Opinion: Francesca Hong Will (And Should) Be The Democratic Nominee. This Week's Chaos Only Reinforces That.
Many Wisconsin Democratic leaders appear determined to stop Hong, and possibly Mandela Barnes, but reviving David Crowley may split the "moderate vote" even further.
This article represents my personal opinion, and will have no effect on our polling average for this race or our upcoming 2026 midterm forecasts, which will remain entirely data-based.
If you stopped paying attention to Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor sometime last weekend, I honestly cannot blame you. More likely, you were never paying attention at all. And that makes sense, as this campaign, although it is a primary, has flown under the radar compared to the inundation of advertisements we’ve seen for recent state Supreme Court races or Senate elections. But it just got a lot more interesting.
Within the span of nine days, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley dropped out and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez1, who was the first to enter the race a year ago and was widely considered a frontrunner. Rodriguez then discovered that her campaign had hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she thought in cash on hand, after contributions were apparently counted twice, expenses were underreported and a planned $1 million television campaign failed to air because invoices had not been paid. She fired her campaign manager and insisted the campaign would continue, before changing course and dropping out just four days later2. That was just yesterday. Are you overwhelmed yet?
Within 24 hours of Rodriguez dropping out, Crowley got right back into the race. Except this time, incumbent Gov. Tony Evers came with him3. After saying he wanted to remain neutral and not play “kingmaker” in the primary last year4, Evers changed his position as soon as who I presume was his preferred candidate (she is his lieutenant, after all) was no longer in the race. It also seems like there are other “establishment Democrats” who are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility of either Francesca Hong or Mandela Barnes becoming the nominee and/or losing a general election to Republican presumptive nominee Rep. Tom Tiffany.
Whether state party leaders will admit it publicly or not5, it is becoming hard not to see this as an attempt to stop Hong from becoming the Democratic nominee. Barnes is probably concerning to them too, and that’s more justified in my opinion, as he already lost a statewide race in 2022 to Ron freaking Johnson, the fourth-most unpopular Senator in the country6, the same year that Evers won re-election to a second term, and when Democrats as a whole performed quite well in the Senate in the “red wave” that never was. Still, the panic around Hong is clearly different.
Despite that, I still think Hong is the right choice, both personally on the policy side, and strategically in terms of who is best to run in the general election.
Can someone tell Wisconsinites there is an election???
Before getting into the candidates themselves, I have a broader complaint: How has a race this important, that is wide open with no incumbent running, received so little attention?
Wisconsin, one of the most politically competitive and dynamic states in the country, is electing a brand new governor who will likely govern during another extremely close presidential election in 2028, and this comes as Democrats have a realistic opportunity to win control of the state Legislature (both branches) for the first time in years.
Yet until this week, the primary had received surprisingly little media coverage or advertising from the candidates themselves.
This is coming from the guy who follows Wisconsin politics obsessively and runs an entire website that includes a polling average for this very race: I still have not seen much meaningful coverage of just about anything. Rodriguez was supposed to kickstart that with her $1 million TV campaign7, only for the ads to never air because the campaign forgot the somewhat important step of… paying for them.
Instead, the first unavoidable TV advertising voters will see is a $2.2 million buy from the Republican Governors Association attacking Hong as “too liberal”8. Democrats have argued that the ads are secretly intended to boost her chances with primary voters, which is probably true, and not very secretive. To those who would argue that is an indictment of Hong’s electability, I’d say this: don’t interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Remember when Hillary Clinton and the DNC were hoping to have Trump as the GOP nominee? How’d that one go? Even if Hong is an easier opponent in the general election, the GOP meddling isn’t likely to be the cause of her primary win. An analysis for this cycle by The Downballot finds that “Republicans have sought to interfere in 14 races that could host competitive general elections, but their preferred Democrats have won their primaries just three times. (One other contest remains ongoing.)“9
Regardless, congratulations are in order to Wisconsin Democrats: Republicans may have done a better job introducing one of your leading candidates than any of the actual campaigns did for themselves.
This feels like a good point to mention that our 2026 midterm forecasts will launch in the very near future, and Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race will be one of the most important events it covers. But forecasts become significantly more useful when polling is more accurate, which won’t happen until voters know who the candidates are. Right now, far too many don’t.
