Progressives Look To Close Out Successful Primary Season With Wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, Teeing Up Challenging General Election Races

After successfully ousting sitting members of Congress and pulling their party leftward this year, progressives in the Democratic Party are looking for two last big wins in critical swing states — Wisconsin and Michigan. If successful, Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate candidacy in Michigan and state Assemblywoman Francesca Hong’s run for Wisconsin governor would be the highest-profile, left-wing candidates running in battleground states. On Tuesday, voters in Michigan will go to the polls to choose the Democratic nominee for this year’s marquee U.S. Senate race. On the Republican side, Congressman Mike Rogers has already locked up the GOP nomination and some in his party have been spending their idle time trying to boost Dr. El-Sayed in the final weeks of the campaign. Dr. El-Sayed is facing off against Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a more moderate lawmaker who has been criticized for supporting Israel and accepting tens of millions of dollars in outside spending on her behalf. Ms. Stevens says Dr. El-Sayed can’t win the general election, which would mean a primary victory for him would all but guarantee that Democrats are unable to retake the Senate majority this fall. Polling suggests, thus far, that Ms. Stevens may be right. According to the most recent surveys, Ms. Stevens holds a narrow lead over Mr. Rogers in the general election while Dr. El-Sayed trails him. Mr. Rogers came within half a percentage point of winning the 2024 Senate race in Michigan. Polling aggregators show Mr. Rogers with an average lead of about two points over Dr. El-Sayed, while Ms. Stevens leads Mr. Rogers by less than half a point. Over the weekend, Mr. Rogers put up an AI-generated video claiming that Dr. El-Sayed and a band of socialists were comparable to Odysseus and his men using the Trojan horse to invade the city of Troy — a clear sign that Mr. Rogers is far more interested in running against Dr. El-Sayed than Ms. Stevens. The National Republican Senatorial Committee last month put up an ad calling on Michigan Democrats to “reject” Dr. El-Sayed, which many saw as another ploy to boost the progressive candidate’s stature with voters just weeks before the primary. Dr. El-Sayed, meanwhile, says the electability argument is less about his progressive policy positions and more about racist smears against him and other Muslim Americans. “They’re saying that you couldn’t possibly be open-minded enough … to elect somebody with a name like mine who prays like I do in a state like ours,” Dr. El-Sayed said at a rally on Saturday, mentioning President Obama as an example of a winner who emerged a winner despite attacks on his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. Ms. Stevens and Dr. El-Sayed have both pledged to support the Democratic nominee for Senate no matter who wins. Not all Democrats agree, however. Congresswoman Hillary Scholten, a Democrat who represents the western part of the state and has endorsed Ms. Stevens, says she could not campaign alongside Dr. El-Sayed if he is the nominee. “I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue,” Ms. Scholten said in an interview with Semafor last week. “I think that he has not done enough to hold his supporters in check for some of the rampant sexist things that have come out against Haley Stevens — and even his own words.”While the primary campaign between Dr. El-Sayed and Ms. Stevens has at times been ugly, the Wisconsin gubernatorial race is a different story. A series of candidacy implosions on the Democratic side — including the sitting lieutenant governor and a former lieutenant governor — means the state’s Democratic establishment has failed to coalesce around a candidate to defeat Ms. Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. In a last-ditch effort to try to beat her, Governor Tony Evers convinced the executive of Milwaukee County, David Crowley, to re-enter the race for governor after Mr. Crowley had suspended his campaign. It may be too late, however, with Ms. Hong holding a 30-point lead in the polls over her chief competitor. What has become a real issue for Ms. Hong in her run for governor in a state President Trump won in 2024 is her past social media posts. Before being sworn in as a member of the state legislature in 2021, she made a number of comments about Thanksgiving, white people, and Christmas that have left Republicans chuckling. “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621,” Ms. Hong wrote on X. She has since deleted the post. “If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realize we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed indigenous folx [sic] and women, so be it.” “I ate two bites of my kid’s cheeseburger at a Culver’s in black river falls and told him they ran out of ice cream. Mostly just wanted to leave [because] I was on the verge of a [sic] anxiety attack … to [sic] many old white people who didn’t think we spoke english,” Ms. Hong wrote in another post back in 2019. In one post also from 2019, she complained that she felt “slightly attacked” after someone who had been working on her computer changed the desktop background to a photo that included snow and a Christmas tree. Ms. Hong’s business experience is also likely to come up during a general election race for the chief executive post. Ten years ago, she and her then-husband opened a restaurant. During the course of that enterprise, which closed in 2024, she amassed nearly $30,000 worth of credit card debt and was later sued by Capital One, which was seeking to recoup the money. The lawsuit was dismissed after Ms. Hong’s parents helped pay off the debt.According to polling, Ms. Hong is in a dead-heat in the general election with the presumptive Republican nominee, Congressman Tom Tiffany. He has been joking online about her apparent dislike for Christmas and her statement that Thanksgiving should be abolished. “Just so everyone knows where I stand, I won’t cancel Christmas as governor either,” Mr. Tiffany wrote on X on Sunday. Ms. Hong has also previously supported abolishing the police, though she has since stated that she no longer supports that goal. After a recent debate, however, Ms. Hong dodged a question from a reporter on eliminating law enforcement agencies. “No amount of spin can erase @FrancescaHongWI’s own words. She didn’t just advocate for defunding the police. She called to abolish them,” Mr. Tiffany wrote recently.

Progressives Look To Close Out Successful Primary Season With Wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, Teeing Up Challenging General Election Races

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