Democrats Got Lucky In Wisconsin. They Should Learn From It.

MILWAUKEE — The near-miss nomination in Wisconsin of state Rep. Francesca Hong, with her tweets circa Woke 1.0, should serve as something more than a crisis-averted moment for mainline Democrats.

Hong's candidacy, and the series of events leading to her less-than-4,000-vote loss early Wednesday morning, were a ghost of Christmas future preview of how they could lose their grip on the party and perhaps the presidency in 2028 — especially if they fail to learn from this primary.

And the 11th-hour intervention of outgoing Gov. Tony Evers to lift David Crowley to victory, likely reviving the party's hopes for retaining the governorship, amounted to a leadership lesson for Democrats on what's required to avoid living the Dickenesian nightmare.

Which is not to say there's a Democratic presidential contender on the horizon who has gone negative on Thanksgiving. Hong was uniquely flawed as a general election candidate in America's most politically dead-center state.

Yet party leaders should consider how she came so close to the nomination as a sort of how-not-to guide for approaching the next presidential election. And they must reckon with how formidable the coalition of younger and more educated voters has become in their party, after this demographic lifted Abdul El-Sayed to victory in the Michigan Senate race and nearly propelled Hong in Wisconsin.

If Crowley's victory felt familiar, well, it wasn't just because the pre-election polling miss echoed Michigan last week. This Wisconsin race was reminiscent of Joe Biden's come-from-behind win in the 2020 presidential primary — a candidate left for dead (Crowley had literally dropped out) who roared back riding a seal-of-good-housekeeping endorsement and bloc of white pragmatists and older Black voters.

As with that race, the Wisconsin contest, too, illustrated how quickly voter sentiment can shift in modern primaries. Undecided or lightly committed voters can turn in days, or even hours, particularly when their screens are filled with new material — in this case, the Hong TV and podcast clips explaining her criticism of police, prisons and major holidays.

Hyper-engaged and living online, they act as much as greenroom-dwelling pundits as civilian voters. And, particularly in an Upper Midwest state famous for its public schools and civic health, that meant the multi-million dollar blitz of advertising from Republicans propping up Hong may have hurt her as much as helped her. The message didn't sneak past Wisconsin Democrats: This is who Republicans think is weakest.

That it got to this point, however — with Crowley relying on the traditional late count of Milwaukee votes to secure a win — demands a deeper accounting.

Because if not for a series of late events — Evers' barnstorming, Hong's self-sabotaging media tour and the withdrawal of another Black candidate — Hong would be the nominee today.

Why?

The short version: a sprawling and flawed field of candidates with competing endorsements, personal rivalry, divided Black voters and elected leaders staying silent. Oh, and a potentially formidable candidate didn't run at all.

The story begins years earlier, well before the wild, final weeks of a primary that saw three top candidates drop out and one of them drop back in and wind up claiming the nomination. For Democrats, the story of how it happened is as consequential as the outcome itself.

I got a glimpse at the making of a mess late last month in Milwaukee, at the only full-dress debate of the primary.

First, there was the forum itself, held in a near-empty theater on the Marquette University campus. Even though an all-important poll from the same school was looming the following day, a survey each of the five remaining candidates knew would show Hong leading, none of her opponents used the debate to target her. They were, as can be the case in multi-candidate primaries, perhaps afraid of being seen as the aggressor and damaging themselves as well as Hong in the process.

However, it was a missed opportunity in what was the only televised statewide debate of the race.

Afterwards, in the spin room, some of the hopefuls were a bit more willing to question Hong.

Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor, said, “I do not know how a person recovers” in the general election from what Hong said about police and prisons and predicted a brutal onslaught of Republican-financed attacks against her. “Once that money starts flowing, the spigot turns on — going to be a rough day,” he said.

When I made my way over to Hong, I got a flavor of what sort of footage the GOP would have had at its disposal.

Did she still, long-term, want to abolish the police?

Hong didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either.

Rather, she discussed the need for “building systems of care” and concluded by saying that “this system is not working. If we want to be serious, we better be putting these billions into the things that we know prevent crime.”