The establishment strategy is not very subtle
If you look at each decision this week individually, everything can be explained.
Crowley dropped out because his campaign was struggling to gain any traction, and endorsed Rodriguez, who appeared to be the strongest establishment-aligned candidate. Rodriguez then dropped out because of her campaign finance issues, a potentially disqualifying distraction. Evers endorsed Crowley who re-entered the race as he believes Crowley is the strongest remaining general-election candidate.
Many Democrats are worried that Hong will win the primary and lose to Tiffany. She is a self-described democratic socialist, has taken several positions that Republicans will portray as extreme, and some independents may agree. And she represents a much clearer departure from the current party establishment than anyone else in the race, by far.
Those concerns are understandable. To be clear: Wisconsin is not New York City, and we don’t yet know that Hong is the next Mamdani. Republicans will spend enormous amounts of money portraying Hong as an “out-of-touch Madison socialist”. Her past comments supporting abolishing the police will be replayed about 40 billion times between August and November if she is the nominee. But this would happen no matter who the nominee is. Republicans tried portraying Tony Evers as a crazy liberal, and he was able to overcome it. Republicans already portrayed Mandela Barnes as “weak on crime” and used racist attack ads to target him10. You could maybe argue that worked, but Barnes barely lost to Johnson, and effectively didn’t run a campaign, which was his own fault. The GOP would label David Crowley as the guy in charge of “liberal Milwaukee”. Are you getting it yet? It’s not about what the Republicans can say about the eventual nominee, it’s about who can best respond and refute those claims. And that’s Hong. Crowley is a complete unknown with little time left, Barnes is low-energy and already failed to establish himself in an “easy” 2022 race, and Joel Brennan and Kelda Roys… sorry, who are they?11
Point is, “the candidate Republicans most want to run against” is one of the oldest and least useful arguments in politics. Republicans claimed Barack Obama was too liberal and inexperienced in 200812, and were more fearful of a Hillary candidacy. Democrats spent much of 2016 (as did everyone else on the planet) insisting Donald Trump wouldn’t stand a chance13. We all know how that went.
Political parties are very confident in their ability to identify “the safest candidate”, right up until that person loses.
A lesson from 2016
Let’s look back to the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries a bit deeper as the best example of this misconception.
Hillary Clinton was overwhelmingly presented as the experienced, responsible, and most electable option in the primary. Bernie Sanders had far more enthusiasm, arguably charisma, a more energized base and a message that connected with many working-class voters, (he won two out of the three rust-belt states in the primaries…14) yet Clinton was considered safer.
Then she lost Wisconsin. Michigan. Pennsylvania. And the election. To a guy whose successful campaign experience was limited to selling Big Macs15. Yes, that’s true.
To be clear, I am not saying Sanders definitely would have defeated Trump. No one will ever be able to answer that question, and there were many weaknesses in his candidacy too. But 2016 should have permanently ended the idea that moderation, experience, and establishment support automatically equal electability.
Sometimes the candidate who looks safest on paper is the one voters are least excited to support, and electability isn’t a position on an ideological chart, it’s about getting people to show up and care enough to vote for you. Only one person in this race has that.
Hong has something the other candidates lack
I’m not going to really get into the weeds on the Brennan and Roys campaigns as they simply have not taken off like Hong and Barnes have. So let’s talk about Barnes. I don’t think he’d be a terrible nominee, and again, he was only 27,000 votes short of beating RoJo in 2022, and has technically already won statewide as lieutenant governor.
But Barnes and his campaign do not have the same energy. He is experienced and familiar, but is not particularly moving or charismatic on the campaign trail. Trust me, I’ve seen him give two rally speeches. They were “meh” at best. His 2026 campaign has so far felt more like an attempt to complete unfinished business16 than a movement. I know Barnes’ resume, and I’m not sure what makes this campaign different from the one he ran four years ago yet.
Hong, on the other hand, has a very clear political identity. She is energetic, direct, and clearly very comfortable speaking to voters without sounding as though every sentence was approved by six consultants first. That distinction matters. The Democratic Socialists of America are also enjoying a lot of momentum nationally.17 DSA-backed candidates have recently won important primaries in New York (plus the general!), Pennsylvania, and Colorado, while the DSA’s membership and chapters have grown. That doesn’t prove one can win in Wisconsin, but it does mean voters, particularly younger voters that the Democrats have been losing lately, are more receptive to candidates who actually offer solutions to their problems, and not politics as normal. Normal isn’t very popular right now, and frankly, why would it be?
