Four Democrats Remain in the Fight for Wisconsin Governor

Voters head to the polls Tuesday, Aug. 11, to pick a nominee to face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in November. It's the state's first open race for governor in more than 15 years, ever since Gov. Tony Evers decided against a third term. ¹ Cook Political Report calls the general election a toss-up. The primary, at this point, is a lot less close. State Rep. Francesca Hong of Madison has led every survey released in the past month, and her lead grew every time the field got smaller.

The Polls

Marquette Law School's late-July poll, fielded July 22-27, had Hong at 46% once undecided leaners got counted, with former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes at 21%, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at 11%, and state Sen. Kelda Roys and former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan tied at 4% each. Fourteen percent hadn't made up their minds.³

State Navigate, a nonpartisan polling outfit, ran its own survey the same week and had Hong at 45% overall, well clear of the pack.⁴ Among the slice of voters who told pollsters they'd already cast a ballot, the order behind her was Barnes at 18% and Sara Rodriguez, still in the race at the time, at 16%. Then the field changed fast. By the time State Navigate went back into the field Aug. 3-6, three of those candidates were gone. Among voters who'd already voted at that point, Hong was up to 48%, and her lead only grew in every hypothetical narrower matchup the pollsters ran. She clears 50% of the decided vote even head-to-head against Crowley alone.⁵

How the Field Shrunk

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes dropped out first, back in June, without much fuss. Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez ended her campaign in mid-July after her own campaign finance filings turned up problems.⁸ Crowley, who had actually quit the race himself on July 8 over money troubles and a looming county budget deficit, jumped back in on July 17, the day after Rodriguez bowed out, this time with an endorsement from Evers himself.⁹ Evers rarely wades into primaries, so that mattered, or at least it should have. Marquette found 62% of Democratic primary voters had heard about the endorsement, but 56% said it made no difference to their vote.³

Barnes was the last domino. The former lieutenant governor and 2022 Senate nominee dropped out July 30, just as reporters were preparing to publish a story on old, anonymous allegations the state party had reviewed about his conduct toward young women.¹⁰ The party's own review, run by an outside law firm, found nothing actionable, since the claims were anonymous and unspecific, and Barnes' campaign maintains there was no wrongdoing at all.¹¹ He didn't endorse anyone on his way out, but he made it pretty clear who he thought was going to win.

That leaves Hong, Crowley, Roys, and Brennan. Roys is running for governor a second time, after losing the 2018 primary that Evers went on to win, and she's picked up the backing of WEAC, the state's largest teachers union, running as the education candidate in the field.¹² Brennan spent two decades in public service, including a stretch running Evers' Department of Administration, and has built his campaign around child care, arguing that fixing it would put parents back to work and real money back into the state's economy.¹³ Neither has broken out of single digits in a public poll since Barnes left the race, until the most recent polls came out this week.

The Other Side of the Ballot

Republicans aren't dealing with any of this chaos. Tiffany, a four-term congressman from Minocqua carrying Donald Trump's endorsement, is the heavy favorite over Andy Manske, a 27-year-old medical service technician.¹⁴ ¹⁵ Tiffany entered August with ten times as much cash on hand as either Hong or Crowley, and he's spent the summer running what amounts to a general election campaign in everything but name, betting the Democratic fighting does his work for him.¹⁶

What This Means Up Here

Green Bay doesn't usually get much love in statewide polling crosstabs, but this cycle it's one of the more interesting numbers on the page. State Navigate's regional breakdown has Hong up just 8 points over Crowley in the outer Green Bay TV market, her tightest margin anywhere in the state.⁵ Compare that to Dane County, where she's ahead by nearly 40 points. If there's a corner of Wisconsin where this primary is actually competitive on the ground rather than settled weeks in advance, it's here in the Fox Valley, not Madison or Milwaukee.

Whoever wins Tuesday gets about twelve weeks to introduce themselves statewide before facing Tiffany on Nov. 3, in a race Cook Political Report is already calling a national test of how far a swing-state Democratic Party can move left and still win.² Given how this primary has gone so far, "settled" might be the wrong word for any of it until the votes are actually counted.