We Know What Hong Called ICE Agents, and It Wouldn't Made Swing Voters Vomit
Progressive policy ambitions meet practical realities as Americans weigh costs and consequences.
So Francesca Hong loses a primary she was supposed to win in a walk, and the reason turns out to be sitting in a 349-page opposition dossier nobody got to use because she lost before anyone had to. That's the part worth sitting with. Wisconsin Democrats didn't need Tom Tiffany to tell them what Hong called ICE agents or what else was buried in that file.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany is facing David Crowley, not Francesca Hong, in November. But we know what he planned to attack her with, because the 349-page dossier has now been given to Puck and is no longer confidential.
Everyone expected Hong to win handily. She lost by 3,211 votes, or 0.4 percent. It was a slim margin for Crowley, but a setback for the far left’s ongoing campaign to take over the Democrat Party. The Midwest seems to be forming a rampart against left-wing lunacy.
Voters here will tolerate progressivism, but socialism might be a bridge too far. We shall see — these people will never go away.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
So Francesca Hong loses a primary she was supposed to win in a walk, and the reason turns out to be sitting in a 349-page opposition dossier nobody got to use because she lost before anyone had to. That's the part worth sitting with. Wisconsin Democrats didn't need Tom Tiffany to tell them what Hong called ICE agents or what else was buried in that file. They looked at her record on their own and decided 0.4 percent was enough of a margin to say no thanks.
That's the story underneath the story. Crowley didn't win by promising moderation in some abstract sense. He won because primary voters in Milwaukee County, not exactly a hotbed of MAGA sentiment, took one look at the socialist option and backed away. A 3,211-vote margin isn't a landslide, but it's a verdict. The people who actually show up to Democratic primaries in a major Midwestern city decided the DSA wing wasn't worth the risk in a general election year.
We'd be careful about declaring victory here, because the piece is right that these people never go away. Hong will run again, somewhere, for something. The dossier will resurface the next time she's on a ballot that matters. But there's something telling about a district this blue flinching from its own left flank without any outside push. Democrats keep telling themselves swing voters are dying to hear more about defunding, more about abolishing ICE, more of the vocabulary that gets you cheered at a rally and buried at the ballot box. Milwaukee just gave them a data point that says otherwise, and they didn't even need Tiffany's help to see it.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.