When I then attempted to ask Hong to explain what she meant with her 2021 comment that “police exist to uphold white supremacy,” she began to answer before two of her aides moved swiftly to usher her out of the spin room.

As striking, if less viral, was what happened after Hong left.

I asked Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive who dropped out of the race in July only to reenter the primary 10 days later, about the seeming likelihood that he and Barnes would splinter the votes one of them needed to stop Hong.

The two were the same age, both born in 1986, Black men with a base in vote-rich Milwaukee, from where each once served in the state Assembly. Both had considerable strengths: Barnes with residual name recognition from being a statewide official and a narrow U.S. Senate loss in 2022, while Crowley enjoyed a burst of attention from returning to the race with a nudge and then endorsement from Evers.

Would the two have a conversation about one of them dropping out?

“That’s a conversation you’ll have to have with Mandela,” Crowley said with a tone icy enough to bring the air-conditioning in the room down a few degrees.

As I followed the candidate out of the room, I pointed over to Barnes, who was still talking to reporters, and indicated to Crowley that his foe was right there. Crowley kept walking and left the room. So I turned to Barnes.

“He can talk — he don’t want to talk,” Barnes told me, making clear there would be no détente, let alone an alliance, with Crowley.

Sure enough, when Barnes himself withdrew from the race the following week, he did so with no endorsement — only an assertion that it was “very clear who our nominee is going to be.” Translation: Hong has the primary locked up.

Barnes’ exit — hours before the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published a story suggesting he used his political power to pursue sexual relationships — proved critical. And just in time.

His departure on July 30th came as late polls made clear that, between Barnes’s support and a sizable share of undecided voters, there was still enough support up for grabs to stop Hong.

Had Barnes waited any longer, and more early votes poured in while he was still a candidate, the eventual four percent he garnered Tuesday may have been a couple points higher and enough to deny Crowley victory. Consider: Barnes drew 4,965 votes in Milwaukee County alone, well above Crowley’s ultimate statewide margin over Hong.

The bad blood between the two Milwaukeeans dates to at least 2022, when Crowley endorsed the candidacy of Alex Lasry, the wealthy Milwaukee Bucks executive who at the time was challenging Barnes in their party’s Senate primary.

That Barnes was running at all for the Senate that year, rather than seeking re-election as lieutenant governor in anticipation of being Evers’ chosen successor in 2026, goes to the heart of why Hong benefited from a fragmented opposition to the very end of the primary.

Barnes, as he would subsequently tell people, came to understand years earlier that he would not be tapped by Evers to carry the party banner for governor this year. Given the story that appeared to raze Barnes’ candidacy last month — a report that indicated the state Democratic Party hired an outside law firm in 2025 to probe “allegations of inappropriate behavior” — that proved to be a shrewd decision by Evers and his top aides.

But between his friction with Crowley over the 2022 Senate primary, his bitterness toward Evers for the original snub that led him to leave Madison to run against GOP Sen. Ron Johnson in the first place, and then the governor’s 11th-hour effort to revive Crowley’s candidacy, well, there was no chance Barnes was going to hop on board the Crowley train.

And he wasn’t alone.

Joel Brennan, who also was on the Milwaukee debate stage, had no interest in doing any favors for Evers’ preferred candidate, either.

As with Barnes, Brennan had served under Evers in the state capital, working as a top cabinet official in the governor’s first term.

Yet despite that connection, Evers also snubbed Brennan. In fact, even though Brennan was still in the race last month, the governor — who had been neutral up until that moment — decided he’d rather support a candidate who had already quit the primary than a candidate still in the race who had worked in his administration.

Evers’ decision was borne out of a cold-eyed assessment of the primary: to defeat Hong and her left-wing coalition, another Democrat would have to consolidate Wisconsin’s Black vote. And the obvious person to do that was an African American who was also the leader of the state’s largest and most heavily Black county.

Of course, that was cold comfort for Brennan, who, despite private efforts, insisted on remaining in the race through Tuesday.

