Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin and 2022 Democratic Senate nominee, dropped out of the Democratic gubernatorial primary race on Thursday.
Barnes told staff in a conversation on Wednesday that there is a clear choice for the Democratic nomination, implicitly acknowledging socialist Francesca Hong’s overwhelming lead in the polls ahead of the Aug. 11 primary. Barnes’s decision to exit the race also came amid reporting of allegations that he was taking advantage of his role in the party to have sexual encounters with young adult women.
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“We’re incredibly proud of all the things that we’ve accomplished and all the resources that we have raised to spread our message,” Barnes said in a video on X. “But it’s become very clear who our nominee is going to be.”
Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race has been among the most chaotic in the nation, featuring an array of messy drop-outs in recent weeks, and even high-profile reentries. The race now appears to be shaping up to feature either Hong or Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley as the Democratic rival to Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), who is the Republicans’ leading gubernatorial contender, in November.
Hong, who has led in the Democratic primary race with 42% support in the latest Marquette Law School poll, compared with Barnes’s 21% and Crowley’s 11%, appealed to Barnes’s supporters on Thursday.
“The Barnes campaign helped grow the progressive movement,” Hong said in a statement posted on X. “To everyone who supported Mandela because you believe working people deserve a government that fights for them, I welcome you to our movement.”
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez had been viewed as the Democratic establishment’s top pick, but was forced to suspend her gubernatorial campaign earlier this month, just weeks before the primary, following revelations that there were major inaccuracies in its financial disclosures.
Rodriguez’s exit led party leaders to nudge Crowley back into the race, in the hope that he could defeat Hong’s socialist bid this week. Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) even broke his neutrality to back Crowley, as more centrist Democrats fight to stave off the growing socialist movement.
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Crowley’s reentrance into the race served as a stunning twist in the political cycle, as he had previously suspended his gubernatorial campaign in early July and endorsed Rodriguez in a bid to consolidate centrist Democratic support ahead of the primary to defeat the party’s left-wing faction.
On the Republican side, Tiffany is leading by a wide margin in the polls ahead of the August primary. Aggregate polling data from 270 to Win indicate that in the general election, he would have a better chance at defeating Hong than Crowley.
