Will Wisc get a communist governor? WTF?

Their going to pass a 25% tax on cheese and beer. I wonder if she's a Packers fan?

Francesca Hong, the Socialists’ Next Hope

Forget the tweets. The frontrunner in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin Governor wants a 17% income tax and ‘public groceries.’

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

Aug. 9, 2026

Gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong speaks on stage during Wisconsin Democrats 2026 Convention on June 14 in Madison, Wisc. Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images

Will Democrats do it again Tuesday? The party’s primaries this year have nominated House candidates in New York and Colorado with ties to the radical Democratic Socialists of America, plus a likely DSA mayor of Washington, D.C., and then a far-left Senate contender last week in Michigan. Is Francesca Hong next, running for Wisconsin Governor?

Ms. Hong is a 37-year-old DSA member who represents downtown Madison in the state Assembly. She’s the polling leader in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, ahead of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, but keep in mind the sizable survey error in Michigan last week. What has gotten Ms. Hong attention is her loopy old internet posts, including one labeling Thanksgiving a “colonizer holiday” and another calling to abolish police, who “exist to uphold white supremacy.”

While Ms. Hong is now saying those aren’t her views, her campaign literature has the same revolutionary zeal. She wants to launch a state “public option” for health coverage, while the world awaits Medicare for All. She would set up a Wisconsin Public Bank to “give small businesses better rates.” She boasts that in the state Assembly she “wrote a bill to create publicly-owned grocery stores.”

Ms. Hong would repeal Wisconsin’s right-to-work law. She also wants to reverse former Gov. Scott Walker’s pivotal 2011 union reform, promising to “nail the coffin of Act 10 shut.” As if that weren’t enough of a tilt toward labor bosses, she calls for letting members “deduct their union dues from their annual income tax.”

She’d offer illegal migrants state IDs, while using sanctuary policies to “protect Wisconsinites of all documentation status from secret police.” She’d raise the minimum wage to $20, legalize marijuana, and pass a “binding clean electricity standard similar to Michigan’s, which requires 60% renewable power by 2030.” And don’t worry about the power bill: She wants to cap utility costs “at 2% of income for energy-burdened households.”

Her “Tax the Rich” agenda includes “a new tax bracket for millionaires and large corporations.” How high would Ms. Hong raise rates on wealthy Wisconsinites? In a recent debate, she suggested a top rate near 8.65%, up about one percentage point. Yet she has sponsored legislation to create a top rate of over 17%. And her campaign is floating the idea that “if millionaires and corporations chip in 17 cents out of every dollar earned after that first million, it could lower all our property taxes by 44%.”

To compare, Wisconsin’s current corporate tax is 7.9%, and the country’s highest business rate, according to the Tax Foundation, is 11.5% in New Jersey. On personal income, the top tax rate in New York City is 14.8%, with California at 13.3%. Such punishing rates are economically harmful, and Wisconsin doesn’t need a reason beyond winter weather for residents to flee to Florida or Arizona.

Even a fraction of this agenda would be ruinous. That’s what the GOP’s presumptive gubernatorial nominee, Rep. Tom Tiffany, will tell voters if their other option in November is Ms. Hong, and he will be correct. What an opening for Republicans, after two terms of Gov. Tony Evers. Socialists keep pulling the Democratic Party left, left, left. But statewide elections in Wisconsin are won in places like the Fox River Valley, not the faculty lounges of Madison.