Progressives stumble in Wisconsin as Trump-backed Lindell loses Minnesota primary
Moderate Democrats who lost a string of competitive elections to progressive candidates pulled off a surprise victory in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary.
Self-described “proud Democratic Socialist” Francesca Hong, a state legislator, entered Election Day with one poll giving her a 22-point lead. By the time The Associated Press declared a winner Wednesday morning, she trailed moderate Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by less than half a percentage point.
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Hong’s showing comes a week after another progressive, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, entered election night with a double-digit lead in public polls, only to see it turn into a nail-biting one-point victory the following morning. Earlier this campaign season, challengers supported by figures in the Democratic Socialists of America defeated moderate incumbents in House races in New York City and Colorado.
Though a growing number of registered Democrats now identify as progressive, and prioritize abortion rights, healthcare and higher taxes on the wealthy, Democratic Party leaders have argued that DSA-aligned candidates may be vulnerable to Republican attacks over calls to reduce police funding, strident criticism of Israel and culture war fights,
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) both refrained from endorsing Hong, who led most public polls in the race and faced pressure to modify her past positions on police funding and criticism of Thanksgiving.
Republicans had attacked Hong as “too liberal,” and spent millions of dollars on primary ads targeting her, which some Democratic Party leaders argued was the GOP’s way of ensuring they would face her in the general election.
Crowley, who had dropped out of the race on July 8 while Hong led public polling, returned to the race about two weeks later and picked up the endorsement of Tony Evers, the outgoing Democratic governor who announced last year he would not seek a third term.
Crowley heads to the general election where he will face Rep. Tom Tiffany, a 2020 election skeptic who was endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Trump endorsement falls short in Minnesota
Lisa DeMuth, the Republican Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, defeated Trump-endorsed election denier Mike Lindell in the Republican gubernatorial primary by more than 11 percentage points, according to the AP. Both finished ahead of businessman Kendall Qualls, who was endorsed by the state Republican Party in Minnesota.
Lindell, who got more than 130,000 votes, did not concede the race, telling reporters his campaign needed to “reconcile these numbers,” MPR News reported.
Lindell’s second-place finish also shows how thoroughly Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election have become embedded in Republican politics.
“Everybody knows the election was stolen,” Lindell said in an interview last week with MinnPost. “It’s, like, not news anymore.”
DeMuth heads to the general election, where she will face Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a moderate who ran for president in 2020. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who was the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2024, announced in January he would not seek re-election. (The AP called Klobuchar’s race less than thirty minutes after polls closed, with 11% of the vote counted.)
In the Democratic Senate primary, Walz’s lieutenant governor, progressive Peggy Flanagan defeated Rep. Angie Craig in a pitched fight over the state’s response to a billion-dollar fraud scandal while Flanagan and Walz were in office.
Flanagan will face former sportscaster Michele Tafoya.
Though Tafoya led public polling, Trump did not endorse a candidate in that race. Tafoya previously said that Trump was “defeated” in 2020, after which time his “politics went from messy to absolute mayhem.” She made the comment in a 2022 open letter that has since been made private, but has been reposted online by other people.
Tafoya, whose senate campaign did not respond to the Minnesota Star Tribune when it asked about the 2020 election recently, won the primary with 52% of the vote, according to the AP.
Tafoya’s apparent shift on the legitimacy of the 2020 election mirrors a change made by the GOP senate nominee in Michigan, Mike Rogers, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. As the New York Times noted this week, Rogers went from saying Trump’s effort to undermine the 2020 election is “cause for both concern and alarm,” to adopting Trump’s stance on the campaign trail.
South Carolina US Senate Primary
The potency of Trump’s endorsement among Republicans was tested in South Carolina, where his preferred senate candidate finished first in a special primary to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, but not enough to clear the field. Graham’s sister, Darline Graham, whom Trump endorsed, got 33% of the vote, according to the Associated Press, well ahead of the second-place finisher Rep. Ralph Norman, who received nearly 24%. Both advanced to an Aug. 25 runoff, since neither surpassed the 50 percent threshold to win outright.
Norman, who told reporters he sought Trump’s endorsement, said the decision ultimately belonged to voters. “South Caroline’s going to decide the next senator,” he said.