A big upset in Wisconsin. A progressive victory in Minnesota. And the enduring power of President Donald Trump's endorsement.
These were some of the emerging themes after voters went to the polls in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, Connecticut, and Vermont in one of the last big primary nights before the November midterm elections.
Here is what we learned:
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS HIT A BLUE WALL IN WISCONSIN
Left-wing candidates have been on a winning streak in Democratic primaries in Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan. But that stopped in Wisconsin, as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley upset Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary by a little more than 3,000 votes.
As in Michigan last week, polling failed to pick up moderate Democratic voters, the kind that made progressive health official Abdul El-Sayed’s win over centrist Representative Haley Stevens a squeaker in the state's Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, when some polls had El-Sayed leading by double digits.
Progressive candidates have spurred enthusiasm and turnout, but the results in Wisconsin show moderates are motivated as well. It probably did not help Hong that the kingmakers associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, pointedly did not endorse her after publicly throwing their support behind El-Sayed in Michigan.
REPUBLICANS WILL MISS RUNNING AGAINST HONG
While Hong’s defeat is a defeat for the DSA, it is also a blow to the national Republican Party, which has relished lampooning DSA candidates as joyless communists who hate America. Republicans and others seized on a call Hong made in a since-deleted 2020 social media post to cancel the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, calling it a celebration of colonialism.
For Republicans and Democrats alike, the remark embodied what Ocasio-Cortez has called the kind of “bad take” characteristic of the "Woke 1.0" era, when social-justice concerns were at the forefront of U.S. politics.
Republicans, who saw the post as a political gift, pounced. Hong sought to distance herself from her earlier comment, telling media outlets that she enjoyed Thanksgiving meals and, a week before the vote, that it was her favorite holiday.
PROGRESSIVES SCORE SENATE PRIMARY WIN IN MINNESOTA
She is not DSA, but Peggy Flanagan's victory in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Minnesota was a win all the same for the party's progressive left wing.
Flanagan, Minnesota's lieutenant governor, channeled many Minnesotans' anger with Trump's deportation sweep this past winter, which deployed hundreds of armed, masked immigration agents across the state and led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens.
Flanagan has called for dismantling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, helping her defeat the more moderate U.S. Representative Angie Craig, who said she regretted being the only Minnesota Democrat to vote last year to give ICE broader authority to detain immigrants.
A TRUMP ENDORSEMENT STILL MATTERS, SOMETIMES
Trump's endorsement was not enough in Minnesota for former MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who earned the president's loyalty for helping propagate Trump's false claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud. Lindell lost to Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, who lacked the Trump seal of approval.
But it appeared to have helped in South Carolina, where his endorsed candidate, Darline Graham, advanced to a runoff to be the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in November's election following the death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally.
