The Democratic establishment finally struck back at the surging populist left.
Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, entered Tuesday evening’s Wisconsin primary for governor as the Democratic favorite, with a lead in the polls built on months of grass-roots organizing and a left-wing message that seemed to fit the moment of establishment unease.
But David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, scored a shocking if razor-thin victory over Ms. Hong, showing the limits of the progressive movement and allowing mainstream Democrats to breathe a sigh of relief as they nominated a candidate perceived as more electable in a battleground state.
Democratic socialists this year have won a mayoral primary in Washington, D.C., and House primaries in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia and Denver. But the force of that wave could not extend beyond such urban cores, at least not in the swing state of Wisconsin.
“Wisconsin, we have built something that will last forever,” Ms. Hong told supporters late Tuesday night, before calling for unity as the Democratic Party prepares for a general election contest against Representative Tom Tiffany, a Trump-aligned Republican: “No matter who’s on this ballot, y’all, we are going to fight to win for one another.”
For the Democratic establishment, Mr. Crowley’s win, no matter how narrow, was sweet. After months of inaction and self-inflicted blunders, a period when Ms. Hong was amassing 7,000 volunteers, consolidating left-wing support and canvassing the state while proselytizing universal health care and taxing the rich, state Democrats belatedly waged an all-out effort to stop her from becoming the nominee.
Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who had pledged to stay out of the race to replace him, went to war for Mr. Crowley, campaigning alongside him and warning that Ms. Hong would “probably” lose to Mr. Tiffany in November. Mr. Evers helped Mr. Crowley raise money from individual donors and labor unions in the final weeks of the campaign, helping him surpass Ms. Hong’s fund-raising totals in July.
“I am so proud of David — he’s the future of our Party, and I can’t wait for him to be our next governor,” Mr. Evers wrote on social media in the pre-dawn morning Wednesday. “For now, we polka. Tomorrow, we’re back at work to win.”
Political observers were skeptical that the last-minute onslaught could halt Ms. Hong’s momentum, especially given that other democratic socialists had scored victories over establishment Democrats by harnessing voter anger over precisely the kind of campaign that Wisconsin Democrats were mounting.
Polling gave Ms. Hong a clear and consistent lead. But in Wisconsin, the polling was wrong. The socialists met their match.
Mr. Crowley’s win was “a truly stunning turn of events,” said Anthony Chergosky, associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
“It shows Democratic voters getting cold feet about the electability of Hong, even if they are broadly sympathetic to many of her positions,” he said.
To be sure, Ms. Hong had liabilities that other left-wing candidates did not. Even some socialists viewed Ms. Hong as a more imperfect messenger than other progressives this cycle, such as Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who defeated a mainstream Democrat in the Senate primary in Michigan earlier this month.
The same polling that had her cruising to a victory in the primary showed her to be by far the weakest candidate for governor in the general election. Her campaigning style was unorthodox. She was soft-spoken on the trail and occasionally shaky in television interviews. And she sometimes struggled to explain old social media posts criticizing holidays like Thanksgiving and calling for the abolition of the police.
Neither of the country’s two most famous democratic socialists — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — endorsed Ms. Hong in the primary.
Still, Ms. Hong’s campaign had believed that her unapologetic populist message was appealing in rural areas, and even to some disaffected Trump voters. She was the most vocal in calling for a pause in new data center construction in Wisconsin at a time when 76 percent of voters believe that the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, including 67 percent of Republicans, according to a recent poll from Marquette Law School.
But Wisconsin, narrowly divided and critical to presidential campaigns, always seemed like an improbable place for the democratic socialists to prove their appeal could be statewide. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by 22,748 votes in 2016, lost to Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years later by 20,682, then beat Kamala Harris in 2024 by 29,397.
While fast-growing Madison leans left, Wisconsin lacks a metropolis like New York, Chicago or even Minneapolis-St. Paul to overcome its rural reaches and smaller towns. No woman has been elected governor, much less a socialist.
But Mr. Crowley is a groundbreaking candidate himself, a Black leader in a state that has elected only white men to lead it. His pitch to voters was similar to Mr. Evers’ — he would work for Wisconsin’s good, with a résumé, not an ideological movement, behind him.
His victory sets up a more traditional general election against a Republican who had threatened to vote in 2021 against certifying Mr. Biden’s victory in Wisconsin in 2020 and who did vote against certifying the votes in two other states that Mr. Trump lost, Pennsylvania and Arizona. A member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, Mr. Tiffany was one of 14 House members who voted in 2021 against making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
“The choice in November has always been clear,” Mr. Crowley’s campaign manager, Garren Randolph, said in the statement Wednesday morning. “We can move Wisconsin forward with leadership focused on solving problems, or we can bring the division and extremism of Tom Tiffany and Donald Trump to Wisconsin.”
Alex Lasry, a Democrat who ran for Senate in Wisconsin in 2022, pointed to a crowded field and a messy primary for Mr. Crowley’s late surge.
“It says more about David than it does about Francesca,” he said. “He just needed people to see him. Early in the campaign, it was hard to break through.”
Kathy Cramer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Mr. Evers’s influence — even if it came near the end of a long campaign — could have turned voters away from Ms. Hong and toward Mr. Crowley.
“It could just be that there are lots of Democrats who just have an affinity for the guy,” she said of Mr. Evers, who has served two terms as governor. “That could have weighed heavily on their vote.”
Narrow as it was, Mr. Crowley’s win was a remarkable comeback. Just over a month ago, he dropped out of the race entirely, saying that it had “become clear that I will not be the Democratic nominee for governor.”
Soon after, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, the early establishment pick, discovered a shortfall of more than $1 million in her campaign finance reports, fired her campaign manager and dropped out of the race.
Mr. Crowley, facing pressure to rejoin the field, was praying for guidance. His wife asked for a clear sign that her husband should rejoin the race and said that if she saw a red bird, Mr. Crowley should get back in. Sure enough, she saw a red bird shortly afterward.
Ten days after leaving the race, he jumped back in.
Then, former Lt. Gov Mandela Barnes suspended his campaign, leaving the anti-Hong field clear of major remaining candidates. Kelda Roys, a lawmaker from Madison, won around 7.5 percent of the vote, fracturing the vote in Madison even further.
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America were looking for a silver lining in Ms. Hong’s surprising loss.
“The fact we’re competitive in a swing state primary, despite having just a handful of congressional seats, is a sign we’re ahead of schedule in terms of breaking through with different electorates around the country,” said Chanpreet Singh, a D.S.A. leader in Seattle who helps lead national efforts to elect democratic socialists. “We’re thinking beyond single election cycles and close losses can teach us just as much as close wins.”
Robert Chiarito contributed reporting.
