Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong has pushed a socialist wish list during her time in the state Assembly, backing everything from publicly funded grocery stores and a state-owned bank to race-based grant programs and doulas for pregnant women in solitary confinement, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of her record.
Hong is the front-runner in the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. She has worked to distinguish herself as a progressive voice in a crowded primary field. That strategy may work: a Wednesday Marquette University Law School poll found that Hong led the crop of Democrats by a 22-point margin, though more than one-third of voters remain undecided.
The swing-state legislator received an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, an insurgent force in the Democratic Party. The DSA’s Milwaukee chapter wrote that Hong would advance “our socialist movement to the state level.”
Hong’s legislative record backs that claim up.
Hong has fought to ensure that prenatal care for women in solitary confinement includes, “if applicable,” doula services. She has also frequently pushed race-based grant programs, including funding for minorities to obtain social work licenses and become school counselors.
Few of her initiatives have succeeded in the Wisconsin State Assembly, which has a nine-seat Republican majority. President Donald Trump won the state by 0.86 percentage points in 2024.
Hong said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that, having spent nearly six years in the Wisconsin legislature, she is under “no illusions” about the position she would find herself in as governor.
“I’ll put bills on the table that Republican legislators will have to explain to their own voters if they kill them,” she said.
One of Hong’s flashiest legislative proposals is a network of publicly funded grocery stores, an idea that helped New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani clinch victory last year. The so-called Wisconsin Public Food Administration Authority would support local governments in the “development and operation of public grocery stores” and would operate a “statewide public food distribution network,” according to Hong’s legislation.
Hong’s own professional background is in the food industry. After dropping out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009, she rose from a dishwasher to an executive chef in the Madison culinary scene before opening her own Japanese restaurant, Morris Ramen, with her ex-husband. Morris Ramen shuttered in 2024.
Hong’s public-sector plans do not stop at grocery stores. She has also sponsored legislation to create the “Public Bank of Wisconsin,” which she says in her campaign materials is inspired by the Bank of North Dakota. Hong’s bank would leverage public deposits to provide low-cost loans and financing for small businesses, minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises, entrepreneurs, start-ups, farmers, and other borrowers.
The bill describes how the bank would “further economic growth, create jobs, reduce greenhouse gases, and build and sustain affordable housing.”
As is common in the burgeoning socialist movement, Hong has also used her platform to zero in on Israel. Shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Hong added her name to a November resolution calling for an “immediate de-escalation and cease-fire” in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
Hong has also backed a more recent bill to repeal Wisconsin’s anti-boycott, divestment, and sanctions measure. The state has a law on the books that prohibits state and local agencies from boycotting Israeli goods. Nongovernmental entities that receive state contracts of over $100,000 are also bound by the current law’s provisions.
The progressive politician has repeatedly allied herself with her state’s anti-Israel movement. Hong previously referred to a May 1, 2024, decision by UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin to remove an unauthorized protest encampment from school property as “state-sanctioned violence.”
“I wish more elected officials could have experienced what the student encampments were about and had more nuanced conversations about what they represent,” she told the Daily Cardinal, the university’s student newspaper, several months later.
Yet Hong’s past actions around Israel paint a more complicated picture. In late 2023, she successfully had police take down an anti-Israel protest display that she told a 911 operator was “pretty disturbing and jarring.” The display featured an Israeli flag splattered in red paint and surrounded by fake bodies.
Hong has since called her intervention “something I regret deeply.”
“Three years ago, there was a piece of protest art at the encampments in Madison, which was photographed and posted to social media,” she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “My constituents reported they felt threatened and alerted me to the social post, but the image was cropped and incomplete to misrepresent anti-Zionism as antisemitism – a distinction I take seriously.”
Still, even as Hong has struggled to galvanize the Republican-led Wisconsin legislature into supporting her progressive policies, she argues that her ideas are becoming part of the political mainstream.
“Being in the minority changes the tools available to you, but it doesn’t change your responsibility to deliver for your constituents,” Hong said. “I measure success by whether I’m building the kind of broad, diverse coalition that can actually deliver change for working people.”
Hong pointed out that several of her major proposals, such as universal childcare and an AI data center moratorium, are “now central to the debate in Wisconsin.”
The saga unfolding in the Wisconsin Democratic primary began when Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) announced last summer that he would not seek a third term. Democrats failed to quickly coalesce around an heir apparent. The race then took a dramatic turn when Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped out earlier this month over her campaign’s mishandling of financial records, which left room for Hong to continue gaining momentum.
The race was upset yet again on Thursday when former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who had been polling in second place, dropped out.
“It’s become very clear who our nominee is going to be,” Barnes said on social media without specifying who that person is.
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“To everyone who supported Mandela because you believe working people deserve a government that fights for them, I welcome you to our movement,” Hong said after the news broke.
The candidate Democrats nominate during their Aug. 11 primary will be all but certain to face Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), a member of the Freedom Caucus. Trump endorsed Tiffany in a January post on Truth Social, calling him an “Advocate for the Working Men and Women of Wisconsin.”