The NPR Politics Podcast - Who will Wisconsin Democrats pick to run for governor?

Episode Date: July 30, 2026

This podcast was taped at 1:15 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, July 30, 2026.State Assemblywoman Francesca Hong leads in the polls over Milwaukee County executive David Crowley. Hong's progressive views and membership in the Democratic Socialists of America has won her fans on the Democratic Party's left, but others in the party fear she couldn't win a general election. We look at the race, its candidates and the issues at play.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, and Wisconsin Public Radio state house reporter Anya van Wagtendonk.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Wisconsin Democrats have a dilemma. Their primary for the state's governor's race is in a couple of weeks. Do they pick a candidate from the establishment or do they pick a Democratic socialist or somebody else? It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Jipa Shiverom. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. And Anya Van Wagnan Tonk from Wisconsin Public Radio is with us from Madison. Hey, Anya.

Hello. All right. So, Anya, the Democratic primary has been, to put it lightly, like pretty dramatic. in the past couple of weeks. Can you catch us up? Yes. So we had a series of candidates as a crowded field for a while. And then, you know, as things usually do, candidates started dropping out, including Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley, was one of the dropout candidates. It seemed like the sort of leading, you know, more mainstream candidate was our current lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez. A couple Sundays ago, we all got a 9 p.m. press release saying that she had fired her campaign manager amid kind of allegation.

of financial mismanagement. Later in the week, finance reports came out and showed that Rodriguez had many hundreds of thousands of dollars less in the bank than she had thought and was actually, in fact, a little bit in debt. So she ended her campaign. And then David Crowley re-entered the race. And so we have had a lot of deck shuffling over here, just trying to keep track of who is actually sort of on the ballot and a contender. Yeah, a lot of moving things around. And I should point out, as people have already started voting, right? Yeah, ballots had gone out a little bit earlier. And I think as of David reentering, tens of thousands had already been cast. So there was also a question of whether people would be able to throw out their ballots and re-vote if they had voted for someone who left or came back.

And as of this week, the court say, no, you cannot. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Well, let's talk about the leading candidate in this race right now. Who is that person? So that would be Francesca Hong. She is a state representative here in Madison while she was serving in the Assembly. She served in the DSA caucus, the Democratic Socialist Caucus.

She is now running as a Democratic socialist on the Democratic ticket. And before she got into politics, and actually while she was in politics, she was a chef and a bartender. She owned a ramen restaurant here in Madison. She kept picking up bartending shifts while she was in the Capitol. And so she has been pretty consistently polling at the front of the pack since the start of the year. Yeah, I mean, arguably all of this scrambling that's happening around her is because this progressive left candidate looks like she could walk away with the nomination. and the establishment, or I don't even know what the right word for it is, but there's a bit of a reaction like, is this really what we're doing in the Wisconsin governor's race? Yeah, it's kind of an interesting, you know, place where Democratic politics is playing out with some pretty big consequences here.

I'm curious just to get back to you, Anya, for a second. What are voters in Wisconsin saying about Hong? Why do they like her so much? Yeah, I think, you know, that background that I discuss where she comes from a more non-traditional background. I think people see that as authentic. They see her as when she talks about sort of championing things for the working class, that she herself is a working person. Her campaign style is also very different, very energetic. It's very grassroots, but then also sort of fun.

She has hosted rallies and live streamed a slumber party. And her campaign has a regular game of Policy Loteria, which is like a Mexican lottery, kind of. And so, you know, each of the campaigns, I should say, has their base of support. I talked to voters who are interested in all kinds of candidates, but the energy around the others is just not at all comparable to what you see if you go to any type of Hong event. That's interesting. And then when you talk to these voters on you, what are some of the big issues that are coming up for them that are better defining this race right now among Democrats? Yeah, I mean, a lot of the kind of standard democratic issues. So obviously, affordability, expanding health care, things like that. Trump looms very large. All of the Democrats are trying to position themselves as the candidate that can sort of take on washing. and that can, you know, really kind of stand up to him to ice those kinds of issues. And then the other really big kind of more perhaps local issue is data centers. And that's

another area where I think Hong has really distinguished herself is that all of the other candidates have tried to more thread a needle on that issue. She has called for a categorical moratorium on data center development. And that's an area where voters, both Republican and Democrat and independent, are pretty opposed to the data center boom that's been going on here in Wisconsin. And so that could be a really important issue in this race. Yeah, and an issue that's playing out across the country. I mean, data centers are pretty unpopular across the board. These moratoriums are happening in New York. There are lawmakers in Texas, which is obviously very politically a different state than New York, that are also trying to look into moratoriums. Tam, it's really

interesting, though, because that conversation and that apprehension towards data centers is definitely not how Trump and the White House are handling that issue. It is, it is not. The president just recently held an event all about trying to promote data centers, but also talking about creating ways to make sure that they can get electricity without hurting consumers. I think that there are a lot of issues related to data centers that actually cross partisan lines in super interesting ways. This is one of these issues where, you know, you can have someone who definitely is otherwise Republican raising concerns about the environment and noise pollution. and is mad at these big outside corporations coming in and telling their community that you've got to do this because you have to do it.

And there's a lot of frustration with the process by which some of these data centers have been approved. So it is a fascinating issue where you are seeing a lot of candidates across the spectrum tap into that voter anger. But you've especially seen the progressive candidates, including Hong, really key. keying in on this data center thing. And Hong talked about it in the governor's debate earlier this week that aired on WISN TV. She talked about the type of regulation she would want around those centers going forward. I think it's important that we have enforceable regulation, that we bring union workers to the table, that this is very similar to what I believe could be seen as more collective bargaining to make sure that we're protecting union jobs and that, you know, the natural resources

we're letting some of the big tech companies know that they are not for sale. So interesting because, you know, we talked about a second ago how the president is kind of out of step with voters on this issue. And data centers really encompass a lot of other sub issues under that, right? You talk about labor and labor protections. You talk about apprehension towards technology. You talk about dissatisfaction with big tech companies. All those things are pretty bipartisan. Yep.

So it's very fascinating to see this play across not only in primary races, but other, you know, races between Democrats and Republicans starting to weigh in two. But at the same time, you know, the president and the leader of the Republican Party is really not in step with everyone else. All right, we're going to take a quick break and more in a moment. Welcome back. So, Tam, we talk a lot on this pod about the future of the Democratic Party, the tension between the different factions of the party. And, you know, primaries are this vehicle essentially for appealing to base voters ahead of a general election. But there's a a schism, right? Not all Democratic voters are these base voters. They're starting to vote differently. There was a CNN poll that came out this week that said that one third of Democrats now identify as Democratic Socialists. So there is this very obvious schism here. And I'm wondering, does it get resolved? Can it get resolved? What are you seeing? My sense is that this schism will likely get resolved with elections. And what I mean by that is right now there is an open question or, actually a heated debate taking place in social media and elsewhere between more establishment Democrats and more progressive or DSA or whatever you want to label it, Democrats. On one side, they say, we need progressive fighters who are outside of the system who are going to shake things up. On the other side, the more establishment Democrats are saying,

you guys are going to lose in the general election and we're in swing states here. We're in states where it's purple. It is not blue. And you are taking a very huge risk by running a candidate who could turn off more moderate voters or, you know, independent voters. And it is a raging debate that I think really can only be settled with elections. It's not going to be settled with primaries. It can only be settled with some general elections. And the stakes are incredibly high. You're talking about the governor of Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a state where there have been so many battles between the legislature and the governor when the governor was democratic. The state Supreme Court was narrowly divided for a long time. There are election issues.

President Trump has disputed outcomes. Like, there's a lot going on there. And the governor of that state is really important. In Michigan, you have a U.S. Senate race where there is the platonic ideal of the progressive candidate versus the establishment candidate playing out. And depending on how that goes in the primary, you then would have a very big test of progressive candidate versus kind of vanilla Republican, which I think is what you also have in Wisconsin. We did talk about that Michigan race on the pod earlier this week. I just want to point out, Anya, I want to ask, though, because, I mean, when you look at the general election that's coming, there are a lot of Democrats that are concerned that if Hong wins this primary,

you know, she could potentially lose the general. Are they at all trying to put their thumb on the scale here. I mean, I guess it depends on who you ask whether you would describe this as putting a thumb on the scale. But, you know, it's not an accident that David Crowley re-entered the race 10 days after dropping out. He came back because Rodriguez was out, but then also because he was able to get the endorsement of our current outgoing Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who up until this point had said that he was going to stay neutral. But his endorsement is kind of the thing that got Crowley back into the race. And so if that's not a signal that some level of traditional Democrats are trying to at least wield some amount of influence and make him a more serious contender.

I don't know what would be. But, you know, Tam talked about the platonic ideal of an establishment versus progressive candidate. This is a much more, I think, muddied kind of matchup because David Crowley is a black man from Milwaukee. There has never been a governor in Wisconsin that has not been a white man. And so he, up until this point, there was a question of electability around him and whether Wisconsin was ready for that kind of thing. And so, you know, a lot of his supporters are now saying that he's being held to this double standard. He can't both be to establishment and, you know,

a historic first potentially. Well, and can you talk about Mandela Barnes, who is, I think, a fairly well-known name in politics because he ran for the U.S. Senate before. He's a known quantity. He's in this race. And yet he doesn't seem to be getting that much support. Yeah, you know, he entered the race a little bit later with this understanding that he was going to come in with a huge war chest because of that national name recognition and that never quite materialized. And I think that's because a lot of these, again, national Democrats are concerned that because he did not win a U.S. Senate race against Ron Johnson, who was at the time a pretty unpopular incumbent, that he just doesn't have what it takes to win. Again, I think Wisconsinites tend to play a little bit of 3D chess when it comes to casting their votes, not just what candidate do I like, but who do I think can win? win in this super tight swing state. And so one of the other kind of criticisms I've also heard from, you know, again, sort of democratic strategists and observers is that Crowley getting back in the race only serves to split votes away from Mandela Barnes rather than positioning himself as a true kind of alternative. It ends up being hung against a bunch of alternatives who are

all splitting votes against each other. And what do we think the strategy is there? I guess like for a party that's really trying to have it together and win the general in November, it kind of seems just like mess. It's definitely messy. It has been a chaotic couple of weeks out here. I think that the strategy partly has to do with the fact that Republicans are not making any bones about the fact that they want Francesca Hong to win the primary. They think that she is beatable. And, you know, I've spoken again to some Republican strategists who say, we're not going to count our chickens. She is popular in a way that, you know, we've certainly underestimated. But I think there really is this understanding that once, you know, moderates and independents get involved, that she can't win. And so they're actually spending money. National Republican groups are spending money on these ads that kind of, they sound like attack ads against Fran Hong, unless you're a progressive because they're saying like, she's so liberal. She will fight against ICE. If you're a liberal voter, that sounds great, right? And so. there's a question of, are they actually trying to boost her up to get her over the finish line so that they can kind of take her down? And so I think Democrats are also kind of flailing against that. Yeah, chess versus checkers. Actually, out here it's Yuker. That's true. Ukir, Yuker. I love that game. Okay, well, Tam, just to circle back on this really quickly, speaking of Hong, you know, there are some concerns around her candidacy. She has a lot of popularity, as Anya was saying, a lot of excitement around her campaign, but it's not exactly like a straight shot to the finish here for her. She has in the past. taken positions on defunding the police, abolishing ICE, abolishing the Senate, that, you know, she's not campaigning on those positions now. Those were older positions at a different time. She's now

campaigning for governor and has more nuance in the way she discusses these issues today. In the debate, she said that she would not be pulling funding from the police as governor. She has also appeared on the far-left streamer, Hassan Piper. Piker's program. He has said that he will campaign with her. And the criticism of that is that she appeared to be aligning herself with someone who has made anti-Semitic comments. Piker has also campaign for some of the other progressive candidates around the country. There were certainly some prominent Jewish Democrats who felt very strongly about her appearance on there. And she didn't just appear, but she also fundraised on that program. But of course, when I talk to Hong about this,

What she says is that this is part of that kind of unusual approach to campaigning that we discussed at the top, where she is trying to reach disaffected voters, voters that, you know, might not necessarily listen to Wisconsin Public Radio, but do get their information from these types of streams. She said, appearing alongside somebody is not the same as endorsing them. But of course, you know, when we talk about the kind of nuance of messaging, there's nuance and then there's what is clippable for an attack ad. And Hassan Piker saying things about, you know, 9-11 in the past. is much more clippable than a more kind of nuanced exploration of what it means to appear with somebody. And then just to like wrap this all up here, we haven't actually talked about the Republican race going on. There's a far and away frontrunner in that race right now, right? Yeah. So that is U.S. Representative Tom Tiffany. He is endorsed by Donald Trump. But it's really interesting. He is very much trying to run a boring campaign. So even though he is very aligned with the MAGAM movement, He is putting out these ads that show him eating pancakes with his family and, you know, talking about the dairy farm that he was raised in, really trying to position himself as Wisconsin's dad.

And so Democrats also kind of have their work cut out for them to try to tie him to these unpopular positions at a time that they're also trying to just win their primary themselves. All right. Well, voting ends on August 11th in this race. Anya, what are you watching for until then? You know, I'm just going to keep talking to voters, again, trying to get outside of these. Democratic strongholds. I am based in Madison, of course, and that is kind of the most central place that any Democratic candidate is going to need to be getting votes from, but getting out onto the road and talking to voters about what they're looking for because one of the things we also forgot to talk about is that a third of Democratic voters are still undecided, even though early voting is underway. And so I'm really interested about how they're going to make those last minute decisions. All right. Thank you both for your very good analysis. And Anya, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me.

I'm Deva Shibram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.