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EXCLUSIVE — Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker shared his concerns about politics in the state amid the rise of democratic socialist Francesca Hong, while also arguing she’s “undermining” her own campaign in a Fox News Digital interview on Tuesday.
Hong, a Wisconsin state representative, is leading the field heading into Tuesday’s Democratic primary, according to recent polling. The far-left, 37-year-old former chef and single mother has courted controversy in recent weeks for her progressive platform and past rhetoric about abolishing the police, as well as her hot take on Thanksgiving.
“Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621,” Hong wrote in a now-deleted November 2020 post to X. “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,” she added. She has since said her views have “evolved,” telling Politico Thanksgiving is actually her “favorite” holiday.
“Well one, I think it’s a sign she’ll say just about anything to get elected,” Walker, who is now the president of Young America’s Foundation, told Fox News Digital ahead of Tuesday’s primary. “And finally, as she’s getting close, thinking she might actually be the nominee, people are telling her you cannot have outrageously outlandish ideas.”
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“Not only on Thanksgiving. Doesn’t care for Christmas. Heck, in Wisconsin, doesn’t like Culver’s cheese curds,” Walker said, in reference to another of Hong’s old social media posts. “Those are all things that are wildly out of touch with the people that she’s going to need if she’s got a shot for the general election.”
Walker warned Hong, however, that she could be hurting her campaign because primary voters had been attracted to her, in part, because of her bucking of the Democratic establishment.
“But I think she’s undermining one of her strengths,” Walker said. “One of the reasons why she’s going to win today’s primary is because Democratic primary voters view her as not the establishment, not the traditional politician. Someone who will just tell it like it is, even if people don’t agree with her. So the more she backtracks on things she didn’t even say as a kid — she’s actually posted as an elected official — the more I think she starts to undermine her own base, and the typical voter can see right through her.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the Hong campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Walker is the most recent Republican to serve as Wisconsin governor. He was elected in 2010 and 2014 — and also survived a recall in 2012 — before losing to Democrat Tony Evers during a bid for a third term in 2018.
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Establishment Democrats have been hoping to stop Hong in her tracks, but she’s the clear polling favorite going into Tuesday night. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive who earned the endorsement of outgoing Gov. Evers, told Politico that Republicans wanted Hong to be their opponent.
“You know, it’s the only time that I know that the governor — Tony Evers — the Republican Governors Association and Turning Point USA have ever been on the same page: in thinking that Francesca Hong is the best candidate to lose this race,” Crowley said.
Whoever wins Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary will face Trump ally Tom Tiffany, who is heavily favored in the Republican primary.
Hong has pushed back on the narrative that she’s too extreme, although she has conspicuously failed to win the endorsement of even far-left darling Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“We have to take this moment, a movement moment, and be bold with transformative change, and build the actual big tent that we can, and we must be as Democrats,” Hong told a crowd at a senior community center in Siren.
“It’s common sense versus dangerously crazy,” Walker told Fox News Digital of the recent rise of democratic socialism in the U.S. “When you talk about abolishing the police, when you talk about a world without prisons, no consequences for criminals, no push for public safety.”
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SCOTT WALKER: DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS ARE COMING FOR MY STATE. THIS IS HOW WE BEAT THEM
Walker said it is intriguing timing that next year will be the 40th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall” speech at the Berlin Wall.
“In all the years since, I think we’ve kind of lost a sense in America, of why there was a wall there in the first place, why did it have to come down,” he said. “That’s because communism and democratic socialism are barriers to freedom. They’re barriers to economic freedom, political freedom, even religious freedom. That’s why Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and others fought so hard to bring that down. We have to remind anyone, but particularly young people, that democratic socialism has failed in Venezuela, just like communism failed in the old Soviet Union. And it’s a really important reminder.”
Walker said the newfound popularity of democratic socialism is in part due to primary voters shifting to the left, particularly under President Donald Trump. Second, he said, is the “years of liberal indoctrination on college campuses.” The third, he argued, is due to a strong frustration over housing prices and the feeling that young adults’ “piece of the American dream is slipping away,” so they are drifting toward the extremes on either side of the aisle.
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Fox News Digital’s Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi contributed to this report.
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