With about 94% of votes counted, 2,778 votes separated Milwaukee county executive David Crowley and state Assembly member Francesca Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday.
Pre-election polling suggested that Hong held a double-digit lead, but at press time, Crowley led with 300,950 votes (39.9%), just barely ahead of Hong’s 298,172 votes (39.6%).
After midnight local time, it was reported that Milwaukee County had misplaced absentee vote tallies on five memory drives, which it needed to retrieve. It wasn’t clear how long it would take to find the votes and to report them.
Hong, 37, had accused Israel of “genocide” and appeared on podcasts with anti-Israel left-wing influencers, including Hasan Piker.
As a state lawmaker, she introduced legislation to repeal Wisconsin’s law opposing the movement to boycott Israel and opposed the state’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred.
She did not make Israel a central theme of her campaign to the same extent that other progressive Democrats did in states like New York and Michigan.
She also disavowed some of her previously held far-left positions, including police abolition and calling Thanksgiving a “colonizer holiday,” but ran on a “tax the rich” platform with calls to abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and a one-year ban on data-center construction.
Hong’s record of outlandish views prompted the Republican Governor’s Association to spend $3.6 million backing her in the final days of the primary in the apparent belief that she would be the weakest Democratic candidate in the general election.
If Crowley holds on to win narrowly, Hong’s defeat would likely raise further questions about the electability of anti-Israel socialists in statewide races after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former health director of Detroit, eked out a win in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan by about 15,000 votes.
Crowley is a more moderate candidate who has not repeatedly condemned the Jewish state and who briefly withdrew from the race in July.
The winner will face off against Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) in November in the race to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat who decided not to seek a third term.
Tiffany was the only substantial Republican in the race and had 457,721 votes (95.4%) in the Republican primary at press time, with about 97% of votes counted.
