WI Dems’ Leading Gubernatorial Candidate Has a Baggage Problem of Platner Proportions
“Did she call for abolishing the U.S. Senate? Yes. … Socialism is knocking on Wisconsin’s door. This November, we slam it shut.”
The Democratic Party’s increasing tolerance for deeply flawed candidates has become a recurring theme in the current election cycle. While Maine’s former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner was the patron saint of flawed candidates, he’s had plenty of competition for that dubious distinction.
Democratic socialist Francesca Hong, the frontrunner in Wisconsin’s upcoming Democratic gubernatorial primary, comes to mind. Hong is a former chef who co-owned a Korean 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.
While Madison is notoriously progressive, Hong’s success among Democratic Wisconsinites statewide has been nothing short of extraordinary. She has risen to the top of the primary polls even as establishment Democrats — including the state’s current Gov. Tony Evers — have endorsed alternate candidates.
Most recently, Hong led her nearest competitor, Mandela Barnes, by more than 20 points. That was before the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed on Thursday “it was investigating allegations that Barnes had leveraged his role within the state Democratic party to have sexual encounters with young women.” He has since withdrawn from the race, leaving Hong in an even loftier position.
While she has tried to distance herself from some of her most radical positions, digital footprints are stubborn things.
Last week, Republican opponent Tom Tiffany tied Hong to the DSA agenda in a social media post.
This sounds a lot like DSA-backed @FrancescaHongWI.
Does she want to abolish the police? Yep.
Does she want to abolish prisons? Absolutely.
Did she call for abolishing the U.S. Senate? Yes.
Socialism is knocking on Wisconsin’s door. This November, we slam it shut. https://t.co/xEo8kKPIow
— Tom Tiffany (@TomTiffanyWI) July 26, 2026
Hong’s campaign accused Tiffany of lying. While acknowledging that Hong “has spoken about police and prison abolition in the past as an aspirational goal,” the campaign said those views “are not her current position, and [are] not something she will pursue as governor.”
The campaign, however, insisted she had never called for abolishing the Senate.
Tiffany responded by producing a social media post in which Hong wrote, “Abolish the Senate.”
Direct quote from @FrancescaHongWI’s campaign to Fox News: “Rep. Hong has never called for abolishing the U.S. Senate. Tiffany cannot produce a single statement where she did, because it doesn't exist.”
Apparently, they forgot about this post. https://t.co/2QIb0AhTCG
— Tom Tiffany (@TomTiffanyWI) July 28, 2026
Shortly after winning her Assembly seat in November 2020, she called for Thanksgiving to be canceled. She wrote: “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed (sic) Indegenous folx and women so be it.”
Francesca Hong: “Cancel Thanksgiving.” pic.twitter.com/TZShfz6cvU
— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) July 31, 2026
Over the weekend, a 2023 interview Hong gave to Meal Magazine resurfaced. The interview, which was republished when she launched her gubernatorial campaign last September, revealed some disturbing 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.
In other words, she's the perfect Democrat candidate.
God help us, those drooling morons will vote her right in. https://t.co/cE2QKrCTRX— 𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓡𝓪𝔂 (@2CynicAl65) August 1, 2026
Former Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-MO) was forced to withdraw from the 1972 presidential race just 18 days after being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee after news broke that he had been hospitalized for depression on three occasions in the previous decade and had undergone electroshock treatment.
While people do recover from mental illness and a governorship does not carry quite the same gravity as the vice presidency, Hong is nonetheless running for the highest elective office in her state. Voters should consider her mental health history accordingly as they evaluate her candidacy.
In a recent blog post, Power Line’s John Hinderaker asked, “Is it conceivable that such a candidate can actually secure the Democratic nomination for governor?” Unfortunately, the answer appears to be yes.
But this tragedy might have a happy ending after all. Tiffany [Republican candidate] has performed better in head-to-head matchups against Hong than he did against Barnes. In the two major general election polls conducted so far, Tiffany led Hong by 3 percentage points, while those same surveys showed him trailing Barnes by 2 and 4 points, respectively.
SOCIALISM: Francesca Hong is running for Gov of Wisconsin. When she aired this commercial her restaurant had failed, shut for over a year, sued by Capital One for $30K in unpaid debt & her parents had to pay & her only income was from politics. pic.twitter.com/USLHpSfKAh
— @amuse (@amuse) August 2, 2026
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Comments
Don’t you want these candidates to win? Seems like they’d die on the vine in a general election. No such thing as a good democrat anyhow
No. A number of them have won and will win general elections. Congress is enough of a shit show now without adding more socialists into the mix.
The trouble is that can easily backfire. If I could guarantee they’d lose in November then I’d want them to win their primaries. But it’s impossible to guarantee that, and by promoting a wacko in the primary you risk them winning the general.
