Donald Trump won Wisconsin in the last presidential election, breaking once more into the fragile blue wall and setting off a sense of anxiety about why the left lost.
Two years later, Democratic voters capped a dramatic primary for governor by skipping the risky political proposition of nominating a democratic socialist as their pick for governor as they tried to regain ground in the politically crucial state.
The field was reshaped in its closing weeks by dropouts, controversy and the rise of state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, as the front-runner, according to polling. Those turns, including Gov. Tony Evers’ move to support Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley as his heir last month, carried the undertone that Hong risked costing Democrats a race they felt they desperately needed to win ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
“I’m not sure that she’s electable in this state at this time,” said Jim Plasman, a voter who sided with Crowley.
“I’m not a socialist, and I think … there are implications involved with that that I’m not convinced of yet. So I would not say I would vote for Hong,” said Jack Johnson, another voter who supported Crowley.
Yet Hong, in an era when political expectations are being tossed aside, also was able to tap into a palpable urge for a different approach.
“She’s definitely much further left than the standard Democratic Party, but I think that that is also what we need,” Hong voter Delaney Kiernan said. “We need something new, something different.”
It wasn’t so long ago that Wisconsin was led by a Republican. Scott Walker won two terms before losing his bid for a third in 2018 to Evers, who is now in his final months as governor.
Republicans’ pick to try to win back the governor’s office is U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany. Even in politically divided Wisconsin, Tiffany is likely to contend with a tough national political environment for Republicans, especially given his deep association with both Washington and Trump in a midterm that threatens to become a rebuke of the incumbent president and his party.
Tiffany is a 2020 election denier, having signed on to a long-shot legal challenge targeting 62 electoral votes won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden and, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, he objected to certifying the incoming president’s wins in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Hong’s momentum, however, gave Republicans reason to think they might defy the moment.
“This is not a socialist country, and [Democrats] embrace it at their peril,” Tiffany told MS NOW last month.
Hong’s primary loss is likely to temper that vision.
Wisconsin is as quintessential a battleground as a state can be in this modern political era. Democrats carried the state in seven straight presidential elections before Trump’s 2016 upset sent him to the White House for the first time. And while Democrats won it back in 2020, ousting Trump from the White House, his narrow 2024 victory in the state helped return him to power.
Hong’s campaign had the potential to capitalize on an anti-establishment mood apparent in the broader electorate. But she also brought an online posting history that offered Republican critics plenty of ways to frame her as odd and out of touch, and her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America stood to alienate some voters.
She also had the opportunity to succeed against a large, divided field of Democrats that, despite dropouts, included seven candidates and two former lieutenant governors.
In a series of congressional primaries this year ranging from Pennsylvania and New York to Colorado and Michigan, democratic socialist candidates managed to win in reliably Democratic pockets of the country. Hong’s campaign was more challenging, however.
Congressional primary wins in liberal districts essentially serve as the general election contest, given the light Republican opposition there. But for Hong, finding a way to win the general election in November would have meant securing not only the Democratic base but also independents and even Trump voters, since Wisconsin is a purple state where people may have both affection and alarm about democratic socialism.
Potential aversion to Hong and the democratic socialist brand as a whole lingered around her campaign. And even as she looked to capitalize on recent weeks of far-left success, Evers’ support for her opponent in the final stretch was a notable shift after months of uncertainty.
The fact that Crowley had dropped out of the race only to re-enter last month and be boosted by Evers was an implicit sign of the tension around it all.
Hong, talking to reporters early on primary day, tried to dismiss the notion of being too extreme for the state.
“What’s extreme is Congressman Tiffany, a longtime D.C. congressman, has voted against the interests of Wisconsinites over and over again,” she said. “What’s extreme is that he’s an election denier.”
Didi Martinez and Hannah Marr contributed reporting to this article.
The post Why Wisconsin shied away from a democratic socialist, bucking a recent progressive trend appeared first on MS NOW.
