“I hope y’all don’t get Giannis,” said Milwaukee County executive and Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley to his diehard Knicks fan questioner during an early June interview with the Prospect.
Crowley was one of several passionate Milwaukee Bucks fans I spoke to while working on this story about the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. Francesca Hong, the Democratic Socialists of America member and current front-runner, sports a large “Bucks in Six” tattoo on her back right leg to commemorate their 2021 championship. Outagamie County executive Tom Nelson, who is not running for governor but provided valuable insight about the race, donned a Giannis jersey and shorts for an ad during his 2022 Senate primary run.
There are echoes of the sorry state of the now-rebuilding Bucks in the Democratic primary. The team has been scrambling since that 2021 triumph to find more talent to keep Giannis Antetokounmpo happy, from aging All-Star Damian Lillard to skilled but limited big man Myles Turner. These moves failed miserably, and Antetokounmpo’s now in Miami.
The Democratic establishment’s flailing anti-Hong movement has the same vibes.
For months, Democrats tried to coalesce the crowded field around Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, getting two opponents—including Crowley—to drop out and endorse her. But then Rodriguez dropped out herself, after a campaign finance scandal that left her with almost no money for the stretch run. Crowley was then induced to re-enter the race on July 18, this time with outgoing Gov. Tony Evers’s endorsement. But that has not been a game-changer so far: Even Crowley’s own internal poll released last week showed him in third place, 21 points behind Hong and one point behind Evers’s other former lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes.
Hong has run a steady, disciplined campaign from the start.
Barnes and Crowley are competing for the same voters in the same parts of the state, relying on similar messaging and policy agendas. The candidates could split the anti-Hong vote, making Evers’s decision to re-inflate Crowley’s candidacy a potentially disastrous error, if the goal was to overtake the leader. Many have raised eyebrows at the fact that Evers did not simply endorse his former running mate.
It should be a moment of great anticipation for Wisconsin Democrats. They are two Senate seats and five Assembly seats away from regaining total control of state government—provided they maintain the governor’s seat—for the first time since 2010. There is a ton of pent-up legislating possible, including a long-awaited expansion of Medicaid. But the attempted knifing of the gubernatorial front-runner and the haphazard manner in which the Democratic establishment is pulling it off has overshadowed everything.
Francesca Hong was first elected to the Wisconsin state assembly in 2020 after working in the restaurant industry for over a decade. She represents a district that includes the deep-blue state capital, Madison.
“Voters are telling us that they are ready for a new type of leadership,” she said in an interview with the Prospect, “one that prioritizes the issues that working-class people care about and that requires transformative change from new leaders.”
Hong has garnered profiles in national publications like The New York Times and reportedly has the largest donor base of anyone in the race, regardless of party. She is who everyone is talking about, including the Republican Governors Association, who have so far spent $2.2 million on “attack ads” meant to boost Hong among Democrats, on the belief that she would be an easier general-election candidate for the presumptive Republican nominee, House Freedom Caucus member Tom Tiffany.
The usually reliable Marquette Law School poll released July 22 had Hong ahead at 26 percent, but it was conducted before Rodriguez dropped out and Crowley re-entered the race. Perhaps more notable was that 54 percent of registered Democratic Party voter respondents had a favorable view of democratic socialists as compared to just 10 percent with an unfavorable view and 36 percent who “hadn’t heard enough.”
Hong has run a steady, disciplined campaign from the start, and was drawing big crowds throughout the state well before the national media noise. She shares many of the fundamental qualities of other successful progressive outsiders in the post-Biden era, in that she is an active and dynamic communicator with uncompromising policy positions.
She is running on what she calls a “permanent affordability” agenda, which contains free child care, universal school breakfast and lunch, paid family and medical leave, living wages, fair and cheap health care for all, clarification that gig workers are employees, an affordable housing overlay that eliminates red tape, public banking to finance small business loans, “comprehensive antimonopoly regulations,” and “lowering costs on things like utility bills with our 2 percent rate cap bill, capping utility costs at 2 percent of annual income for energy burdened families.”
The agenda bears some resemblance to what the neighboring state of Minnesota was able to pass when Democrats won back a trifecta there in 2022. “It requires a candidate and a campaign like ours to make sure that we’re delivering for Wisconsinites at the scale and speed in which their struggles are growing,” Hong said.
She has also garnered attention for her stance on artificial intelligence and data centers, an issue that has broken through with even pro-Trump Republicans across the country.
“There is growing opposition to corporate control, corruption, and consolidation,” Hong said. “Working-class folks are already struggling, and for the state to take a risk in selling out our natural resources and to Big Tech? There’s bipartisan opposition to that.”
Tom Nelson characterized the issue of AI and data centers as “a scorching prairie fire” across Wisconsin, and added that “many counties and cities, villages, and towns have adopted moratoriums on lopsided votes.”
Nelson publicly endorsed state Sen. Kelda Roys for governor in April, and sung her praises as a small businesswoman and a mother in his interview with the Prospect. “She melds solid progressive bona fides with tenured legislative experience,” he said. “It seems a candidate that can appeal to both centrist and left makes for the best candidate. Her political and business experience and clear positions on the issues make her an excellent choice.”
