Who will Wisconsin Democrats pick to run for governor?
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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 Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keefe. I cover politics. And Anya Van Wagdentonk 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 allegations of fraud. 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 reentered 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 have 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 courts say, no, you cannot.
Oh, my goodness. OK, 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, um, is this really what we're doing in the Wisconsin governor's race?
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting conversation.
What recent events reshaped the Wisconsin Democratic primary field?
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 discussed 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.
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