Madison Police Killing Will Shake Up Democratic Race for Governor

Matty Ring (CC-BY)

The images are sickening. Four Madison police officers are wrestling a Black suspect onto the ground and one of the officers shoots him three times, killing a man suspected of looking into car windows for a possible theft. The police say the suspect, Corey Ruiz, pulled a knife on them, but it doesn’t look that way from the angle of bystander videos. And why are there no police body cameras, why aren’t they required in the most liberal city in Wisconsin?

The reaction was anger and outrage among many in Madison and across the state. State Rep. Francesca Hong, the socialist and leading Democrat in the race for governor, channeled that rage. Hong, whose district includes part of the city of Madison, spoke to the protesters through a bullhorn. “A man died at the hands of state-sanctioned violence,” Hong declared. “This state sanctioned violence was an execution.”

Eric Toney, the Republican candidate for Wisconsin attorney general, slammed Hong’s comments, calling them “appalling,” “disgusting” and “irresponsible,” while the Republican candidate for governor, Tom Tiffany, charged that “Too many politicians rush to the cameras before the facts are even known. Francesca Hong chose to do that.”

Conservative, anti-Trump columnist James Wigderson, who has been warning Democrats that a Hong victory in the primary will be a problem, dubbed her “Gov Bullhorn,” predicting that this “indelible image” will “haunt Hong” in the general election.

How much will it hurt Hong? And is this issue, along with that of data centers, beginning to clearly distinguish the Democratic candidates for governor, who have often seemed a unified chorus on the major issues?

Let’s begin with a key factor in driving elections: voter anger. Democrats across the country are angry about the policies of President Donald Trump, and polls show their turnout will be higher. That’s what the Marquette Law School polls this year have consistently shown. Respondents are angry about inflation and the cost of living, insurance and housing; these are all top issues, the MU poll has found. The only non-pocketbook issue among the top five concerns is immigration.

Now you can add the anger over the killing of Corey Ruiz. It will drive turnout even higher in Madison, the second-biggest area of Democratic votes in the state. Hong was already popular with Democrats there, but this could push it higher.

But it will open the door to Republican attacks, should she win the primary. They may run ads about Hong’s comments with a bullhorn, combined with past statements by her supporting “defunding the police as a first step toward abolishing the police.”

That said, there will be Republican attacks against whoever wins the Democratic primary. You can expect a very negative general election because Tiffany is so out of step with the electorate on issues like abortion, and so supportive of Trump on unpopular issues like tariffs and the Iran War, that his campaign must even the playing field with attacks on his opponent. If it’s former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Republicans will repeat ads used against him in the 2022 campaign for U.S. Senate charging he wanted to abolish the police (though he really talked about “redirecting or decreasing” police funding). If it’s Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, he will be attacked for the Twitter account he had as a young man which posted crude and offensive remarks.

Even someone like Joel Brennan, who has been sold as a centrist candidate that will be more difficult for Republicans to target, won’t be invulnerable. They would run ads quoting the Milwaukee Courier story blasting Brennan for his ad that “attacks every person of color in the race for Governor” with its warning that Hong, Barnes and Crowley will “all lose to Republicans in November.” This could become fodder for suppression efforts — ads targeting Black voters to discourage them from voting.

Last week’s Marquette Poll found that 67% of Democratic respondents said that winning the November general election was “extremely important” to them. Barnes has pointed to the poll’s finding that he leads Tiffany in a head-to-head matchup, with 44% vs 40% for the Republican, while Hong and Brennan trailed Tiffany by 3% and Democratic State Sen. Kelda Roys trailed by 4%. But with at least 10% of likely voters undecided in all cases and the poll’s margin of error of 4.5%, the results are suggestive but far from definitive.

Far more striking are the numbers that break down support for Hong by age: Among registered voters in the Democratic primary, 43% of those aged 18-29 support Hong (Barnes is a distant second with 14%) and 38% of those aged 30-44 support Hong (with Barnes at 16%). Hong is behind Barnes only among voters 60 and over. Though you could weigh those figures against the average respondents’ view of Democratic Socialists of America (net unfavorable by 18%) and Democratic socialists (net 30% unfavorable). That, too, might be fodder for attack ads.

Meanwhile, Hong continues to get national media attention, with The New York Times today doing its second story in three weeks on the surprising rise of the democratic socialist in Wisconsin. Hong continues to offer the clearest stands and most sweeping policies. Only Hong has proposed a one-year moratorium on data centers, allowing time to create a state regulatory structure to prevent “tech giants” from treating “our communities, land, water, energy grid, and ratepayers as collateral in a speculative gold rush.” All the other Democrats oppose any taxpayer subsidies of data centers. But so has Tiffany.

And none of the Democrats were so harsh in their criticism of the Madison police as Hong is. All, including Hong, talked about the need for body cameras and better training and stricter procedures for police, but only Brennan talked about how a governor might make this happen, noting that more shared revenue for local governments could pay for more thorough training of police.

Brennan’s candidacy has sought to repeat Gov. Tony Evers‘ formula for winning office in 2018, offering Democratic moderation from an experienced Capitol hand. But this is not 2018. Democrats are angry and want a fighter, and no one fits that description better than Hong. Yet that very clarity may make her the easiest to attack.