waukesha County is a different question entirely.
Rep. Tom Tiffany now faces Crowley instead of Hong, a matchup that denies Republicans the easy ideological contrast they spent $3.5 million trying to secure. Tiffany, who carries President Trump's endorsement, signaled the fight ahead. "We'll be the place that stops socialism," he said.
Crowley enters the general election as a candidate who won by running away from his party's left flank. Whether he can hold that center in a polarized swing state, with a motivated Republican base behind Tiffany and a demoralized progressive wing behind him, will be one of November's defining tests.
Hong's trail of radical social media posts and her inability to credibly disown them cost her a nomination that polls said was hers. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez saw the wreckage coming and stepped aside. Republican donors saw it and tried to prop her up. Wisconsin Democratic voters, to their credit, saw it too, and chose differently, by 3,200 votes.
When even your own side's biggest names won't vouch for you, voters tend to take the hint.
