In the bleak Covid winter of 2020, with Joe Biden elected but not yet sworn in and Donald Trump seething in the White House, Francesca Hong, a then 31-year-old chef and restaurateur in Madison, Wisconsin, had a radical Thanksgiving thought. She decided to share it on Twitter. “Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a worldwide pandemic for us to realise we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed the indigenous folk and women, so be it.”Six years later, that message, along with other ideologies Hong has either published or spoken about, is being held against her by both Republican and moderate Democrat critics as she heads into next Tuesday night’s primary election to become an official candidate for governor of Wisconsin. Since March, Hong has soared in the polls tracking the Democratic primary race. A fortnight has passed since Mandela Barnes, one of her opponents, dropped out stating that it was “obvious” who Wisconsinites would elect. Sara Rodriguez, the lieutenant governor, also suspended her candidacy following staff mismanagement of campaign financing.A week after Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary win in Michigan was heralded as a major breakthrough for the guerrilla progressive socialist movement, the national focus will return to the midwest. Specifically, to see if Hong’s poll lead over David Crowley, a black Milwaukee County government official, will transfer to reality in the polling booths. Waiting in the wings will be Republican candidate Tom Tiffany, armed with a deep financial war chest from mega-donors.Wisconsin presents the same dilemma for the Democratic movement as Michigan did. Hong, an avowed member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is carrying the momentum and a clear, urgent message to earn the candidacy. But notional polls suggest that ultimately, Crowley would have a better chance of beating Tiffany in the general election. Meanwhile, Hong’s critics are raising the alarm.Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the US Senate election in Michigan, addresses supporters at the Majestic Theater in Detroit on Wednesday. Photograph: Nick Hagen/The New York Times “It’s inexplicable. If you look at her and listen to her for two minutes – one minute will do it – she is a radical nutcase,” said Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News host turned radical-conservative YouTube broadcaster.“There is something deeply wrong with this person. She wants to get rid of the Pentagon, the US Senate, prisons, also the presidency. She would like to get rid of police as well. Obviously she wants to defund Ice. Medicare for all: I can’t wait to see who is going to pay for that. “And her latest pitch is that she gets white privilege: she is Asian but her son is half Korean, half white and therefore she has been in ‘the proximity of whiteness and she sees what that will do for someone’. She speaks of course of her 10-year-old son – so she is willing to bastardise her own child and his privacy for the sake of getting a leg up on the argument.”Bill Maher, the political show host who specialises in snarky humour, offered a scathing take on Hong’s remarks to supporters in May, in which she said her ideal world would contain no prisons because society would then see the humanity in one another and “know that nobody’s disposable”.“Well, murder victims are,” Maher told his audience. “If you heard this kind of nonsense coming out of the mouth of a teenage beauty queen it would be an eye-roller.”Beside him, Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor who has brilliantly and ceaselessly marketed himself as an empathetic seer of the wrongs and ills in American society, applauded. Meanwhile, David Axelrod, the former Obama-era adviser-turned-CNN analyst, took to X to point out that it would be best for El-Sayed if Hong lost on Tuesday night. David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to the US president during Barack Obama's presidency. File photograph: CJ Gunther/EPA He posted: “He is a serious person. She is a font of zany liberal faculty lounge exotica. But the R’s, hoping to deflect attention from an unpopular president who hangs from them like an anchor, would surely try and link Abdul and Hong as philosophical kin.”Kelly, Galloway, Maher and Axelrod see themselves as belonging to very different political spheres. But they have one thing in common. To the increasing number of American voters attracted to progressive and Democratic-socialist candidates like Hong, all four are high-profile figureheads of the prevailing US political system which they are bucking against. For divisive voices like Kelly and bad-boy-of-the-class figures like Maher, that system has been extraordinarily generous. Maher and Axelrod are children of the 1950s; Galloway was born in 1966, Kelly in 1970. The American Dream – at once a cliche and untouchable aspiration – delivered for each of them in bucketloads. Kelly has a net worth of $45 million (€38.9 million), Maher’s is estimated at $150 million. Their experience of what the United States could offer is unrecognisable to the generations of Americans whose 21st century experiences have been defined by 9/11, the 2008 crash, the Covid pandemic and the lurching economic fortunes generated by those various catastrophes. Hong has rejected corporate donorship, believing her messaging and manifesto will appeal to voters. Tony Evers, the exiting Wisconsin mayor, and a Democrat, has endorsed Crowley.Francesca Hong, who is running for governor of Wisconsin, with a supporter in Racine, Wisconsin. Photograph: Sara Stathas/The Washington Post via Getty Images “I am a chef and one of the first meals I made for the community was a Thanksgiving meal,” Hong told Kaitlan Collins on CNN this week by way of contextualising her now-infamous Thanksgiving note. “I was 16. I always think my hospitality background, in owning a restaurant for seven, eight years of bringing folks around the table to share a community and build a conversation, is a good thing. Thanksgiving is also a time that is incredibly painful for many people in our community. There, I wanted people to understand that there are multiple views. Views can evolve.”Hong is strikingly soft-spoken for a politician and carries herself with an unflappable demeanour. She doesn’t go in for retaliatory politics, instead presenting her manifesto with the patience of a primary school teacher. She rowed back on her comment about defunding police and closing prisons, pointing out that it is beyond the remit of the office of governor.“What I am interested in is about being serious about safety and that means ensuring that law enforcement has training they need and holding law enforcement that breaks the law accountable,” she said. “We have to be sure that the system which is right now incarcerating more Black and brown men than any other state in the country, where schools are having to have referenda to figure if they can keep the lights on . . . Democratic socialism to me is ultimately rooted in caring and making sure that people have their needs met. “It is still democracy, fairness and human rights. I am one of the proudest Packers fans, our publicly-owned NFL team. Tom Tiffany is having to go through my old tweets because a lot of what he has done is about defunding healthcare, ripping food away from our children, supporting a national abortion ban. And last time I checked, he still hasn’t said who won the 2020 election.”Hong’s webpage presents a campaign that is almost European in its emphasis on equality and funded programmes: free school meals, universal childcare, guaranteed paid leave for Wisconsin workers, rights for gig-economy workers, affordable housing and construction programmes, property and estate taxes. It is easy to see why younger Wisconsin people who feel locked out of the prevailing system would be drawn to her manifesto – and why the wealthier and property-owning demographic would interpret it as a quick tax heist coming down the tracks.Governor candidate Francesca Hong speaks on stage during the Wisconsin Democrats convention in June. Photograph: Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for WisDems Nationally, the emergence of Hong gives beleaguered US president Donald Trump further fuel to his campaign to try and convince Republican voters of an apparent communist putsch within the Democrat party. Trump has learned the futility of aiming his noxious barbs at Democratic party grandees such as Senate leader Chuck Schumer: it’s a bit like trying to punch a bouncy castle into submission. Nothing lands. But the sudden emergence of the progressive, socialist-driven rebellion within the Democratic party has provided Trump and the GOP with the gift of an attack point as they prepare for the midterms. What better way to make Americans forget the cost-of-living crisis and the Iran War than to present them with the next Red Scare?While giving a speech in Las Vegas earlier this week, Trump referenced Hong without mentioning her by name.“And in Wisconsin, the communists even have a woman who said that the holiday of Thanksgiving should be immediately abolished and the police only exist to quote ‘uphold white supremacy’. These people are dangerous and frankly, they are lunatics. They’re crazy and we can’t let them get into office.’Hong’s supporters believe the establishment cannot keep her out. They expect her to be governor by Thanksgiving.