Hong is capable of winning over independents and working-class voters with her policies in a variety of areas18. On education, she supports fully funding Wisconsin’s universities, technical colleges, and K-12 schools, while moving public money away from private-school vouchers and towards public schools. She is advocating for universal childcare and free school meals, which may be “liberal”, but I’ve never heard of someone not wanting that. On labor, she supports guaranteed paid family and medical leave, stronger collective-bargaining rights, and wants to expand BadgerCare, our extension of Medicaid, while limiting pricing by large hospitals. She also is treating public transportation as an actual statewide priority, not just in Madison and Milwaukee, which is unique. And perhaps what sets her apart from her Democratic opponents most is that she is in strong support of a moratorium on AI data centers in the state, which no one else has stood behind. Data centers are not popular in rural areas.19 That could help her.
Return of The (Milwaukee) Executive may accomplish the opposite of its intent
The political logic behind reviving Crowley is straightforward: Rodriguez’s campaign collapsed, so Evers and other party leaders want her supporters to consolidate behind another moderate candidate before Hong can win a divided field.
One slight issue with that: Crowley was already in the race. He ran for months, had basically no support20, dropped out and told voters Rodriguez was the better choice. Now he is asking those same voters to forget he ever did that and support him weeks before the primary, as tens of thousands of votes have already been cast. Evers’ endorsement could help, as he is popular amongst Wisconsin Dems.
But who is Crowley actually taking votes from? I doubt there are many voters who were firmly behind Hong that would abandon her because Evers endorsed a more moderate candidate, as her supporters like her because she challenges the norm. If anything, this reinforces her argument.
Instead, Crowley is much more likely to take votes from Barnes, Roys, Brennan, and anyone who was in the Rodriguez camp, the more “conventional” candidates. Adding another conventional candidate doesn’t automatically consolidate the votes, it may divide them further. I’m no campaign strategist (maybe after college), but that seems like a slight flaw in this plan.
Elections are won with energy
Democrats absolutely need to consider electability in this race. Tom Tiffany can win, and that is a threat that should be taken seriously. But the party’s problem nationally is that it isn’t exciting anymore, and it isn’t for change. Too many voters see Democrats as cautious, scripted, or disconnected from the urgency of the moment, while populist candidates like Trump win by being erratic, bold and for change, even if that change isn’t well thought out to say the least.
Hong offers a clear message, an energized base and goals that directly address the issues voters care about. She has her weaknesses, and the general could be a tough one. But every candidate has their weaknesses, and every election in the most purple state in the nation can be a tough one.
The question is whether Democrats want to spend the next four months supporting a nominee voters reluctantly accept, or someone that excites the base. That should, and will be decided by the primary, not by Tony Evers, not by other establishment Dems or the state party, but by the voters. And I think the decision will be to go with Francesca Hong.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2026/07/08/david-crowley-to-endorse-sara-rodriguez-after-ending-governor-campaign/90855508007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-ds=timeout
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/us/sara-rodriguez-wisconsin-governor-drop-out.html
https://milwaukeemainstay.com/tony-evers-2026-primary-endorsement/
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fjzi4t2vc62eh1.jpeg
https://intel.morningconsult.com/mc-content/trackers/senator-approval-ratings
https://www.wpr.org/news/wisconsin-governors-primary-ad-wars-campaign-spending
https://www.wpr.org/news/gop-ads-attack-hong-liberal
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/us/politics/crime-ads-racism-republicans.html
Sincerest apologies to Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan, but I think it’s time to call it quits.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/gop-unwise-to-call-obama-inexperienced-010758
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/01/nx-s1-5872747/democratic-socialists-are-on-a-winning-streak-heres-what-that-means-for-democrats
https://francescahong.com/policy/
https://heatmap.news/politics/americans-oppose-data-centers-poll
https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2026/03/24/new-marquette-law-school-poll-finds-majorities-of-registered-voters-still-undecided-in-wisconsin-supreme-court-race-with-taylor-leading-lazar-among-likely-voters/