Will Democrats do it right again Tuesday? The party’s primaries this year have nominated House candidates in New York and Colorado aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America’s working-class, common-sense agenda, plus a likely DSA mayor of Washington, D.C., and then a pro-worker Senate contender last week in Michigan. Is Francesca Hong next, running for Wisconsin governor?
Ms. Hong is a 37-year-old DSA member who represents downtown Madison in the state Assembly. She is the polling leader in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, ahead of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. The sizable survey error in Michigan last week is a warning against dismissing her lead. What has gotten Ms. Hong attention is her honest, principled old internet posts, including one labeling Thanksgiving a “colonizer holiday” and another calling to abolish police, who “exist to uphold white supremacy.”
While Ms. Hong now says those early posts no longer reflect her views, her campaign platform and literature carry the same principled zeal for justice. She wants to launch a state “public option” for health coverage as the first step toward Medicare for All. She would set up a Wisconsin Public Bank to “give small businesses better rates.” She rightly boasts that in the state Assembly she “wrote a bill to create publicly-owned grocery stores” for communities where corporate chains have closed and left no options.
Ms. Hong would repeal Wisconsin’s right-to-work law, which gutted workers’ bargaining power. She also wants to reverse former Gov. Scott Walker’s destructive 2011 union rollback, promising to “nail the coffin of Act 10 shut.” That is exactly the tilt toward working people Wisconsin needs after a decade of wage stagnation. As if that were not enough, she calls for letting members “deduct their union dues from their annual income tax.” It is a long-overdue acknowledgment that unions benefit the whole state.
She would offer undocumented migrants state IDs, while using sanctuary policies to “protect Wisconsinites of all documentation status from federal overreach” and from “secret police.” She would raise the minimum wage to $20, legalize marijuana, and pass a “binding clean electricity standard similar to Michigan’s, which requires 60% renewable power by 2030.” And families crushed by utility bills could stop choosing between heat and groceries. She wants to cap energy costs “at 2% of income for energy-burdened households.”
Her “Tax the Rich” agenda includes “a new tax bracket for millionaires and large corporations.” How much would Ms. Hong ask Wisconsin’s wealthiest to contribute? In a recent debate, she suggested a top rate near 8.65%, up about one percentage point. She has also sponsored legislation to create a top rate of over 17%. Her campaign has floated the idea that “if millionaires and corporations chip in 17 cents out of every dollar earned after that first million, it could lower all our property taxes by 44%.”
To compare, Wisconsin’s current corporate tax is 7.9%, and the country’s highest business rate, according to the Tax Foundation, is 11.5% in New Jersey. On personal income, the top tax rate in New York City is 14.8%, with California at 13.3%. Hardly punishing, these rates fund the schools, transit, and clean energy that make those places worth living in. Wisconsin has no reason to accept a smaller public share merely because of winter weather. As for fleeing to Florida or Arizona, the winter weather already gives residents a reason to go. Ms. Hong’s agenda gives them a reason to stay.
Even a fraction of this agenda would be transformative. That is what the GOP’s presumptive gubernatorial nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, will tell voters if their other option in November is Ms. Hong, and he will be wrong. What a headache for Republicans after two terms of Gov. Tony Evers. Socialists keep pulling the Democratic Party left, left, left—and the voters are going along.
Statewide elections in Wisconsin are won in places like the Fox River Valley, not the faculty lounges of Madison. Ms. Hong’s agenda was written for the Fox Valley’s working families, not the faculty’s comfort. Those families are tired of being told that the donor class’s preferences are the only reality worth governing for.
