Do Democratic Candidates Need to Be More Moderate?

Mandela Barnes, David Crowley, Francesca Hong, Sara Rodriguez, Kelda Roys and Missy Hughes.

Last week, it seems, the nation’s most prominent newspaper decided it was time to beat up on Mandela Barnes.

On October 20 the New York Times wrote a story declaring that “Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win” for Democrats. In Wisconsin, the unsigned analysis by the editorial board noted, “Mandela Barnes, a progressive Democrat with a history of supporting cuts to immigration enforcement and police funding, lost his 2022 Senate race,’ while [U.S. Senator Tammy] Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers “have won by running to the middle.”

The next day the newspaper ran a story by Reid J. Epstein, a former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who knows this state well, which revealed that Wisconsin Democrats were “uneasy” about the return of Barnes as a statewide candidate. He is expected to run for governor in 2026 and “would be the front-runner the moment he got into a campaign for the Democratic nomination,” predicted Joe Zepecki, a Wisconsin Democratic consultant who is not involved in Barnes’s deliberations.

A poll by a Republican political firm in Wisconsin found Barnes had support from 16% of Democrats, “a figure twice as much as any of the announced Democratic candidates in the race but not necessarily high enough to intimidate primary rivals.”

“The apprehension about Mr. Barnes, 38, is less about his age or a connection to a detested party establishment than it is about a desire to avoid renominating a candidate who recently lost,” the story noted.

Barnes’ 2022 loss to incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who had taken some wildly extreme positions, was a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow. Johnson’s campaign relentlessly attacked Barnes as out of the mainstream, and Barnes didn’t effectively counter this. After the defeat, then state Democratic chair Ben Wikler blamed under funding by the national Democratic Party: Johnson had a $26.4 million edge in spending by outside groups.

But the Times analysis argues that it is not about funding but the candidate’s views. “Candidates closer to the political center, from both parties, continue to fare better in most elections than those farther to the right or left,” it notes. “The evidence is vast. Republicans have frittered away winnable races in Alabama, New Hampshire and elsewhere over the past decade by nominating extremist candidates, while Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, is the only sitting senator who represents a state that reliably votes the other way in presidential elections. On the Democratic side, there are no progressives in the mold of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders who represent a swing district or state. Instead, the Democrats who win tough races work hard to signal to voters that they are less progressive than their party.”

Of 17 Democrats — 13 in the House, four in the Senate — who won in places that Mr. Trump also won in 2024, “Moderation dominated their campaign messages,” the story noted. That included Baldwin, who is famous for campaigning hard in heavily Republican rural areas. The Times analysis of House elections last year found that more moderate Democrats out-performed the party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris by 2.8% and more moderate Republicans out-performed Donald Trump by 2.9%.

In a swing state like Wisconsin you might think moderation would be always be an advantage. Yes and no, says one Wisconsin democratic consultant. “Wisconsin voters tend to treat the US Senate differently and we have a long track record of sending mavericks in both parties (usually one at a time) to Washington. You can look at Joe McCarthy, Gaylord Nelson, Russ Feingold, Ron Johnson. None of them can be considered moderates.”

But candidates for governor are a different matter, he told Urban Milwaukee. “To win a Wisconsin governor’s race, you have to be perceived as a moderate, and I would argue that is true going back at least to the 1970s. Tommy Thompson was a moderate, Jim Doyle was a moderate, Scott Walker in 2010 ran a much more moderate race than he is remembered for in his turn in later years, Tony Evers is a moderate. It was only after Walker’s in-your-face conservative swing presidential race that he lost for governor.”

Longtime Democratic pundit Mordecai Lee goes even further, arguing the Democratic primary for governor rewards moderation. In the 2002 Democratic primary of Doyle vs. Tom Barrett, “Doyle was the more moderate,” he noted, and won. And in the 2018 primary, “all the other major candidates (i.e., well-funded, well-organized, etc.) were to Evers’ left. But Evers won his 10-way primary with 41% of the vote. That’s a de facto landslide,” he wrote in an email to Urban Milwaukee.

The field of Democrats currently running for governor includes Milwaukee County executive David Crowley; state Rep. Francesca Hong; Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez; state Sen. Kelda Roys; and Missy Hughes, who served as Mr. Evers’s top economic adviser. If Barnes enters the race that will increase the number of name candidates to six. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann are running as Republicans.

Most observers expect Tiffany to win the GOP primary and “Tiffany is pretty fu—ing crazy,” says another Democratic consultant. “If you match any of these Dems up against him, they will seem pretty sane.” But similar statements were made about Ron Johnson and he won.

Of the five Democrats, who is likely to be more moderate? Hong is a socialist, Rodriguez’s introductory video called Trump a “maniac” and Roys called him an “extremist” she vowed to take on. They may end up competing for the more progressive Democrats.

By contrast, Crowley has touted his work with Republican legislators to gain more funding for Milwaukee County and an increased sales tax; his announcement video critiqued the “chaos and cruelty” of Trump but also portrayed himself as a problem solver who cut property taxes.

Hughes has been the most overt in claiming the mantle of moderation. She has described herself as “not a politician” and someone who will reject “divisive politics.” She served for six years leading the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation for Evers and before that worked for 17 years at Organic Valley, a Wisconsin-based dairy cooperative that began in 1988 and includes more than 1,600 family farms in 34 states and over 900 employees. “Right now the hunger is for someone who understands the economy and isn’t divisive and I fit that lane perfectly,” Hughes told the Associated Press.

If Barnes as expected, enters the race, he seems likely to run to the left of Hughes and perhaps of Crowley. Though the clash of the campaign inevitably offers surprises that can better define and even redefine the candidates.

The good news for Democrats is this is a solid slate of candidates that will give voters lots of options. More than anything they may want the candidate with the best chance of winning the general election. “It’s more likely the voters in Wisconsin will support a moderate,” predicts another Democratic consultant, “since we’ve seen them do that many times over.”