And while there’s (almost) no such thing as a good Democrat, there are better Democrats and worse ones. She’s a worse one.
Let one crazy acrually win as a constant warning to the voters. A bipolar nutter left of Bernie and AOC would be comic gold
Currently in many places and nationally any Democrat or Republican can have a 50/50 shot at winning. We need the Democrats to fracture completely or regain sanity.
there is nothing wrong with colonization you stupid twat. Every single inhibited square inch of this planet has been colonized. most multiple times. We’re being colonized now by hispanics, chinese, and muslims. Europe is being colonized by muslims. They all will be successful unless we resist which is our right to do. If we lose they will write future histories and I very much doubt anyone will be standing up for us.
The postcolonial lie is one of their favorites to spew because it’s so easy to distort history.
She has no qualms about lying to your face. That’s why she’s loved by Democrats. They want to get rid of prisons, but what about re-education camps?
That’s funny you should ask about the re-education camps. No one in the MSM ever asks follow up questions about the things they want to replace the police or prisons with….
I’m so ashamed
I grew up in Wisconsin
First they tell you the truth and then when someone points out her truth she denies it and blames everyone else. Communist to the core.
That’s typical of leftists. While they’re lining you up against the wall, they’ll tell you it’s so they can give you free ice cream.
(Biden’s eyes widen…)
The mouse never realizes how dangerous the free cheese is until it’s too late.
Do the Dems that ostensibly control the voting machines want these types in place? Or are they so full.of TDS that they will still cast multiple absentee ballots to keep the R’s out no matter the political fallout from this nuclear-socialist path they appear to be on?
Go Pack Go!
She’s Bipolar? Yeah.. that’s an immediate disqualification for me. If you have a condition that prohibits you from joining the military, law enforcement or holding a pilot’s license, you’re too unstable to be governor of a state.
Or even to vote …if we took the same broad definition of ‘mental defective’ used in restriction of 2A and also applied it voting eligibility.
The party of mental illness makes headlines again.
Should Americans celebrate our national holidays such as Thanksgiving? No! American Holidays bad. Cancel Thanksgiving!
How about Korean holidays? Yes! Hong honors her Korean heritage by celebrating all major cultural holidays to honor her roots and connect with family.
When a public figure like Hong wants to cancel Thanksgiving while simultaneously celebrating her own ancestral traditions, it highlights the double standards the left is known for.
It’s not a double standard any more, they are very upfront about how much they hate our country.
In way, the DSA is not wrong. The Senate is practically useless. It certainly no longer serves the function is was meant to perform (since the ratification of the 17th Amendment). Today it no longer represents the States as nominally-sovereign geopolitical entities as it was meant to do.
OTOH, it does only occasionally perform its function of having a negative vote on acts of the House (more usually when the two chambers are controlled by opposing parties). Contrary to the DSA’s complaint, this was exactly the purpose of having different constituencies represented in the two chambers. It’s just that it’s devolved into a partisan divide, when the struggle was meant to be one between the the popular will (usually in favor of expanding the role of the federal government) and the States’ desire to maintain their semi-autonomous character. This was key to bipartisan cooperation in the Senate – all Senators understood they had a singular purpose – protect the States from the popular will as it was filtered through the House, no matter which party controlled that chamber.
Repeal the 17th Amendment.
This is nonsense. The senate still fulfills exactly the same role that it was originally designed for. It gives the people of the smaller states an equal voice with those of the larger. The people of Wyoming get two votes, and so do the people of California. So to pass, a law must be popular in at least some smaller states, and can’t just be popular in the largest ones.
And the filibuster gives those smaller states even more of a say; the senators who represent the people of the smaller states can block legislation that’s unpopular in those states, even if they don’t make up a majority combined.
The Senate fulfills those duties, yes. But the Senators are not beholden to their state legislatures, as was the case prior to the 17th. One may fairly argue that the Senators don’t represent the interests of the states. The counter is that we had some terrible senators pre-17th; the counter-counter is that we’ve had plenty of terrible senators since.
Thank you, steve.
The fact is that now both chambers of Congress, being popularly elected, need to seek reelection from the same constituents. They both now represent the “popular sentiment” the authors of the Constitution took care to guard against by not only balancing the popular sentiment by giving each State equal representation in the Senate, but by making them beholden to a separate constituency and by tasking it with a different mission – the jealous guardianship of the States’ semi-autonomous character. The Senate is in name only the chamber provided for by the Constitution’s authors and bears only a superficial resemblance to what it once was, the linchpin of our republican form of government, now made nearly entirely (but for the Electoral College) democratic in nature.
