The Socialist Electoral Project Still Hasn’t Hit Its Ceiling
Francesca Hong’s defeat was a setback for the Left. But lost in discussions of the campaign’s shortcomings is how much she actually accomplished. Hong may have opened the door to a new era of politics for Wisconsin and the Left more broadly.
In the space of a few years, Wisconsin socialists have gone from no state legislature representation, to two assembly members, to coming within half a percentage point of the Democratic nomination for governor. These are impressive accomplishments. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Last night was a sobering one for the Left. After months of exhilarating victories, including Abdul El-Sayed’s stunning Michigan Senate primary win just last week, the Left’s hopes for another high-profile Midwest triumph crashed in Wisconsin, where socialist gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong saw her double-digit polling lead evaporate into a 0.5 point defeat to the Democratic establishment’s centrist choice, David Crowley.
That result is already being used to create the impression that this was a wholesale rejection of socialists up and down the ballot, which is not the case. Five of eight candidates endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapters in Wisconsin and Minnesota won their races last night, while one more has advanced without a primary, and a further five of seven DSA-backed candidates are moving on to the general election in Connecticut and Vermont. And one of those losing DSA-backed candidates lost to another, non-DSA-endorsed socialist.
But there is no doubt Hong’s race was by far the most coveted prize for the Left last night and the most important electoral test for socialists in particular, given it was a statewide race in the Midwest and that unlike the victorious El-Sayed in Michigan, Hong actually identifies as a socialist. What explains such a bitter, if narrow, defeat only one week after the broad Left was riding high in a neighboring state?
Was it the money? If Michigan proved that big money can be overcome, Wisconsin is a reminder that it still often wins out. Pro-Hong forces were massively outspent, their less than half a million dollars on ad spending dwarfed by the $4 million spent by the pro-Crowley camp, a significant chunk of which went toward an attack ad in the home stretch casting Hong as a risky candidate in the general election. Weeks before the election, 45 percent of voters were undecided, and there is ample anecdotal evidence that they were swayed by messaging that cast doubt on Hong’s ability to appeal to a wider electorate in the general.
“Fear won out last night, by a narrow margin,” says socialist State Assembly Member Ryan Clancy, who also won reelection last night to his third term. “It was the idea from the beginning, to make a campaign based on character assassination and focused on the specter of electability, instead of on what Wisconsin needs after a decade of Republican control.”
Was it the campaign’s own unforced errors? Hong didn’t go negative against her opponents, even as they turned to attacking her and fearmongering about her old tweets. She was also the only candidate to not spend a single dollar on traditional TV and focus instead on streaming services and other digital ads, a deliberate strategy her campaign manager boasted about on the eve of the election. Hong herself seemed to recognize that mistakes had been made, reportedly planning to replace campaign staff with more experienced operatives if she had won the race.
Was it Hong’s own vulnerabilities as a candidate? Hong was hammered in the final weeks over old “woke” tweets expressing support for abolishing the police, calling to “cancel Thanksgiving” and other beloved holidays, and discussing race in alienating ways that reflected the prevailing progressive style of the era but that have aged poorly now — particularly on public safety, as some socialists are beginning to argue for a “carceral minimalism” framework rather than “abolishing” prison or police. Hong attempted to do as other socialist candidates like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have done and parry these and other attacks by making explicit that she was charting a new course on criminal justice and public safety. But she was not as successful in persuading skeptical voters on it.
Was it the reluctance of leading socialist figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to lend their endorsement to Hong? They and a parade of other high-profile socialist candidates who had a week earlier rallied with El-Sayed declined to show up for Hong, reportedly because of private doubts about her effectiveness as a candidate. Opinion in the cold light of day is split between whether this could have moved the needle just enough to get Hong the few thousand more votes she needed, or whether Hong’s defeat showed socialist officials were right to stay away. This will likely be a matter of intense debate for some time.
Whatever the case, the months ahead should be a period of self-reflection for the Left if it wants to build off Hong’s surprisingly strong campaign and take advantage of an appetite that clearly exists among the state’s Democratic electorate for a robust left-wing politics.
Hong’s defeat won’t be the only disappointment in Wisconsin that socialists will have to reflect on. Former Catholic priest David Liners, who had been endorsed by Hong, Clancy, and Wisconsin Electoral Socialists — an organization founded two years ago to support socialist candidates for public office — fell short last night in his state assembly bid.
So did the DSA-endorsed socialist running for Hong’s state assembly seat, Juliana Bennett. But while this might be a setback for perceptions of the power of DSA’s ground game, it is not necessarily one for the movement as a whole: the candidate who beat her, Madison Common Council Member Dina Nina Martinez-Rutherford, is also a socialist and will become the first openly transgender person to serve in Wisconsin’s state legislature if she wins in the general.
Meanwhile, in the primary to see who would try to flip the purple Third Congressional District, former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge — not a socialist but endorsed by the local DSA chapter — lost to her more centrist opponent, Rebecca Cooke, in another race that shows that Sanders and the movement he inspired don’t always overlap. Sanders had chosen Cooke, a former Democratic fundraiser who now works as a restaurant server, as his only Wisconsin endorsee this cycle, even though she dragged her feet on backing a data center moratorium and has waffled on Medicare for All.
