The Wisconsin governor’s primary is heating up, but the race is fracturing.
Fresh out of the contest was Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez. David Crowley, Milwaukee County Executive, hasn’t ruled out re-entering the mix.
Democrats are scrambling. They see Francesca Hong as the threat that could splinter the ticket and hand the election to Republicans. GOP super PACs are already spending two million dollars to brand her before the dust settles. Her 2021 tweet—”Defund then abolish”—is their preferred ammo.
Hong doesn’t blink at the opposition. She’s not here to play small.
But here is the thing people miss when they scan her platform: she’s not running on abstract ideology. She is running on specific, grinding policy work.
The question isn’t just if she can win. It’s what a democratic socialist actually does in an executive role bound by balanced-budget laws.
The First Socialist Governor Isn’t Just a Label
Francesca Hong is a 37-year-old former chef. She owns no boardrooms, only experience from a industry that nearly collapsed during the pandemic. She entered the State Assembly in 2020 for exactly that reason.
Six years later, she wants the top job.
There has never been a socialist governor in U.S. history. Swing-state executive power is heavy. It requires dealing with hostile legislatures and real-world budgets. Hong argues that this pressure cooker is exactly what democracy needs right now.
Incrementalism is irresponsible. Pushing for the middle or the moderate does not yield the structural wins we require.
Hong frames her governance around one metric: democratic control. If policies don’t return power to working-class voters, they aren’t policy. They’re maintenance.
Republicans expect a showdown. They assume Hong’s past rhetoric dictates a radical pivot on law and order.
They might get it. They might get something more complicated.
Pragmatism Has a Price Tag
Look at the specifics of Hong’s agenda. They overlap significantly with mainstream Democratic priorities in blue states.
She wants to fix public school funding. Specifically: kill the voucher system, raise state reimbursement for special ed to 90%, and shift the financial burden so two-thirds of school funding comes from the state treasury. She wants local governments to stop being bled by the state capitol.
She supports gun safety. She backs expanded child care. These are popular in Wisconsin suburbs, provided you have the votes.
Here is where the divergence happens. Hong isn’t satisfied with tweaking existing tax structures.
Her platform targets corporate power more directly than her rivals. She proposes taxing corporate hospitals differently. She wants the Attorney General’s office staffed and funded to take on private equity monopolies. These are aggressive regulatory moves that traditional moderates often avoid due to business backlash.
But executive power has limits. You cannot create jobs without a budget. You cannot mandate housing without state approval.
That brings us to the legislature. To pass anything substantial, Democrats need to flip both the State Senate and the Assembly.
That is the hurdle. Without a trifecta, the governor’s role becomes persuasive, not prescriptive. Hong’s strategy is to use special sessions to force high-priority bills like gun safety and AI moratoriums to the floor.
Can a governor bully the legislature into submission? Or do they need a partnership built over years?
The Data Center Standoff
One of the most distinct pillars of Hong’s campaign is her push for a statewide moratorium on hyperscale AI data centers.
Why? Local control.
Wisconsin communities are waking up to the impact of massive tech infrastructure. Cities like Wisconsin Rapids, Beloit, and Menominee are grappling with energy demands. Developers are moving in fast. Locals are moving slower, with fewer regulatory tools to protect natural resources and utility bills.
Hong argues that Wisconsin cannot afford to be “Foxconned again.”
Taxpayer subsidies are a risk. Polluter accountability is absent. Without a framework, local communities are handed deals they are too weak to reject.
A moratorium buys time. It prevents the state from selling off grid capacity and land resources without a consensus on how these projects benefit the local economy. It is a hold on progress until there are enforceable mechanisms for negotiation.
It’s a position that makes tech investors nervous and rural towns wary. It fits the narrative of a socialist blocking corporate expansion. It also reflects a practical fear of unchecked infrastructure development.
Israel, Gaza, and the Limits of Free Speech
Hong entered politics amid a racial reckoning and a pandemic. Her early years in the Assembly were defined by those dual crises.
Her stance on Israel and Gaza reflects her commitment to civil liberties. During the 2024 Democratic primaries, she supported the “Uncommitted” movement to pressure President Biden on Gaza. As governor, her priority shifts from protest to legislation.
Wisconsin currently has an anti-BDS law. Hong calls it interference. She has introduced bills to repeal it.
The state has also adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism—a definition critics argue conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish hatred. Hong suggests repealing that statute as well.
This is dangerous political terrain in a politically mixed state. But she frames it through the lens of free speech. If the state is policing protest movements or specific faith-based political activism, it fails its duty to protect all communities equally.
Hate has no place in Wisconsin, she argues. But the government cannot pick which speech gets silenced in the process.
From the Line to the Legislature
How did a cook end up shaping state law?
2020 forced the issue. The pandemic destroyed the restaurant industry. Hong watched the State Assembly fail to respond to a crisis hurting her neighbors, her employees, her regulars.
She was asked to run. Not by a political party machine. By chefs. By regulars who knew the state capitol buildings from the other side of the pass.
It wasn’t a sudden calling. It was grief and frustration boiling over.
“I was ready,” Hong said. “For new leadership. For representation.”
Six years later, she sits on the Assembly floor as a liberal Democrat, often working across the aisle.
It worked. She passed bipartisan legislation requiring Asian American history in K-12 schools.
She attributes this to the kitchen. High stress. Team dependency. Hustle.
In service, you learn that relationships are currency. You talk to whoever needs to talk.
She spent after-hours beers with Republicans on the assembly floor to push economic development goals. It wasn’t about friendship. It was about function.
Defunding Abolition: The Long Game
The 2021 tweet—”Defund then abolish”—remains her most controversial signature.
It doesn’t mean she plans to dissolve police forces next January. The law and budget cycles are too slow, and the political resistance too fierce.
Hong calls abolition a “long-term vision.”
Her immediate goal is less dramatic, but still structural: “Tough on crime means tough on causes.”
Poverty is a criminalization vector. Public safety rises when communities have parks, healthcare, grocery stores, and stable housing.
Shifting funding from punitive systems to social infrastructure is the method. It requires using the Governor’s pardon powers efficiently and redirecting resources toward mental health and decriminalization.
It’s not an immediate dismantling of the state patrol or prisons. It’s a strategic shift in where taxpayer dollars create safety.
The Gamble on Hong
Winning requires more than conviction.
It requires Democrats to unify. Right now, they are fracturing between Mandela Barnes, Sara Rodriguez, and Hong. Republicans are betting on the split. They are spending millions to ensure that the first socialist governor loses before she takes the oath of office.
But if the Democratic establishment coalesces around her—fearing a GOP landslide more than her politics—the trajectory changes.
Wisconsin voters are looking at an affordability crisis that older strategies haven’t solved. A climate emergency that doesn’t care about party lines. A government that feels broken to a generation raised on internet activism and gig-work precarity.
Hong offers a pragmatic socialist answer.
Not utopia. But a heavy, determined shift toward local control and public investment.
She is testing if voters in a swing state are ready to trade traditional compromise for democratic power. The results of this primary will answer that, whether we are ready for them or not.
