Voters headed to the polls in several states yesterday for primaries ahead of the November midterms, and one of the most shocking results of the night involved Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidate Francesca Hong failing to win the Democrat nomination for governor in Wisconsin despite heading into the day with significant polling leads.
Hong spent much of her campaign trying to defend or walk back outlandish past positions and comments, most notably her calls to cancel Thanksgiving. While the radical rhetoric garnered national attention for the statewide race, it didn’t seem to be hurting Hong in the polls.
Hong was up at least 18 points in the final five public polls, yet, in a surprise twist, she was taken down by establishment-backed Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. With 98 percent of the expected vote tallied, Crowley led Hong, 39.8 percent to 39.4 percent, according to the Associated Press. Crowley will now face Trump-backed GOP nominee Tom Tiffany in November.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Wisconsin native and After Party host Emily Jashinsky to discuss Hong’s shock loss and what it means for the far-left.
Thanksgiving Drama
Some on the left are blaming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for failing to endorse Hong in the same way they supported Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan.
But Megyn thinks the issue was Hong herself. “Hong was up double digits again… but then that Thanksgiving clip hit, which was no bueno for her. I mean, everyone loves Thanksgiving. Only a true nutcase doesn’t like Thanksgiving. And then she injected more Thanksgiving into the narrative,” she noted.
In a November 2020 social media post Hong has since deleted, she suggested the U.S. “cancel Thanksgiving” because the day of gratitude is “celebrating colonialism” and the diseases spread by European settlers that “killed [indigenous] people.”
“Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621,” she wrote at the time. “If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indegenous [sic] folx [sic] and women so be it.”
When CNN asked Hong about her position on the annual celebration last month, she offered a Kamala Harris-esque word salad:
“I’m a chef, and one of the first meals that I made, that was for the community when I was 16, was a Thanksgiving meal. You know, I always think my hospitality background and owning a restaurant for seven, eight years that bringing folks around the table, to share conversation and build community, is always a good thing. But Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views. But views can evolve, and the position that I’m running for right now, and I think my background as a chef, will actually help me become a better governor that’s able to bring more people to the table.”
In an interview with USA Today last week, Hong claimed “there’s nothing more magical than being in a cranberry marsh” and named cranberry stuffing as “one of my absolute favorite dishes to make.”
“I’m not going to cancel Thanksgiving,” she added.
Rather than move on to more substantive issues, Hong made Thanksgiving the subject of her closing message to voters. When asked by Politico on Election Day what the media may have missed about her background, Hong inexplicably circled back to Turkey Day.
“I’ve cooked many great Thanksgiving dinners, and I’m not going to cancel things. I wanted to be a sports journalist. I was gonna go to J-school, but my path took me on a journey to become a chef and open my own restaurant,” she rambled, before attempting to pivot to her more populist economic platform.
“And as an employer, I learned how important it is to make sure that we’re respecting, honoring all workers, and that, as a small business owner, things are really rigged against our small businesses,” she added. “I want to make sure that there’s relief for small businesses, that we enshrine workers’ rights, and that many of my fellow single moms out there just remember how powerful and why.”
Culture War Issues
While Jashinsky acknowledged that some of Hong’s positions, like her stance on data centers, were of interest to Wisconsin voters, her far-left stances on race, defunding the police, and other cultural war issues likely proved too much to bear for some. “It screams out of touch,” she noted.
“As these posts started coming up, she was going on… CNN Fox News to talk about these things. You don’t have to do that if you’re running in a Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor,” Jashinsky said. “Is it possible that just made Democratic voters in the last week of the campaign, as she’s doing all this national media, actually start to shift?”
As Jashinsky explained, even Crowley’s own internal polls had Hong up by double digits, which means there was a large shift in voter sentiment down the stretch. “She got trounced by Crowley in a lot of rural counties; she didn’t put up the numbers that she needed to put up in Dane County, where Madison is; Milwaukee County was very close,” she said.
Unlike DSA comrade Zohran Mamdani in New York City, Jashinsky said Hong was not able to effectively distract from her radical positions. “This was the Zohran Mamdani revolution. He’s out there smiling constantly, deflecting any conversation about culture war issues. He looks cheerful, and that was not how Francesca Hong came across at all. She came across as weird and dour,” she observed.
“This is the world of the cultural left, and everything has to be analyzed through this particular lens. It’s not relatable to average Americans,” Jashinsky continued. “So while her data center messaging might be relatable to average Democrats in the state of Wisconsin, and actually average voters in the state of Wisconsin… they can’t take you seriously.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky by tuning in to episode 1,378 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.