In Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race, Republican officials have long recognized the challenge they face. They realized months ago that the party was poised to nominate Rep. Tom Tiffany, an election denier and member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus who is likely to struggle in a statewide race in one of the country’s most competitive battlegrounds.
To boost their odds, Republicans decided to meddle in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. The rationale was simple: If they spent millions of dollars to boost Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist state lawmaker, they could try to turn the race into a referendum on her progressive views and controversial social media history as opposed to Tiffany’s MAGA record and allegiance to President Donald Trump.
The plan had a certain logic to it, but it didn’t work out. MS NOW reported:
In an upset, Francesca Hong was defeated Tuesday in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary by David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive who some argue is better positioned to build the broad coalition needed to win in November in the swing state.
Crowley defeated Hong, who was aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, according to The Associated Press. He only recently re-entered the Democratic contest and was backed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
With just about all the ballots tallied, Crowley’s victory was very narrow, but it was enough.
Time will tell what becomes of the Wisconsin race over the next 12 weeks, but as the dust settles in the Badger State, it seems like a good time to take stock of the broader GOP. How have Republican plans to meddle in Democratic primaries worked out over the course of the election cycle to date?
Following Hong’s narrow loss, the party’s win-loss record can charitably be described as a mixed mag. The fine folks at The Downballot have kept a running list of 2026 races in which Republicans have tried to boost a specific Democratic candidate in the primary, and with primary season nearly over, the GOP has racked up more failures than successes.
There are some notable exceptions — in one of the nation’s most closely watched primaries, for example, Abdul El-Sayed, whom Republicans pushed, won the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan — but the overall list shows only five successful examples of GOP meddling as compared to 11 failures.
It’s worth emphasizing that in many of these races, there’s no reason to assume that Republican interference in Democratic primaries made any difference at all. Some of the winners likely would have won anyway, just as some of the losing candidates would have lost anyway. Similarly, just because GOP officials came to believe that some Democrats would be unelectable, there’s no reason to assume those assessments were necessarily correct.
Nevertheless, Republicans have tried to help steer Democratic voters, and more often than not, it hasn’t worked.
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