Well, that’s not what we expected to happen.
When we began our live stream last night, it looked almost certain that Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong would win the Democratic nomination for governor, and in commanding fashion. She had a 20-point lead in the polls over her closest rival, who had just re-entered the race a few weeks earlier after other candidates melted down, and turnout in Hong’s home base of Madison was soaring.
But doubts began to creep in shortly after polls closed and the vote count began, and in the early hours of the morning, the national news outlets called the race for Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, a massive upset that nobody saw coming. Thanksgiving had been avenged.
There will be reams of postmortems and lessons cherrypicked from the shock result, but we shouldn’t look past how Hong reached the precipice of power. An outspoken DSA member who had never run outside of her lefty district, Hong went from 1% in the polls to a dominant frontrunner who just missed out on the nomination. How did that happen?
To better understand her rise and unconventional gubernatorial campaign, I spoke with Josh Klemons, her long-time digital director (he left the campaign in January). He helped create an unlikely political juggernaut over the course of five and a half years, and now works with countless down ballot candidates, using the same principles to win election after election.
We spoke about how Hong got to this point, what campaigns can learn from it, the heights of economic populism, and the limitations that come with cultural “woke” positions. We also discussed how the media freakout over “electability” helped shape this race; watch that clip below and the whole interview up top.
Note, because we recorded this before polls closed, it was based on the premise that Hong won. Other than being a bit embarrassing for me, everything in the conversation still applies.
Also watch:
