What A Day - Is Wisconsin A Warning for Democratic Socialists?

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

On Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost to Milwaukee’s county executive, David Crowley, in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Now, the somewhat unknown is facing Republican Representative Tom Tiffany in November — but Crowley he may not have an easy time winning over the Democrats who voted for Hong. For more on what Democrats can learn from the race, we spoke with Holly Otterbein, senior politics reporter at Axios.And in headlines, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has convened a special grand jury in Washington, D.C., Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to individuals, and the Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million on White House construction.Show Notes: Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

I talked to a woman who was a former state party official herself, part of the establishment, right? And she was so ticked off at Evers for endorsing Crowley and saying that Hong, you know, likely couldn't win in the general election. She asked, is he trying to sabotage us? I'm Jane Koston, and this is What Today? The show that can for once say, and I mean this. I totally agree with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Here he is with his wife, Jeanette, on Katie Miller's podcast. I tried this thing called keto.

You've heard of this. Yeah, keto. And you just eat all this protein. And so you go through this massive withdrawal from sugar and carbohydrates for the first 72 hours. It was a near psychotic event. It's true. If I did this in this job, I would be in a Mr. President, we must bomb, you know, Paraguay. And it's like, why?

I don't know. I'm just really mad. I haven't had any sugar. Look, I also tried going keto once. and weirdly, it also made me contemplate bombing Paraguay. On today's show, we talk about the Democratic divide at play in Tuesday's Wilde Wisconsin gubernatorial primary with Axios' Holly Otterbine. Before we get into Badger on Badger Bad Blood, here's what we're following today, Wednesday, August 12th.

It's only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do. So I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go on a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say. Well, I don't know. I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. President Donald Trump sounded remarkably sanguine, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews Tuesday night, where he threw the Secret Service under the bus from moving him off Air Force One and onto a decoy plane on the way back from last month's NATO summit. NPR reported today that a threat was shared with the United States by Israeli intelligence, who alleged that Iran might use missiles to bring down Air Force One.

The New York Times also reported today that U.S. intelligence had picked up similar information. But in response, Trump told reporters that actually everything with the war in Iran is fine. Quote, Iran is going fine. It's going just absolutely fine. We totally control the Strait of Hormuz. We have control over it. Nobody else. Only us. Maybe if he says it's going fine one more time, I'll believe it. U.S. Attorney Janine Piro has convened a special grand jury in Washington, D.C., according to our report by the Washington Post. You might be asking, what's the difference between a special grand jury and a normal grand jury? Well, a special grand jury considers a specific case and can issue a critical report about the subject of its investigation,

even if there isn't enough evidence to go to trial. Sounds pretty petty, if you ask me. We're not sure who or what the special grand jury will be investigating. And to be clear, Puro's move is unprecedented. According to sources who spoke with the post, it's significant, especially considering the president's affinity for prosecuting his perceived enemies. Immigration and customs enforcement officers may soon be outfitted with gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks intended to gain compliance from combative individuals.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, these are literal gloves worn to shock people into submission. The devices are known as G-L-O-V-E, which stands for generated, low-output voltage emitter. They have been used in recent years by some jails and police departments. According to a notice published Monday by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE plans to spend up to $20 million to purchase thousands of these, quote, conductive distraction and de-escalation devices. DHS said Tuesday that it was working on a response to an Associated Press inquiry and offered no immediate comment.

The Trump administration plans to spend at least $900 million on White House construction, according to a Washington Post report. Remember the good old days when we were only concerned over what was supposed to be a $200 million ballroom? Well, according to the Post, this nearly $1 billion endeavor by the White House includes construction on the ballroom, a helipad, and a new visitor screening center. And surprise, surprise, most of that tab will reportedly be paid. picked up by taxpayers, meaning you and me. Remember when White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said this about the ballroom last year?

It's not going to cost the taxpayers a dime. So we look forward to this project continuing, and we will continue to keep everyone apprised on it. So it will instead cost many dimes. To recap, not only has Trump used my money to help fund his foreign war of choice in Iran, he's also using my money to build a presidential palace. I thought the government was supposed to serve the people. not an orange king. And that's the news.

Let's talk about Wisconsin. On Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong narrowly lost to Milwaukee's County Executive, David Crowley, in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. This was a wild race. Crowley had actually dropped out back in July to support another candidate, who then dropped out herself. Then Crowley got back into the race

with support from sitting governor, Tony Evers. Now, the somewhat unknown, is facing Republican representative and 2020 election denier Tom Tiffany in November, which is not what the GOP wanted. Republican Senator Ron Johnson is already sounding the alarm about an enthusiasm gap. Here he is on Fox News Wednesday. We had about 500,000 Republicans come out and vote in our primary. 700,000 Democrats. That's a 200,000 vote differential there.

