Hong vs. Crowley Is the Establishment’s Worst Nightmare Coming True

Let me tell you something. I’ve been watching this Wisconsin governor’s race from my kitchen table between packing lunches and checking homework folders, and what I see is a bunch of party bosses in a full-blown panic because the people wouldn’t vote the way they were told.

Francesca Hong was a state representative nobody outside Madison had heard of. She’s a democratic socialist. She’s 37. By every rule the consultants wrote down on their little clipboards, she should have been toast by February. Instead she built a real lead in the polls, energized actual human voters, and became the candidate the entire national press corps couldn’t stop talking about. She did that the old-fashioned way. She talked to people. She had a platform. Universal healthcare. Universal childcare. Things that matter to moms like me who have priced out daycare three times this year.

And the Democratic establishment lost their minds.

Enter David Crowley. Nice man. Milwaukee County Executive. First Black man to hold that office, grew up in the 53206 ZIP code, overcame real hardship. I’m not here to trash his life story. But here’s what happened: Crowley ran for governor for ten months and couldn’t get above 3% in the polls. He suspended his campaign. He said he had no path. His own words. Then Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped out, and suddenly Crowley’s phone started ringing, and ten days later he’s back, this time with Gov. Tony Evers draped around him like a life vest.

LaShawnda Jones (BY-SA) via wikimedia

“I’m all in on David Crowley,” Evers posted. Well, governor, that’s real sweet, but since when do you get to pick?

This is the part that makes me want to speak to the manager. Evers sat out the primary for months. He said he wanted to let the candidates make their own cases. Good. That’s how it should work. Then the race got close, and suddenly he’s stomping across the state with Crowley like a dad walking his kid into the first day of school. Pro-Crowley outside groups flooded the airwaves. The Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor said it herself: Crowley was “starting way back on home plate” while Hong was “already on third base.” So they didn’t like the score, and they sent in the relief pitcher.

And here’s the kicker. The Republican Governors Association spent millions on ads that supposedly attacked Hong but were clearly designed to help her. The ads warned she’d return Wisconsin to its “progressive roots.” You know who hears “progressive roots” and thinks that sounds terrible? Not the Democratic primary voters those ads were aimed at. Crowley himself stood up and said Republicans were “making an investment” in picking the Democratic nominee. He called it a “five-alarm warning sign.” He was right about that, at least.

But then tell me why your own party did the same thing, David? Evers hand-picked you. The machine cranked up. And now we’re sitting here at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday morning with you and Hong separated by a few hundred votes, and nobody knows who won.

Tony Evers (BY) via wikimedia

Here’s what I know. A judge ruled that people who already mailed in their absentee ballots couldn’t get new ones, even though the candidate they voted for dropped out. Rodriguez and Barnes were still pulling nearly 4% each. Kelda Roys took 8%. That’s 20% of the vote gone to people who aren’t even in the race anymore. Twenty percent. You know what that is? That’s thousands of Wisconsin voters whose voices got thrown in the trash because the party couldn’t get its act together fast enough.

So now there might be a recount. In Wisconsin, if the margin is under 1%, the second-place candidate can ask for one. If it’s 0.25% or less, the state pays. Otherwise the candidate does. Either way, we’re going to be fighting over ballots while Tom Tiffany, who already won the Republican primary, is out there on Fox News talking about “extreme Madison socialism” and raising money.

The party bosses wanted to stop Hong. They might have succeeded. They might also have just handed Wisconsin to the Republicans. Because when you spend the whole primary telling your own voters that the person they actually liked was too risky, too far left, too much, you don’t just damage that candidate. You tell every person who knocked on doors and phone-banked and believed in something that their work doesn’t count unless the people in charge approve it first.

I did my own research on this one. And what I found is a party that trusts its voters right up until the moment the voters do something it doesn’t like.