That’s a good thing. Instead they’re beholden to the actual people of the state. Senators were never intended to represent the interests of their state legislators; they were always intended to represent the interests of their state’s people. The legislators, being themselves chosen by those people, were supposed to choose someone who would act in those people’s interests, not in their own. The 17A cuts out the middleman and ensures the senator represents the state’s people’s interest by making him appeal directly to them.
That seems like an argument to restrict out of State campaign contributions and lobbying ..after all if the Senator is exclusively beholden to the voters of the State as you claim then any outside influence distorts that exclusive relationship you describe. You’ve argued very strongly to the contrary in the past. Given the 1A current interpretation problem/barrier to bar or even restrict out of State campaign contributions and out of State PACs potentially (in practice effectively) distorting the relationship between the Senator and his voters I’d argue the middleman of the State Legislature is more useful than ever.
Whatever its faults the prior system did retain two features currently lacking. First its much easier for a State Legislature of several dozen to achieve a majority to ‘throw the bum out’ than a Statewide majority of voters. Secondly if your particular legislative member doesn’t meet your desires re selection/retention of a Senator then its much easier to hold that member accountable and throw his butt out than a statewide race. Both of which in practice make the relationship to voters closer and more responsive b/c the threat of being ‘unelected’ is more achievable.
“ Did she call for abolishing the U.S. Senate? Yes.”
Abolish the 17 th Amendment.
I love the imagery in that ad/lede photo.
She’s got that “Tokyo Rosie The Riveter” thing going on.
“For years we’ve been told that doing better isn’t possible.”
Yeah, by your side.
While ours has been trying to get you to understand that the American Dream — putting in the effort from day one to achieve the deferred gratification of success in your adult years — was available to anybody with the character to stick it out. Simple things, like actually taking advantage of your free education, instead of waiting every day for the clock to strike 4:20.
But your side disparaged the American Dream as an illusion, despite the evidence available to all your eyes — which includes maybe 90% of those “oligarchs” you badmouth, and (worse) a great number of your own Asian brethren who showed a lot of “white people” how the American Dream can really be done.
You can’t fix what you don’t understand, sister. And the rap sheet of your life pretty much proves what a failure you are at that.
Hong is (1) Asian and (2) has a vajayjay. As such she is politically holy in a way Plater – a straight white male – never could be.
She is not a socialist, even as she boogies with the Assembly Socialist Caucus and is endorsed by the DSA. Though her parents came from South Korea and are far-lefties, she is a full blown NorK.
Born/raised/schooled in Madscow (as we cheeseheads call it), yet she is a college dropout from UW-Madscow.
When she signed up to run for the state’s 76th Assembly District seat, she didn’t live in that district.
And while we now know the specifics of her mental illness, many of us previously knew because it is so obvious.
Have fun….
https://www.meal-magazine.com/meal-digital/hong
Lost me at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s being referenced as a “smart young woman.”
(Yes, I did scan down to see Hong has a history of mental illness.)
Wow. Lefties created an online magazine about the restaurant biz and socialism. Can they not give the latter a rest to just discuss another subject on its own?
The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.
Besides if you talk about restaurants you are talking about endeavors that almost always fail. These failures are often run by someone who is sure that the world needs them to run a restaurant to share their amazing vision. If it weren’t for dirty capitalists they would be happily running a 5 hour a day restaurant pulling in high six figures in suburban Milwaukee. That’s just one more reason we need socialism.
Mad as a hatter.
Why did she wear a Rosie the Riveter costume?
To look like she’s working class. Have noticed that many of the female DSA candidates appear in photo shoots wearing white button down shirts and earth tone pants, sans make-up. All engineered to look unfeminine and blue collar relateable, to be taken seriously as socialists today, communists tomorrow.
Like “Bernadette for Congress,” a plaid-work-jacketed Arizona chick whose qualifications for congress include “26 years of experience [as] a veteran long-haul truck driver,” and apparently not having a last name.
(The latter is a publicity stunt — she apparently has TWO.)
Aaahhh. Mental illness. She’s a victim ! All the better to vote for this lunatic, they say. She is completely off and probably takes a ton of psychopharms rendering her totally useless. But Democrats will vote for her; it’s what they do.
The media is going to block this stuff. I wonder if any local news station in Wisconsin has spent any time whatsoever on these very, very serious and bizarre issues.
Not a soul in the press has asked if she is currently medicated and on what treatment. Bipolar rarely goes away – typically worsens without treatment. Is she suddenly now sane
Medication will not make her sane.
Bipolar is short for manic-depressive. Let’s see her have a presser when she’s feeling down. It should be interesting. She won’t be dressed up like Rose the Riveter, that’s for sure.
No prisons. No police. It’s incredible that democrats are unable to put forth candidates who have even a modicum of common sense, yet they keep doing it. The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed.
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