That's what I'm concerned Tom Tiffany. But Crowley may not have an easy time winning over all those Democratic voters. For more on what Democrats can learn from Crowley's win and Hong's defeat, feet, I spoke with Holly Otterbine. She's a senior politics reporter at Axios. Holly, welcome to Waddey. Thank you for having me. Democratic socialist Francesca Hong suffered a tight but significant loss to Milwaukee County

Executive David Crowley in the Wisconsin governor's race yesterday. You were with her campaign last week. Were you surprised? Not exactly. I talked to people in her world who told me that they thought that they were going to eke it out, but that it was going to be much closer than the polls showed. You could see and feel on the ground that momentum was starting to pick up for Crowley. I think there was just an assumption among Hong and other folks really across the national media that that would be too little too late,

right? And they were able to close the gap. Tony Evers campaigned around the state he barnstormed with Crowley, and he was able to close like a pretty significant gap. I mean, Crowley, put out his own internal polling days ahead of the race, showing him down 20 points. And he was able to, you know, defeat that. So Tony Evers is the current governor. How popular is he? He's pretty popular. That helps a lot. I mean, like I said, he barnstormed around the state for Crowley. He also explicitly argued that Francesca Hong was a general election liability in a very, like, Midwestern way also. I was like he didn't say liability. He said something that was like actually so incredibly polite that no one else would be able to understand it if you were not from the Midwest.

Correct. Correct. I think a reporter asked him like, do you think that Francesca Hong can beat Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee in November? And he said, probably not. That was like an earthquake, right? I mean, that was huge for the Midwest. Yes. That's a real banger. So that influenced a lot of people. I think The voters at the end of the election on both sides were paying super close attention to every in and out of the race. Like I picked that up talking to people. And I think they 100% saw that Evers said that, that he was making these arguments, that he was signaling that Crowley was the alternative to Hong, the quote unquote, you know, in his view more electable alternative to Hong. They listened and they realigned. Realigning behind a candidate you think is better suited to beat Republicans.

Republicans, Democrats should try that more often. We'll be back with my conversation with Holly Audubon in a moment. But in the meantime, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. What a day is brought to you by Zbiotics. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice so I can either have a great night or a great next day. That is until I found pre-alcohol. Zybiotic pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. Here's how it works. When you drink,

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So I think that there are some who are interpreting Hong's loss as being a problem for the larger progressive movement. And we've seen progressives win across the country. obviously states differ. But one poll a few weeks ago had Hong winning by about 20 or so points. But it sounds to me like she actually hit her expected vote total. It's just that the opposition looked very different from the way it did a few weeks ago. So what happened? 100%. That is exactly what happened. There's been a lot of discussion after this race about how this is another polling miss like in Michigan. But it's really different. As you said, Hong actually

met her mark. You know, the polls showed that she was going to be at 40%. That's exactly what she ended up getting. It's just that in the intervening time period, a lot of stuff happened, you know, since they last polled, right? There was this huge momentum. There was this barnstorm by Evers. At the very last minute, Mandela Barnes, another progressive candidate, dropped out amid a scandal. They had brought Crowley back in at the last minute after another candidate, Sarah Rodriguez, because of scandal, it was an insane race. So a lot of things changed, and they were just sampling it at a moment in time, I think. Because we saw, you know, in the last couple polls, he went from like 10 to 20 or so percent over the course of a few days. So it was clear that

something was shifting. So you were talking about how voters were paying such close attention to every in and out of this race. And something that came up recently was past comments made by Hong. And unlike what we tend to see when people are talking about old tweets, they weren't exactly offensive. They were just very, how best to put it, very pandemic, saying that the U.S. should cancel Thanksgiving, for example. What did the Wisconsin voters you spoke to think about that? They were worried about what it would mean in November, and that includes Hong fans. So at nearly every Hong event that I went to, she was asked about her posts and she was asked how she would run against Tiffany in November. You know, there was this one little old lady who asked a question at one of her events and she said that she had essentially been a secret socialist for her life, but that she was concerned about it and that word.

and just concerned, I think, seemed like she was concerned writ large about what was going on in the race. And she asked Hong, like, how are you going to deal with this? And do you think the socialism word is going to scare people? People asked about the defund the police posts, asked about the cancel Thanksgiving post. Like, it just came up every single place that she went. And again, I thought that was so telling just a signal of how much these voters are really paying super close attention to what's going. going on. So they didn't necessarily disagree with her. Voters were thinking, we want to beat this guy. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I was following Hong around, so that obviously attracted a certain type of voter, right?

