Wisconsin Democrats just got a plot twist nobody saw coming.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley pulled off a squeaker of a win over Francesca Hong in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for governor, overtaking a candidate who’d been sitting on a double-digit lead in the polls right up until voters actually showed up.
The final margin: 3,200 votes out of 787,000 cast. That’s four-tenths of one percentage point — the kind of gap that keeps campaign staffers up at night.
Hong, a 37-year-old state legislator and self-described Democratic Socialist, could have demanded a recount. Wisconsin law let her, since she lost by less than a point. But she’d have had to pay for it herself, and by Wednesday morning she’d made her call — literally, to Crowley, conceding the race before dawn.
It’s a wild finish to a race that barely resembled itself a month ago.
Crowley had actually dropped out and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez back in July. Then Rodriguez bowed out. Then her predecessor, Mandela Barnes, bowed out too. And suddenly Crowley was back in, the last establishment option standing between Hong and the nomination.
His campaign manager, Garren Randolph, struck the unity notes you’d expect from a candidate who just squeaked through a bruising primary: gratitude for Hong and the other rivals, talk of “affordable” living and “good-paying jobs,” and a pitch to Republicans and independents who might be persuadable in November.
Hong’s team, for its part, sounded like a campaign that lost the battle but wants credit for the war. “Our team campaigned clean, our souls are intact,” said her manager, Becky Cooper. Hong herself told supporters in Madison Tuesday night that they’d “built something that will change politics forever” — the kind of line a candidate reaches for when the vote count isn’t going her way.
If Crowley wins in November, he’d be Wisconsin’s first Black governor. He’ll face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, and outgoing Gov. Tony Evers wasted no time getting behind him. “For now, we polka,” Evers posted on X. “Tomorrow, we’re back at work to win.”
It’s worth asking whether Hong’s late stumbles cost her the race.
In the campaign’s final stretch, she caught heat for voting against a bill cracking down on child grooming — a vote her rivals hammered relentlessly.
She also managed to alienate a good chunk of the electorate by trashing Thanksgiving as a holiday worth skipping, which is not exactly the move of a candidate trying to win over Wisconsin’s dairy-and-deer-camp Democrats.
None of it sank her by much — 3,200 votes is a hair’s breadth — but in a race that tight, it didn’t need to sink her by much. It just needed to be enough. And it was.