Had he dropped out at any point in the final weeks — after the final debate, in light of public polls showing him in low single-digits or when Barnes exited — it may have given Crowley more breathing room. But Brennan claimed over four and a half percent, 37,000 votes — or about 10 times Crowley’s margin over Hong.

For a while, it seemed Evers wouldn’t have to intervene in the race. Or that he at least could get away with staying quiet — that is until one of his preferred candidates unexpectedly dropped out.

Lt. Gov Sara Rodriguez, who succeeded Barnes in the number two job, was consolidating support by June. She gained so much momentum that she prompted Crowley, for the moment, to drop out. But then, in early July, Rodriguez was forced to end her candidacy when it was revealed her top aide had so mismanaged the campaign’s finances that the lieutenant governor was nearly broke.

The governor was overseas on a trade mission when Rodriguez’s campaign unraveled. But when this disaster hit, it became undeniable to him and his top aide, Maggie Gau, that they’d have to step in — just a little over a month before the primary.

Tony Evers is nobody’s idea of a backroom political power broker.

A white-haired 74-year-old with the grandfatherly demeanor to match, the governor defeated the highly partisan Scott Walker in 2018 in part because Evers came off as more the high school science teacher he once was than a flamethrowing partisan.

Evers’s superpower, and why he won two gubernatorial elections, was that Republicans could never credibly paint him as a radical. But there was good reason why the GOP couldn’t land that charge in the first place: he’s hardly an intimidating political boss.

That was apparent with the sprawling nature of the field and how little he initially attempted to shape the race. It drew no national attention, certainly not compared to Hong’s rise, but when the state teachers union endorsed Kelda Roys in April, it illustrated how unformed the primary was and just how much it was at risk of fracturing.

A more ferocious political operator likely would have tried to keep the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest public employee union, out of the primary or pushed them toward a different candidate. The nod helped keep her in the race to the very end, when she garnered seven-and-a-half percent.

Roys remaining in the race may, however, have proven a blessing for Crowley. If Barnes' withdrawal allowed Crowley to consolidate Black votes, Roys' staying in may have siphoned away enough white liberals from Hong to deny her victory. Because even as she won just seven-and-a-half percent statewide, Roys, a Dane County state senator, captured 11 percent in her home county, outperforming in the beating heart of Wisconsin liberalism and taking votes Hong desperately needed to mitigate rural losses.

If it took a near-perfect storm for Crowley to claw back, Democrats should also consider why he was the last man standing at all. Oftentimes it is the candidates who don’t run who shape races as much as those who do run.

The drama around finding a Hong alternative may never have never come to pass if another top Wisconsin Democrat had joined the race in the first place. "AG," as the saying goes, stands for "Almost Governor." But Josh Kaul, Wisconsin's attorney general, decided to run for re-election rather than governor, depriving Democrats of a candidate with statewide experience and fundraising prowess.

He also stayed on the sidelines of the gubernatorial primary, which is perhaps understandable given he’d need to run with and serve as the state’s top lawyer for whoever won the governorship.

Less understandable is the silence of Wisconsin’s Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin. A progressive member of Congress for 28 years, Baldwin represented Madison in the House before winning her Senate seat. Nobody in this state, it’s safe to say, better understands the caricature Republicans use to portray those from Wisconsin’s capital. Yet, whether out of caution or fear of a restive left-wing base, Baldwin stayed out of the primary entirely.

Somehow even more ineffectual was Baldwin’s successor in the House, Mark Pocan, who in late July sought to shift the focus away from Hong’s DSA affiliation by urging the media to… cover other topics.

It was a pathetic plea, but one worthy of just about everybody else in the state party besides Evers in the final stretch of an extraordinary race.

This primary was, as Barnes put it to me the night of the debate, “the most ridiculous race in the country.”

But for Democrats eyeing the presidency, it should be something else: instructive.

Wisconsin showed how easily a divided party can sleepwalk toward a nominee its own leaders believe cannot win — and how little time they may have to stop it once they wake up. This time, Democrats escaped that fate. In 2028, if they fail to absorb the lessons of this primary, they may not be so fortunate.