After Hong: Considering the Prospects of the Wisconsin Left

By J. Deisinger, Editor

The below is the personal opinion of the author, and does not represent an official statement or position of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America

Francesca Hong lost her primary for governor last week–$4 million dollars and an endorsement from Governor Tony Evers was enough to put Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley over the top by half a percentage point. The convolutions and bizarre events of this primary needn’t be recapped here; at this point anybody following the news in this state has the gist. The democratic socialist from Madison ran a ground-game focused, people-powered campaign that promised a return to Wisconsin’s historic progressive radicalism after more than 15 years of Republican obstruction and destruction. It’d be easy to make this a morality play; the Good Guy went down swinging when the Bad Guy dropped the money bomb on her, with an assist from the establishment. BB warned us not to do that, so I won’t. Rather, this moment calls for a frank consideration of where the socialist movement in Wisconsin goes from here, and what it should expect from the Crowley administration (assuming the County Executive fends off Representative Tom Tiffany–no guarantees in this state).

Listen to the liberal press, and we on the left have plenty to celebrate, even with this loss. Francesca Hong was a legend, says Dan Shafer of the Recombobulation Area, a wildcard who brought much needed hustle to the campaign and ‘changed the face’ of how democratic politics will be conducted in this state. Hong has already sat down for a ‘Unity Brunch’ with her erstwhile opponents, and a ‘Unity Tour’ is underway. Dozens if not hundreds of earnest progressives are singing the praises of the scrappy chef from Madison who came within inches of crossing the finish line, singing from the hymnbook of Vote Blue No Matter Who and prophesying a bright future for Hong in the next cycle (pie in the sky, bye and bye…). ‘You didn’t win the primary, but you changed the conversation and your views will shape the next administration’, is the general thrust of the Democratic press’s pitch to Hong voters.

With sincere respect and affection for many of those making this argument: give me a break. What happened was that the socialist movement took it on the chin and lost, and that means what happens next, most likely, is the knives come out. The national press is already all too happy to cast Hong’s narrow defeat as a welcome and chastening check on the Democratic Socialists of America’s arriviste entryists. And Crowley himself is, I would argue, uniquely unlikely to make genuine accommodations to the socialist and progressive left as part of his administration. Here, then, is an exercise not in despair, but in pessimism.

Before I lay out the argument for stormy seas ahead, I should give the case for optimism its due (and to answer the inevitable question, yes, I will be voting for Crowley on the November ballot). Crowley and his team have affected a tone of welcoming rapprochement towards Hong supporters. The usual centrist lip service to ‘passion’ has been paid, which can unfortunately only sound patronizing to those of a radical bent, but is certainly preferable to scorn or contempt. The election was extremely close, and sense would suggest that the razor thin margin of victory would encourage some coalition-building mindset among the victorious center. Perhaps Crowley really will crib from Hong’s campaign, coming around, for example, to a moratorium on data centers. Your correspondent will eat humble pie with crow and enjoy it, if and when it happens.

I am not convinced.

Beyond the ‘E’ Word

The term ‘establishment’ is in bad odor in Wisconsin politics, to nobody’s surprise. As is the case for voters nationwide, Wisconsinites are unhappy with the direction of their state and their nation. That Hong was not the establishment candidate is essentially beyond dispute. Apart from her socialist bonafides, the Assemblywoman has spent her time the legislature as a member of the Democratic caucus’ left flank. Her campaign surged to prominence not on the strength of endorsements from elected officials or transfusions of large-donor cash, but on a spirited army of volunteers and an inspiring message. But Crowley’s campaign has objected, with great vehemence, to the discourse labeling their man as the ‘establishment’ choice, even allowing for his endorsement by the most powerful Democratic political figure in the state, Governor Tony Evers.

