Francesca Hong's campaign told Fox News she never called for abolishing the U.S. Senate, but a February 2021 post on her own X account saying exactly that remained live for anyone to read.
Hong, a Democratic Socialists of America member and state assemblywoman from Madison, is the leading candidate in Wisconsin's August 11 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Her campaign spokesperson flatly denied the post's existence after Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany accused her of wanting to scrap the Senate, police departments, and prisons. The problem: the two-word post, "Abolish the Senate", was still sitting on Hong's verified X account as of Wednesday afternoon, publicly visible to anyone with an internet connection.
The denial, the post, and the walkback all landed within the same 48-hour window, less than two weeks before Wisconsin Democrats pick their nominee for a race the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates a toss-up. For a candidate already carrying the Democratic Socialists of America label into a general election, the sequence raises a straightforward question: if she will deny something this easy to check, what else gets memory-holed on the way to November?
The exchange started Tuesday, when Tiffany's campaign issued a statement following a Wisconsin Democratic primary debate. Tiffany, the favorite for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, accused Hong of having "called to abolish the police, prisons, and the U.S. Senate."
Hong's campaign spokesperson responded to Fox News the same day with an unequivocal denial:
"Rep. Hong has never called for abolishing the U.S. Senate. Tiffany cannot produce a single statement where she did, because it doesn't exist."
It does exist. Hong's post went up in February 2021 as a reply to a tweet by human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid about the Senate. The post, two words, no ambiguity, remained publicly accessible on her X account (@FrancescaHongWI) days later.
When the Daily Caller News Foundation pressed the same spokesperson, the story shifted. The spokesperson said Hong made the post the day after 57 senators voted to convict President Donald Trump for his conduct during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, ten votes short of the two-thirds supermajority required to remove him from office. Hong, the spokesperson said, "was reacted in frustration to Trump's acquittal."
So the campaign's position moved from "it doesn't exist" to "she doesn't remember writing it" to "she wrote it because she was frustrated." All three claims came from the same unnamed spokesperson.
Hong leads the Democratic field by a wide margin. A Marquette Law School poll from July showed her at 38 percent support, well ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes at 16 percent and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at 7 percent, with many voters still undecided. The primary is August 11.
Crowley, who picked up an endorsement from outgoing Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, has faced his own turbulence in the race. The Wisconsin governor's race has already seen its share of stumbles and restarts on the Democratic side. But Hong's polling lead makes her the most likely nominee, and the most likely to face Tiffany in November in what Cook calls a toss-up.
That general-election math is what makes the "Abolish the Senate" post more than a social-media curiosity. Wisconsin is not a safe blue state. A Democratic Socialists of America member running on a record that includes a public call to abolish a chamber of Congress hands any Republican opponent a ready-made television ad.
Hong's spokesperson tried to minimize the damage by pivoting to kitchen-table issues:
"It is not her current position, and it is not something a governor has any role in. She's running to lower costs, fund public schools, and make childcare affordable."
That may be a reasonable campaign message. But it is a different argument than "it doesn't exist." Saying a governor has no role in abolishing the Senate is true, and irrelevant. The question is whether Hong meant what she said in 2021, and whether voters should trust a candidate whose first instinct was to deny a post that anyone could find in thirty seconds.
Tiffany's statement did not stop at the Senate post. He accused Hong of calling to abolish police and prisons as well. The Daily Caller report did not detail what specific statements or posts Tiffany cited to support those two claims, and Hong's spokesperson did not address them directly in the quoted responses.
The rise of far-left candidates in Democratic primaries across the country has put establishment figures in an awkward spot: defend the insurgents and risk the general election, or distance themselves and fracture the base. Wisconsin's primary is shaping up as a test case.
Hong's DSA membership already places her to the left of most general-election electorates. Her spokesperson's denial-then-explanation cycle only draws more attention to a post that might otherwise have stayed buried in five years of social-media noise.
Greg Price, who runs the X account @greg_price11, amplified the contradiction on July 28 by reposting Hong's original "Abolish the Senate" tweet with a single word: "Hilarious." The post helped push the exchange into wider circulation just as the primary debate put Hong in the spotlight.
The Wisconsin Democratic field has given voters no shortage of material to evaluate. But the Hong episode is unusually clean-cut. A candidate's spokesperson denied that a public statement existed. The statement was still online. The spokesperson then offered three different explanations, nonexistence, amnesia, and frustration, without acknowledging the contradiction.
Wisconsin's gubernatorial race matters nationally. With Evers stepping aside and Cook rating the contest a toss-up, the Democratic nominee will face serious scrutiny. Tiffany, as the likely Republican standard-bearer, will not have to dig through opposition research files to find this one. Hong left it on her own timeline.
The broader pattern in Wisconsin Democratic politics, candidates making statements they later scramble to reframe, is not new. But most politicians at least have the sense to delete the evidence before denying it ever happened.
Voters can forgive a bad tweet. They have a harder time forgiving a candidate who looks them in the eye and says the tweet doesn't exist while it's still pinned to her own account.
