Barnes ends Wisconsin campaign as Hong surges in Democratic primary

Mandela Barnes ended his campaign for Wisconsin governor on July 30, clearing the way for Francesca Hong to capitalize on a sudden shift in a Democratic primary that now looks more open to the party’s left flank. The former lieutenant governor bowed out less than two weeks before the Aug. 11 primary, after a Marquette Law School Poll released July 29 put Hong in first place with 38%, Barnes in second and state Rep. Kelda Roys in third.

The numbers point to a race moving fast enough to reshape the party’s strategic calculation in one of the nation’s closest battleground states. A Marquette poll released July 22 found almost half of Democratic primary voters still undecided, and the July 29 survey showed Hong’s support concentrated among the party’s youngest and most liberal voters. Barnes, who launched his campaign on Dec. 2, 2025, had been trying to make a case for a return to statewide office with a pitch for pragmatism and contrast. He framed the bid as a second chance and promised to “reject the Washington way, and get things done the Wisconsin way.”

Instead, the polling suggested Barnes had not found a lane broad enough to hold off Hong, a Madison state representative who identifies as a democratic socialist. Her rise changes the primary’s center of gravity at a moment when Democrats are trying to decide whether a more openly progressive nominee can still compete in a state that has repeatedly come down to a sliver of the vote in high-stakes contests.

Barnes’s exit also came the same week as the race’s only televised debate, adding another jolt to a contest that had already been destabilized by late-breaking undecideds and shifting alliances. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Barnes stepped aside amid its reporting on a 2025 state Democratic Party review into allegations that he took advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women, a story the newspaper said it was continuing to report.

For Hong, the opening is significant because it changes not just the polling order but the race’s underlying politics. Her strongest backing came from younger, more liberal voters, the bloc most likely to reward a sharper ideological break from the party establishment. For Democrats in Wisconsin, the question now is whether that coalition can expand beyond the primary electorate and still hold together in November against the Republican nominee.