Politics
Wisconsin Democrats’ governor primary is an all-out fight over electability
KENOSHA, Wisconsin — The progressive movement’s midterms march has arrived in Wisconsin, where a democratic socialist is forcing establishment Democrats to mount an all-out, last-ditch effort to stop her.
State Rep. Francesca Hong is the front-runner to become the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, fueled by a populist campaign tapping into voters’ cost of living concerns. David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive backed by outgoing Gov. Tony Evers, has emerged as the top candidate trying to cut off Hong’s bid.
Ahead of Tuesday’s primary, electability was top of mind for voters and both candidates as they raced to prove they could build the widest, strongest coalition against presumptive Republican nominee Tom Tiffany.
Crowley and Evers have been barnstorming the swing state over the past week, warning a vote for Hong risks losing the governor’s mansion in November to Tiffany, a hard-right member of the House Freedom Caucus backed by President Donald Trump.
“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 in an interview at a local tavern in Sheboygan on Friday.
Hong rejects those warnings. Speaking to voters at events across the state, Hong argues Democratic voters are fed up with the establishment ahead of November — and that she can appeal to a wide array of Democrats, Republicans and people who don’t feel represented by either party.
“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 of about 50 people gathered at a senior community center in deep-red Siren.
Hong, a 37-year-old former chef and single mother who represents the bluest district in the state assembly, has charted a remarkably rapid rise in a purple state that Trump won by just shy of 30,000 votes in 2024. She launched her campaign as a long shot, with far less name recognition than other Democrats in the race like Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Both of them have since dropped out. And despite being at a consistent fundraising disadvantage — Hong still has not put out a single television ad — the progressive has maintained wide leads in public polling.
But Hong’s campaign has also faced intense scrutiny over a string of controversial past social media posts, including advocating for defunding the police and railing against Thanksgiving. She was later slammed for being unable to give a straightforward answer to CNN about whether she would “cancel Thanksgiving.”
Following those missteps, Hong’s team has clamped down on her interactions with both local and national media at campaign events in the final stretch. She has also moderated some of her past positions in public remarks, emphasizing repeatedly that she is “serious about public safety” and even attempting to eschew some of her anti-establishment ties.
On Wednesday, she reversed herself on Thanksgiving, telling POLITICO that it was, in fact, her favorite holiday. And asked by Blue Light News on Saturday if she had any regrets about her past, she told reporters at a campaign stop in Sheboygan that she had learned from her tweets.
“I had some hot takes, some bad takes on Twitter, but when you’re a business owner running a restaurant during Covid, trying to pay bills as a student, you’re putting feelings out there into the world,” Hong said. “But I’ve evolved, I’ve learned. I think it’s more dishonest not to learn.”
Hong has leaned heavily into affordability policies, including raising the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $20, progressive taxation and a statewide one-year moratorium on data center construction — a salient issue in Wisconsin, where several local governments have already voted on moratoriums.
“While many of our supporters or other folks have framed us as anti-establishment, what we are for is working-class people,” she told Blue Light News. “It’s not so much being anti-establishment as it is ensuring that we’re listening to voters who are demanding change.”
But many Democrats in the state worry her ideology — including the old social media posts hawking far-left talking points — will be a political risk in a battleground general election.
Pro-Republican PACs, including one associated with the Republican Governors Association, have spent millions of dollars to boost Hong in the primary so they can face who they perceive to be a weaker candidate in November.
Kyle Kilbourn, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran against Tiffany for his House seat in 2024, said he still had not decided who to support in the primary because of concerns about “electability statewide.”
“The last several elections have been very very close, by one or two percentage points, and so it matters,” he told Blue Light News while attending a Hong event at a brewery in Rhinelander.
Even some of Hong’s supporters are anxious.
“It’s always going to be a concern,” Jan Stroman, who attended an event in River Falls, said when asked if Hong could win against Tiffany.
Robert LaGesse, 74, said at an event in far-north Superior on Friday he was voting for Hong — but admitted Hong’s tweets about abolishing the police “sounds like a foolish statement that could hurt her big time.”
At the same event, a young Hong campaign volunteer asked her about those social media posts.“I’m not going to abolish the police as governor,” Hong responded. “I cannot and I will not defund the police.” She was asked a similar version of the same question at nearly every other event last week.
Some supporters also fear that Hong will face racist and sexist backlash as an Asian American woman. Wisconsin has never elected a governor who is not a white man.
“There’s a lot of sexism yet in our country,” Tim Freiss, 60 — a Hong supporter who previously voted for both Bush presidencies — said in an interview outside his home in Green Bay.
“Honestly, what I’m worried about is her race, because our state is very racist,” another Hong supporter, Heidi Meyer, 48, said as Hong canvassed her neighborhood in Appleton.
Democratic officials in the Badger State are determined to unify after the primary, but many are deeply concerned Hong isn’t running the disciplined campaign required to defeat a Trump-backed Republican in Wisconsin.
The messy race has also deeply divided Democrats in the state. Hong’s allies bristle at Evers’ campaign against her, using his resources — including his own communications staff — to boost Crowley. Evers defeated Republican then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2018 by deploying his brand of more moderate Democratic policies to win over independents and limit deep losses in rural areas. But he decided not to run for a rare third term as governor.
Evers on Friday would not commit to endorsing or campaigning with Hong should she win — though Democrats expect he’ll have to.
“I want to have a chance to take a breath, and once that’s in a position, we’ll see,” Evers said in an interview as he walked with Crowley from a Hmong family-owned bakery in Sheboygan to the corner tavern packed with supporters.