This string of losses in Wisconsin will be a bitter pill to swallow for socialists in and beyond the state. But it should also be kept in perspective. For one, Clancy tells me that the Wisconsin Legislative Socialist Caucus is set to expand from its current four members in the next legislative session, even with the loss of Hong who joined two years ago, though he can’t disclose specific names of new members just yet.
Looking more broadly, the fact that Hong, a three-term socialist state assembly member, even got as far as she did is a fairly remarkable development for the Left. The socialist caucus in Wisconsin’s legislature did not even exist four years ago, and the last time one did was nearly ninety years before that. This result means that in the space of a few years, socialists have gone from having no representation in the state legislature, to just two assembly members, to coming within less than half a percentage point of taking the Democratic nomination for governor. While the Hong defeat is a setback in the short term, from a wider lens, her campaign is the product of rapid socialist growth that no centrist Democrat in the state will be looking at with carefree eyes.
Beyond the Dairy State
Looking beyond Wisconsin, things were brighter for the Left.
The most high-profile victory was Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s win over the centrist, ex-medical-device-industry-executive Angie Craig in neighboring Minnesota’s Senate primary, the only other endorsement Sanders made for this set of primaries. While Flanagan is not a socialist, she had a better, albeit somewhat mixed, record on Israel and Palestine than Craig, and some of her policy commitments overlap with those of socialists, like her support of Medicare for All. In the end, Craig’s vote for Trump’s turbocharged immigration crackdown that wreaked death and havoc in Minnesota proved to be her undoing.
In terms of DSA-backed candidates, Omar Fateh, who narrowly lost the Minneapolis mayor’s race to the centrist incumbent last year, cruised to reelection in the Minnesota State Senate, and two other DSA-endorsed incumbents — Liish Kozlowski in the state house and Jen McEwen in the state senate — have moved on to the general election without contest.
It wasn’t just incumbents. Kris Eilers, running on a platform of environmental protection and resisting corporate influence, won the most votes in the three-way race for St Louis County Commissioner in the First District and will face the second-most vote getter and incumbent in the seat come November. Meanwhile, Christin Crabtree, backed by DSA’s Twin Cities chapter, won a seat to Minneapolis’s school board. Crabtree, a public-school teacher and anti–Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activist during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge earlier this year, won on the back of a door-knocking campaign that saw local DSA members pair campaigning for Crabtree with organizing against the federal immigration crackdown, according to Twin Cities DSA Communications Coordinator Lena Pak.
Meanwhile, progressive Matthew Little overcame an avalanche of more than $3 million worth of pro-Israel lobby spending to win the race for Craig’s seat in Congress by 17 points. That not only adds yet another “Squad”-adjacent and pro-Palestine voice in Congress but marks the latest expensive failure for the pro-Israel lobby’s interference in Democratic primary elections, one week after after flushing away $30 million to lose the Senate race in Michigan.
The Midwest wasn’t the only region that saw primary elections last night, nor the only place where socialists won less high-profile races. Maybe most notable is Maryam Khan, the two-term state representative who has now won the primary to become the first ever Muslim state senator in Connecticut history.
After outreach from Connecticut DSA, who were impressed with her progressive record in the legislature — including her opposition to charter schools, support for abolishing ICE, and strong pro-Palestine position — and with the New York races demystifying socialism for the broader public, Khan became a dues-paying DSA member and won the chapter’s endorsement earlier this year. That win was somewhat offset by the defeat of the state house campaign of socialist Justin Farmer, who previously served six years on the Hamden town council.
Meanwhile, in Vermont, socialist Tanya Vyhovsky won reelection to the state senate, while two nonincumbent socialists are heading to safe seats in the general election. One, Burlington’s Jeffrey Peterson, effectively took the nomination uncontested for the district currently held by the outgoing state house speaker, while another, school district librarian Matt Gile, won the state house primary for Chittenden’s Twenty-First District with 38 percent of the vote. Two others — Nick Gauthier in Connecticut and Alexander Bobella in Vermont — have moved onto the general election for state legislature seats with no primary.
Still Room to Go
Tuesday’s result was a contradiction: at once a bitter, disappointing defeat for socialists that shows the movement still has a way to go to broaden its appeal to voters and to ease the anxieties of electability-focused Democratic voters; and a marker of how far and rapidly the movement has come at the electoral level, in a state where socialists have been invisible for more than half a century and only recently begun to reshore their numbers, no less.
Hong’s defeat was a setback for the Left. But whatever her political future, Hong’s campaign will be remembered for potentially opening the door to a new era of politics for Wisconsin and the Left more broadly — if the Left plays its hand correctly.
Hong’s razor-thin losing margin, some of the details specific to her race, and the continuing, steady accumulation of downballot socialist victories across both the Midwest and other parts of the country suggest that socialists have not hit a wall quite yet. Rather, if they are willing to honestly assess what went wrong, there is still room to go before they touch the ceiling.