Roys ran and failed in the last contested primary for governor in Wisconsin, finishing third to Tony Evers. She’s a longtime member of the state assembly and now the state senate. Though she has lagged in polling and struggled to gain momentum, it is very apparent in talking to Roys that she is passionate and knowledgeable in a way that is rare for politicians. Early in her interview with the Prospect, she rattled off without prompting or hesitation the previous years that the Democratic Party held a state government trifecta in Wisconsin.
As for the potential of a trifecta in 2027, she said that it’s “going to depend mightily on who our nominee for governor is, and how heavy of a lift it is to get that person across the finish line in what should be a banner Democratic year. Those assembly maps are hard. They are Republican. It is not a truly fair map.”
Even if the Democrats do achieve the vaunted trifecta, Roys is concerned that an inexperienced governor will struggle to navigate state government and get things done. “We’ve got a lot of really good people running, but most of them are pretty darn new to politics,” she said. “They are first-time candidates or they’ve only been in politics a couple of years … the challenges we face are complicated.”
As for Hong, she told the Prospect that she believes that there is a “real path to getting the majority in both the assembly and the Senate” and says that she is well positioned to accomplish it in November. “We are seeing more disdain and opposition to the Trump regime and growing support for Democrats across our state. And our campaign is the only campaign bringing strong organizing infrastructure from people who have not previously engaged in door-knocking, in text-banking, in hosting events to talk about politics and a political campaign.”
A big question for the race is what the candidates hope to do with that trifecta. Hong, Barnes, Joel Brennan (whose campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests), and Crowley have each indicated that they support Medicaid expansion as part of their broader health care agendas. Roys, however, has argued that it is not feasible and told the Prospect that Medicaid expansion is “functionally off the table for non-expansion states like Wisconsin because of the federal budget changes in the ‘big ugly bill.’” That law, signed last year, cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
“In Wisconsin, our reimbursement rates are so low that every time a patient uses their Medicaid, that doctor, that hospital, that physical therapist, that dentist is losing money,” she said. “And so the idea that Medicaid expansion is somehow an answer to health care does not solve anybody’s problem with the high cost and unavailability of health care.” Roys is instead offering “Keldacare,” which would allow every Wisconsinite to buy into the same insurance coverage that state employees enjoy. Local businesses could also enter the state employee pool. In her view, such a plan “takes what is working in health care in Wisconsin and makes it available to everyone.”
Crowley acknowledged in his interview with the Prospect that Medicaid expansion is a challenge given the Trump cuts. But he argues that it still represents a workable long-term strategy. “We cannot just make decisions based on who is in office,” he said.
With his fundraising prowess and experience in government as a state assemblymember and then as Milwaukee County executive, Crowley was expected to be a strong contender in the governor’s race. But he initially struggled to stand out in a crowded and discombobulated field. The return with Evers’s endorsement should provide a boost, but there isn’t much time left to make an impression, with the primary election on August 11.
“We really haven’t been communicating what we’re fighting for,” said Crowley of the Democratic Party. “And so this is really about making sure that we can bring those lost voices back into the party and really tackle the affordability crisis, really tackle health care and not only win elections, but show people that we can actually govern moving forward here in the state of Wisconsin and be a great example of what we can do across this country.”
Then there’s Barnes, who was not available to answer questions before this article’s deadline. He was involved in one of 2022’s highest-profile races as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate against Republican Ron Johnson. His narrow defeat was considered by many a startling disappointment, especially on a night where Tony Evers, who outperformed Barnes in every single Wisconsin county, was re-elected as governor. People are still debating what exactly went wrong for Barnes against Johnson; Barnes spokesman Cole Wozniak recently argued to Politico that Barnes’s 2022 defeat was owed to “being outspent by tens of millions of dollars, in an incredibly difficult year for Democrats.”
Whatever the answer, the 2022 experience hangs over his campaign this year. If the Democratic establishment thought Barnes was a strong performer, they probably wouldn’t have enticed Crowley back into the race.
On policy, Barnes is running a standard 2026 Democratic Party campaign focused on affordability issues, universal child care, and calling out corruption. The new Marquette Law School poll, which again was conducted before Rodriguez dropped out and Crowley re-entered the race, indicated that Barnes is functionally tied with Hong among voters making less than $50,000 a year, and had the highest name recognition among the Democratic candidates, which makes sense because of the Senate run. Barnes also did the best in the poll against Tiffany, leading him 47-42 among likely voters. Hong was tied with Tiffany at 44-44. These results will certainly keep Barnes in the race, and make it hard for either him or Crowley to overcome Hong.
Crowley’s candidacy will test the influence of Evers, but labor support could be what drives him forward to the nomination. Crowley garnered the endorsement of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council on July 20. It is worth watching if other unions follow. “I think the labor vote will surprise many,” said Nelson. “They’ve been hibernating a bit, and with a lot at stake this time around they’ll rise to the occasion.”
As it stands, Hong’s the likely favorite to win the primary. She says that she is ready to govern, and that even if the general election ends in a split legislature, “we will be working toward and coming into negotiations from a place of strength where more people across the state are now seeing and understanding what government can do … We deserve a government that is a force of good, not one that sows dysfunction and chaos and puts corporations and the ultra rich and privileged over everyday ordinary Wisconsinites like myself.”