These protests are not merely a matter of ‘hit dogs will holler’. Crowley’s supporters have real and serious objections to the term. How, they ask, can a man who grew up Black and poor in the most heavily incarcerated ZIP code in the nation, be a part of the “establishment”? How can a county executive in a post-industrial corner of the United States be tarred with the same brush as Democratic sachems like Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi? Not a few of Crowley’s supporters, many of them activists of color in Milwaukee themselves, detect a bit of a hard ‘t’ in the word ‘establishment’, so to speak. Such concerns should be taken seriously–the socialist movement has no monopoly on virtue, after all, and we socialists should indeed take care that our criticisms are well-founded and accurate. Hong herself has noted that the term ‘establishment’ sometimes conceals as much as it clarifies.

So then, let’s leave the ‘e’ word aside, and discuss more concretely why socialists have reason to be skeptical that Crowley, should he win, would adjust his policies to offer olive branches to his left. The first and most obvious reason is an examination of how Crowley has won his elections. We do not need to hallucinate that Crowley is himself nefarious or corrupt–by all accounts, he is a personally deeply decent man with a sincere desire to do well by his community. What concerns us rather is who else believes in David Crowley, and what their support suggests about his priorities.

Why has the term ‘establishment’ long haunted Mr. Crowley’s career like the ghost at the feast? Well, we can give the ghost a name: Chris Abele. It’s hardly controversial to say that Crowley owes no small part of his success to the support and patronage of the former County Executive. Crowley’s razor thin victory in that race over Chris Larson would not have been possible without support from one of Wisconsin’s most deep-pocketed Democratic donors. As County Executive, Mr. Crowley has been at pains to cultivate cordial relationships with well-heeled political organs of capital such as the City Forward Collective and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Such connections complicate the narrative of a ‘progressive’ candidate.

Then there is the matter of financing for his present campaign. Since re-entering the gubernatorial campaign in the wake of Sara Rodriguez’s implosion, Crowley has raised millions of dollars, mostly from very large donors and many of them from out-of-state sources. One does not have to imagine that David Crowley is personally corrupt to smell a rat, here. Massive data center developers and centrist liberal millionaires do not donate money to a last-minute Democratic gubernatorial candidate in a Midwestern state because they are inspired by his (genuinely admirable!) life story. They do it because they fear that the alternative candidate’s policies will cause them economic and political trouble.

And that is why Crowley’s support from such bodies should fill socialists with trepidation. When you are a Democrat that even the Executive Roundtable could love, it begs the question as to whom exactly will be served for catered lunch on that table. Consensus and compromise aren’t dirty words, but neither are ‘conflict’ and ‘contention’. When political issues arise that really do require Crowley to pick a side between the center and the left, we have good reason to believe that his friends in the Northwestern Mutual building are confident that he’ll make ‘the right choice’. When the capitalist class tells you who their allies are, believe them.

I’m similarly jaundiced about the idea that Hong’s campaign style will inspire the Democratic Party to approach their future campaigns with a greater eye towards ground game and fieldwork. It’s still practically an article of faith among Democratic fulltimers that field and canvassing are a romantic waste of money, when what really matters are TV ads and locking up endorsements. Why should Hong’s close loss inspire a reconsideration? She did, after all, lose. Apart from which is the obvious and unpleasant problem that to get a doorknocking army of motivated progressives, you sort of do need a message that inspires such people to get off the couch and into the streets. If the mainstream of the Democratic Party had that kind of message, they’d already have the vols.

Tony Evers and the Center-Left Polka

Not for nothing has Crowley’s strategy in his resurrected primary campaign been described as ‘a noun, a verb, and Tony Evers’ (hat tip again to Shafer). Evers remains very popular among Wisconsin Democrats, particularly among older and more moderate Democrats, who consolidated late to give Crowley a win. Evers has been at pains to cultivate an image of folksiness and approachability–a euchre-playing elfin schoolteacher who uses minced oaths and would never express (heaven forbid!) a dislike of Thanksgiving.

But Evers is no pushover, and he didn’t pick Crowley out of affection for the County Executive’s life story. Evers rather openly dislikes the left flank of the party, and he was not thrilled when the socialist caucus in the Legislature helped sink his grand bargain with Republicans in 2025 to slash property taxes across the state. Hong was one of those assembly members.

