Anyone following the polls in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary over the past month can’t help but notice the extraordinary momentum behind democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong’s campaign.
A Marquette Law School poll of registered voters conducted July 8-16 showed Hong leading the field by 11 points. Just two weeks later, a new Marquette poll found her lead had doubled to 22 points.
Hong now leads her nearest rival by roughly 20 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average and will likely cruise to victory in Tuesday’s primary.
But November will be another matter. Hong will face presumed Republican nominee Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) in what promises to be a far tougher contest. Tiffany currently holds a narrow 1.7-point lead in the RCP average.
Interestingly, Hong’s campaign has not spent a dime on traditional television advertising, according to campaign finance records. Instead, she has focused her spending on digital and connected-TV advertising.
And yet, Wisconsin television viewers have been seeing lots of ads featuring Hong over the past month.
X user @SwannMarcus89 reported that family members who live in Wisconsin tell him “there are tons of Francesca Hong ads on TV — there actually seem to be more ads for her than any of her opponents.”
So, if Hong’s campaign isn’t paying for all those television ads, who is?
Marcus did some digging, and what he found out is remarkable.
He discovered:
A lot of Hong’s direct TV advertising came from a super pac called Middle Class Priorities. Middle Class Priorities only has one donor, Progressive Prosperity Caucus, Inc. And what is Progressive Prosperity Caucus, Inc? A fake GOP slush fund run by Republican operatives that’s spent millions of dollars getting leftists nominated in swing districts. Most leftists who have won swing district primaries are being funded by the GOP btw, that’s why so many of them claim they won despite being outspent.
He also learned that a second Republican PAC spent $2.2 million on “attack ads” against Hong. Marcus began tracing those ads and found that the so-called “attack ads” only appeared “in extremely Democratic areas like Dane County and they were all about how you shouldn’t vote for Francesca Hong because she opposes Trump’s immigration agenda.”
Naturally, that message was music to the ears of many Democratic voters and helped boost Hong’s support even further, just as it was intended to do.
While Hong held a slight lead over her primary rivals in early July, by mid-July she had spiked in the polls. That happened “at the exact same time a GOP Super PAC launched an ad campaign meant to make Democratic Primary voters think the Republicans are scared Francesca Hong will stop their immigration priorities.”
He added that “literally her entire TV footprint” was paid for by Republican PACs.
Marcus drew some interesting conclusions:
[T]he second the primary is over every penny of Francesca Hong’s TV advertising disappears and the GOP will spend tens of millions of dollars on [attack] ads about how she’s a radical police abolitionist who hates Valentine’s Day, is grotesquely obsessed with her son’s ethnic heritage, and pals around with a guy who said America deserves 9/11. There will be no response to these ads because Hong doesn’t have any money for ad buys and all of her Super PAC support came from [Republican mega donor] Peter Thiel.
According to Marcus, Tiffany’s campaign has roughly 10 times as much cash on hand as Hong’s.
Professor Jacobson responded to Marcus’s post: “Good. This is the tactic in reverse Democrats used expertly for decades to get the weakest republican nominated.”
https://x.com/wajacobson/status/2086201920344015114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Although Hong is as far to the left as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), he has so far declined to endorse her. Asked last week by “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau if he plans to endorse Hong, Sanders replied,
“I don’t think so. I met Francesca a couple of years ago. I was in Wisconsin, and she seems very, very nice, but again this is a race I’m just not that familiar with.”
He added that he has “not gotten involved in many governors’ races,” because he is very focused on the Senate races.
Sanders’ notably restrained response fueled speculation on social media that he questioned Hong’s electability.
In a recent post about Hong, I wrote that she “had a baggage problem of Platner proportions.” At the time, a 2023 interview Hong gave to Meal Magazine had just resurfaced, revealing troubling details about her history of mental illness.
Hong said:
At 18, I had a mental breakdown. I didn’t actually walk at my high school graduation because I had been hospitalized for a week at a child psychiatric hospital. … And I found myself self-harming to feel something.It was cutting. I was diagnosed with bipolar disease. I was taking SSRIs and I’d overdosed on lithium. I didn’t know why I couldn’t connect with people deeper, and that pushes you into isolation.
While people do recover from mental illness, Hong is running for the highest elective office in her state. Voters should consider her mental health history accordingly as they evaluate her candidacy.
Hong is a former chef who co-owned a ramen restaurant with her husband until the pandemic hit in 2020. That’s when she pivoted to politics and won a seat in the Wisconsin State Assembly representing the 76th district (Madison). She is a member of the legislature’s Socialist Caucus.
But the most dangerous thing about Hong is her radical worldview. Leaders matter. A Hong governorship would be devastating for the state of Wisconsin and terrible for America.
https://x.com/TomTiffanyWI/status/2081492267835981902?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY