Dem
47
GOP
53
With less than 2 weeks to go before the Wisconsin primaries, former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes has dropped out of the governor's race. He will still be on the ballot, but as someone who has told people not to vote for him.
Why did Barnes jump ship so close to the finish line? There are two good answers to that question. The first is that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that in 2025, the Wisconsin Democratic Party paid a law firm to investigate Barnes' conduct toward several young women who worked for him while he was in office. The resulting report apparently cleared him, and Barnes himself denies any wrongdoing. But in the #MeToo era, just weeks after the implosion of Graham Platner, the allegations are a big problem.
The second issue is that Barnes was getting trounced in polls by the clear-cut frontrunner, State Assemblymember Francesca Hong (D). In the last five polls of the race, all released since July 20, Hong led Barnes by 8 points, 13 points, 20 points, 30 points and 25 points. Those are in chronological order, from oldest to newest, and the three 20+ point leads all came after the Journal-Sentinel reported on Barnes' sexual conduct. There's no explanation—sampling error, inaccurate models of the electorate, misleading questions—that can wave away leads that big, from that many pollsters. And nobody comes back from 20 down in (roughly) 10 days, absent a miracle.
Barnes failed in a Senate run in 2022, and now he's failed here, so this is probably the end of the line for his political career. That said, Rep. John James (R-MI) came up short in two Senate runs, and then had success when he aimed his sights a little lower. So, Barnes could maybe follow that approach. That said, James did not have any allegations of misconduct against him.
Hong is a Democratic Socialist, and has adopted some very Democratic Socialist stances over the years. Some of her positions, like getting rid of AI data centers, are pretty popular. Other positions, like getting rid of Thanksgiving and defunding the police, are rather less so. She's tried to disown some of her more radical rhetoric, but the GOP and its likely nominee, Tom Tiffany, are going to try to make Hong wear all of the controversial statements she's made. So too will the entertainers at Fox. The Bernie wing of the Democratic Party has been saying for years that populist lefties are what the voters really want, and Hong is certainly going to put that to the test. Hypothetical polling of the Hong vs. Tiffany matchup has the race as a coin flip; the three polls released in July had Hong +3, Hong +1 and Tiffany +3.
It is more likely than not that next-door Michigan will be staging a test of its own, with Abdul El-Sayed as the Democrats' U.S. Senate nominee. A poll released yesterday had him up 17 on the more moderate Haley Stevens, and he was up double digits in each of the six polls before that. If El-Sayed and Hong can both win in the very purple upper Midwest, that is valuable information for the Democrats. And if they both lose, suggesting Democratic Socialists are viable only in very blue places, that is valuable information for the Democrats, too. Other interesting questions are: If El-Sayed and Hong are elected, will that produce hordes of progressive candidates in 2028? Also, if they both lose badly, will progressives learn anything from that? (Z)