I think that there's no doubt that within the Democratic Party, there are voters who are turned off and do not agree with her on past tweets like cancel Thanksgiving and defund the police. Like they disagree with that on a substantive level. In fact, I would say that's probably most, like a large majority of Democratic voters fit that. I think I was more thinking towards like they agree with her policy suggestions, the Democratic Socialist Policy, because I think that to that point, and I'm curious as to your thought, Wisconsin is considered the birthplace of American progressivism. And you have an older woman going to an event talking about kind of being a secret socialist. So why do you think the socialist element was a concern for voters? Because it sounds like something that people were agreeing with, but they understood that that could be a challenge in November. Yeah, the history is super interesting, as you mentioned.

There's this rich history of socialism in Wisconsin, you know, the quote-unquote sewer socialist mayors ran, you know, the city government in Milwaukee. for, you know, like 50-some years. So that, like, DNA is there. And clearly, a lot of voters there and elsewhere throughout the country want those socialist policies. I think the concern was that it wouldn't work in November potentially. And it makes sense. Like, it hasn't been done. Right. I mean, there has never been a socialist governor in U.S. history. She would have been the first if she had pulled it off. So I think they were, like, struggling to sort of imagine. how it would work. And that's why you got these people asking these questions, like, okay, but what's the reason going to look like? How are you going to take on Tiffany as a socialist?

Is that going to be, you know, a word that scares people off? Now, Crowley will be facing, as I mentioned, Republican Representative Tom Tiffany and the general, election denier, I should note, that is not what Republicans wanted. A side piece of this campaign was how much money Republicans spent to support Hong, who actually did not spend that much money or any money on television at all. But even though Hong lost, she got a ton of votes about 300,000, and Crowley is going to need those votes. In your view, what does Crowley need to do to win over Hong's voters?

It's going to be a challenge. I mean, as you said, it's 300,000 voters. A lot of these people were younger. A lot of them were pretty disillusioned with the quote-unquote establishment. And I talked to them on the trail. Like, they were already angry. You know, I talked to a woman. who was a former state party official herself, part of the establishment, right? And she was so

ticked off at Evers for endorsing Crowley and saying that Hong, you know, likely couldn't win in the general election. She asked, is he trying to sabotage us? So that's like the level of anger that was already there. I think Crowley is clearly taking some steps to unite the party already. And Hong is as well. Hong conceded to Crowley very quickly once it was clear what the election results were. I just saw on Twitter that they were, or X, that they were at a unity meal together today. Crowley said that he's going to go on a unity tour with other candidates in the race. So they're definitely doing like sort of logistically some of the steps that you have to do to unite the party. One question that I have is whether he will.

take a more substantial pivot to the left in policy. And, you know, just put it out there. One thing that he could do is something on data centers. You know, Hong ran aggressively on a data center moratorium. When I was following her around in kind of these far flung parts of Wisconsin, there were signs up, you know, saying, you know, anti-data center. That energy is there. It's clear, and it is popular across the general electorate. When I asked him, he does not support a data center moratorium. He says it's a local issue, essentially. But that issue is there, potentially, as an option to unite the party.

It seems to me that, and maybe this is going to be more of a concern for 2028, but the differences between center-left and progressives, that seems like a larger issue with Democrats across the country. How do you think Democrats can unite as a whole? Or is it something where Democrats can unite if they are facing a common enemy? I think that helps. I mean, I think the fact that Tiffany is, as you said, an election denier, and it's worth kind of pointing out what he has done. He voted in Congress to overturn the 2020 election results. He stated, and I think it's still up on his website, that there were thousands of illegal votes cast in Wisconsin. He also signed on to a Paxton lawsuit by the Texas AG, Ken Paxton, aimed at overturning results. And I think that really helps Democrats unite, right? I mean, no one, no progressive, no moderate Democrat wants an election denier to be in charge of a major swing state in 2028.

And so he does some of the work for them for sure. Holly, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. It was great. That was my conversation with Holly Otterbine, senior politics reporter at Axios. Before we go, this Thursday, former vice president Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams, sit down to consider how we as a nation look beyond Donald Trump and towards the future. They discuss the steps we need to take to protect our democracy and revive the American dream.

Check out the assembly-required bonus episode with Kamala Harris tomorrow on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Don't forget that our real actions have real consequences and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just about how, according to MS Now, sailors deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln have now been at sea for nearly eight months in support of the Iran War. And conditions have gotten so bad that some sailors are allegedly attempting to jump overboard. What a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston.

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