What Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong’s Loss in Wisconsin Really Means for the Democratic Party
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Another Democratic primary, another progressive outsider vs. establishment-backed moderate that ended in a photo finish. Except this time the more moderate candidate won. That’s the story of last night’s highest-profile race, in which David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, narrowly beat Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, to become the party’s nominee for Wisconsin governor. Crowley’s win was also a surprise, making it the second recent primary in which a Midwestern moderate has defied the polls. (In Michigan last week, a centrist congresswoman came from behind and nearly upset Abdul El-Sayed , a Bernie Sanders–endorsed progressive.)
But two elections does not necessarily a pattern make, particularly when those elections yielded two very different winners. And elsewhere, progressives had some big wins in last night’s primaries, so the struggle for the Democratic Party’s future remains far from settled. Let’s get into what happened, what it means, and what it doesn’t mean.
Crowley is a former member of the State Assembly who in 2020 became the first Black person to lead Milwaukee County. But after launching his gubernatorial campaign last year, he struggled to gain traction and actually suspended his bid in July. Other moderates also floundered, leaving Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who represents a deep-blue State Assembly district, as the prohibitive favorite. But left-wing comments she made on social media a few years ago put her on the defensive—including support for abolishing the police and canceling Thanksgiving , positions she ultimately disavowed (though, according to my colleague Luke Winkie, not particularly well ). Then, in the race’s final weeks, two other moderates dropped out and Crowley revived his campaign with the sitting Democratic governor’s endorsement. He was ultimately the only plausible option for voters worried that Hong’s controversies risked blowing the general election and ended up eking it out by less than half a percentage point.
That’s a tight margin! What else makes his win notable?
Mostly how unexpected it was. As polling booths closed, Hong was overwhelmingly favored on betting markets like Polymarket and Kalshi. That impression was based largely on polls, which showed her roughly doubling Crowley’s support. But in retrospect, it’s probably better to think of the result as a product of very specific circumstances: a field that was fractured among multiple moderates and progressives, Crowley’s late-stage resurrection, a perceived front-runner who was sui generis in the controversies she created, and voters who decided late in the game that Hong risked losing to a Republican in November.
In fairness, Hong barely lost the primary. Why did voters see Crowley but not her as electable?
Electability can be a frustratingly amorphous concept—one that isn’t always fair either. Some voters view female candidates as innately less electable even though political science research suggests that they tend to perform as well as or better than men. On a different note, since Donald Trump’s reelection, many progressives have argued that it’s the Democratic establishment that has lost the capacity—or maybe the right—to discern who is electable. But the evidence also suggests that candidates whom voters perceive as less extreme have a better track record in purple, closely divided states, like … Wisconsin. As mild-mannered Democratic Gov. Tony Evers put it after winning reelection in 2022, “ Boring wins .” Hong’s DSA label and progressive platform excited many younger and more educated Wisconsinites, but these qualities evidently raised concerns about her viability statewide for plenty of other Democrats. One of them was Evers, who warned that Hong would “probably” lose to Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee. Notably, many Wisconsin Republicans agreed: GOP-aligned super PACs spent millions to boost Hong’s candidacy, and polls suggested that she would struggle against Tiffany.
Is Hong’s defeat a setback for the left?
It depends who you ask! Some progressives are actually relieved . If Hong had gone on to lose in November, it could’ve become an albatross for their whole movement—and would’ve handed leadership of a swing state to a Trump-endorsed Republican. Even some fellow progressives seemed skeptical of Hong’s campaign and rhetoric; both Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declined to endorse her. (They claim to be focused on congressional races, but both have endorsed candidates in other kinds of elections too.)
Progressives also have more-straightforward reasons to celebrate: The more-liberal candidates won primaries last night for Vermont governor and for open U.S. Senate and House seats in Minnesota.
So was Crowley’s win the only real bright spot for the Democratic establishment?
No, which is another reason the party’s civil war will almost certainly drag on. Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut easily beat back a lefty challenger, moderate Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar romped in her state’s gubernatorial primary, and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan became the party’s Senate nominee, also in Minnesota. But Flanagan is a progressive as well, a reminder that the establishment–outsider dynamic doesn’t always map perfectly onto the party’s ideological divides.
Another race that exemplifies the varying dynamics at play here: Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, a 78-year-old who suffered a complex partial seizure on the House floor last year, lost his bid for a 15 th (!) term to Luke Bronin, a former mayor of Hartford. Larson, a progressive, had support from more-moderate Democrats in Congress, while Bronin, a 47-year-old Navy veteran, ran mostly on generational change with the backing of the Connecticut Democratic Party.
One last question: Given how off the polls were in Wisconsin, should we doubt them going forward?
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