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THE SOCIALIST ELECTORAL PROJECT STILL HASN’T HIT ITS CEILING  
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Branko Marcetic
August 12, 2026
Jacobin
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_ 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
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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
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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
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an attack ad in the home stretch casting Hong as a risky candidate in
the general election. Weeks before the election, 45 percent
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of voters were undecided, and there is ample
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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
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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
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about on the eve of the election. Hong herself seemed to recognize
that mistakes had been made, reportedly
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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
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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
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framework rather than “abolishing” prison or police. Hong
attempted
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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
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to show up for Hong, reportedly
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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
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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
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on backing
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a data center moratorium and has waffled
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.

_Branko Marcetic is a __Jacobin__ staff writer and the author of
__Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden__._

* Francesca Hong
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* Wisconsin
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* Left Electoral Strategy
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