The governor has not exactly strained to be accommodating and sympathetic to Crowley’s defeated opponent. While the primary was still going on, he fairly openly announced to anyone who listened that Hong ‘probably’ couldn’t win the general election. When asked on 620 WTMJ what the place for Hong’s supporters in the Crowley campaign would be, the governor dismissively said they ‘would have to play along’, before remembering himself and slightly softening his words. When asked in another interview if there was anything Crowley should adapt from his socialist opponent’s platform, Evers’ answer was simple and straightforward: ‘No’.

Why does this matter, if Evers is not running again? Two reasons. Firstly, as the old saw goes, personnel is policy. Not a few members of the Evers’ administration will be hoping to keep their posts under a Crowley administration. If we can reasonably conclude that Evers’ employees share their boss’s point of view on major matters of Democratic strategy and policy, then the socialist movement can expect a chilly welcome in Madison over the next few years no matter who wins the election (allowing again, that ‘cold-shouldered liberals’ are preferable to ‘murderous fascists’).

Secondly, Crowley simply would not have won this election without Tony Evers. That’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact. Evers anointed Crowley with that all-important chrism of ‘seriousness’ that Wisconsin Democrats, perennially shellshocked by decades of Republican perfidy, are drawn to. Crowley owes the governor an enormous chit. Cross-pressured between Evers’ support and the socialist movement’s, we can expect Crowley to elect to choose Evers side. And perhaps well he should. After all, what have we done for him lately?

Voting Blue, and for Who

Liberal readers might be expecting a left-wing argument for abstentionism here, or for ‘withholding our votes’. You won’t find it. I’ve never been terribly convinced by the arguments for withholding votes from centrist Democrats as a means of political leverage. Participating in a popular front of liberals, moderates, and socialists against a fascist right is about as pleasant and speedy a process as a root canal. I’ve often compared voting for Democrats to being a little like changing the oil in one’s car; it’s not fun, it’s plenty messy, and your hands get dirty, but it must at times be done to forestall greater calamity further down the road.

What sticks in my craw is not that Crowley is a centrist or a moderate; there are lots of centrists and moderate liberals in this country, after all, and I don’t spend my days seething about that. Rather, what I resent is the gauzy insistence that the heroic effort of Fran Hong and her campaign ‘changed the conversation’ or ‘advanced the ball’ or ‘brought their ideas to the table’. I resent the idea that the Democratic Party as an institution is standing somewhere with Sorkinesque music swelling in the background, pronouncing with all the confidence of a Jesuit in his robes that all this Meant Something. Spare me.

Let’s speak as grownups here; the socialist movement lost this one. This doesn’t mean that our efforts were all in vain; the network of thousands of people who knocked doors and stuffed envelopes for Fran Hong is still there, ready for the next fight. But that is exactly my point; they will be there for the next fight, and likely will not be welcomed into the vaunted Big Tent in any way that goes beyond their pulling the lever for the (D) candidate. What has mattered in this campaign is that the socialist movement reached for power, and though it fell short, it found far more allies and comrades-in-waiting than we could have anticipated.

In this, those of us who knocked doors and wrote letters for the chef from Madison with a Rosie scarf and a fighting spirit can find some consolation. We gave the Democratic Party a hell of a scare, and we did it on a shoestring. Tens of thousands of doorstep conversations at a time, we put the fear of God into the worst kind of reactionary centrists who would love nothing more than to never hear the word ‘socialism’ again in their lives. Let us take comfort not in our self-righteousness (always empty), nor in self-pity (always poisonous). Rather, it is for us to find solace in each other, knowing we are much less alone than we have always feared, and that (as the old man said), “the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning.” David Crowley is the nominee of the Democratic Party for governor of Wisconsin. He may win. He may lose. I have confidence and faith, however, that regardless of who sits in the governor’s mansion in Madison come January, the socialist movement in this state is going nowhere.

You’ll see us again very soon.