Crowley, asked if he would campaign for Hong this fall if she wins the nomination, shot back with a smile: “Ask her that too.” But he quickly added: “I want to be very clear: I’m not in this race running against any of my opponents. I’m running for the votes of Wisconsinites, and if they don’t choose me to be the nominee, my job is to make sure that it’s blue no matter who.”
Asked Saturday if she would endorse and campaign with Crowley if he wins on Tuesday, Hong replied with one word: “Yes.”
Hong has admitted the democratic socialist label comes with baggage — “I can’t say I always love it for me,” she said at a restaurant in River Falls — but she also rejected the notion that her campaign is undisciplined and noted that establishment Democrats had consistently underestimated her bid. She hopes to work with Democrats across the ideological spectrum in the sprint toward November.
“We’re a serious campaign that has built a movement and turned out new voters, folks who are voting for the first time,” Hong said. “We’re a serious campaign that knows how to win, but we’re also serious about working as a coalition and making sure that we collaborate and coordinate with the people that we need to to make sure we defeat Tom Tiffany in the fall.”
Crowley has charted a more moderate path than Hong’s blistering democratic socialism. In an interview, he argued the party needs “someone who’s not just going to fight back, but also who can sit at the negotiating table and be able to work with folks who want to deliver for those that we represent.” He also ruled out the data center moratorium popular with a wide swath of voters that Hong is running on and using to pull in some pockets of rural support: “So, the way I hear that question is that we’re going to preempt local communities from not being able to focus on their own economic development,” Crowley said.
There are signs that Crowley is making some gains. But he’s still 20 percentage points behind Hong in the latest polling.
“Crowley is closing the gap, but it’s likely too little, too late,” said one longtime Wisconsin Democratic strategist, who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the governor’s pick.
Crowley’s team argues that Wisconsin polling is likely off just as it was in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed clinched the Democratic Senate nomination last week by a tighter than expected margin. But the signs of Hong’s strength are evident across the state, beyond just her stronghold of Madison. The first voter Crowley greeted at his opening Sheboygan stop Friday, Paige Gerber, said in an interview later she had already voted early for Hong.
Supporters at the Crowley event later in the day were well aware of his standing. Voter after voter in interviews with Blue Light News expressed alarm that their party was poised to pick Hong, a losing horse in their view.
Retirees in “radicalized by basic decency” T-shirts sipped on beer and cheered when Evers walked through the door with Crowley, alongside local IBEW union workers and teachers. “Tony! Tony!” chants eventually rang through the bar.
A Crowley staffer at one point tried to start a “David! David!” cheer. But it never caught on.
Tyler Katzenberger contributed to this report.
Republicans and Democrats are fighting over working class voters. Americans don’t believe the rhetoric.
Fifty-five percent of Americans think politicians are just trying to win votes when they say they will help the working class, according to new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s a view held by majorities of people who voted for President Donald Trump, who voted for Kamala Harris and who self-identify as working class.
Only one in four Americans who self-identify as working-class say politicians genuinely want to help them.
That wariness comes as both parties increasingly see working class voters as key to their winning coalitions. But The POLITICO Poll results show both parties face serious challenges to doing so.
Neither party does particularly well with Americans who identify as working class: 38 percent of them say Democrats best represent them, while 32 percent say Republicans. Americans, broadly, are almost identically split, with a 37 percent plurality saying Democrats best represent the interests of the working class, while 30 percent say Republicans.
Democrats wrestling with how to win back voters who have drifted toward the GOP — as their coalition has grown increasingly dominated by college-educated Americans — are locked in an intraparty battle over which wing of the party, progressives or moderates, best speaks to these voters.
“We’ve struggled with the working class for quite a while and it’s been a combination of being out of touch with working class values on a lot of culture issues and being seen as either not helpful or not helpful enough on economic issues,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), widely considered the leader of the progressive movement, told Playbook’s Will Steakin that progressive Democrats “are speaking to the needs of working families.”
“It is not just traditional Democrats or independents,” he said. “There are a lot of working-class Republicans who understand that there’s something wrong when we are the only major nation on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are trying to hold onto the gains Trump made in 2024 with working class voters — including Black and Latino voters frustrated with the Biden-era economy — at a time when cost of living remains voters’ top concern.
“With the [Iran] war, with gas prices, with cost of food, the working class is not happy with the president, and many who are independents and even some Republicans have said that he’s forgotten about them,” said former Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Renacci.
Who is working class?
Complicating both parties’ efforts to win over these voters is that Americans do not agree on what makes someone working class. Neither do lawmakers and party officials.
When asked whether the term “working class” describes them, a 59 percent majority of Americans broadly say it does, while just 31 percent say it does not, according to the survey conducted by London-based polling firm Public First. But when forced to choose from a list of labels — including wealthy, middle class, lower middle class, working class and poor — just 16 percent of adults say they identify as “working class.”
Americans are also divided over what characteristics define the working class.
Some politicians, including progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Andy Schor, the centrist Democratic mayor of Lansing, Michigan, have argued the definition of working class is expansive — encompassing anyone who needs to work to pay their bills.
“If you’re not making enough money that you don’t have to work, then you’re working class,” said Schor in an interview. “The American Dream is to be able to work hard and get ahead, and people are not getting ahead like they used to, and they’ll look at the folks that they vote for and think, ‘Who can help me to get ahead?’”
The Blue Light News Poll illustrates the difficult path for the GOP to solidify its gains with working class Americans as economic concerns continue to be top of mind: More than a third of this group say they are not currently employed. A 35 percent plurality also say Trump, not former President Joe Biden, is fully responsible for the economy and many oppose the war in Iran, which most say has made things more expensive for them.
Half of self-identified working class Americans say Trump has spent too much time focusing on international affairs instead of on domestic issues.
“I think [Republican candidates] just got to tell the truth,” Renacci, the Ohio Republican, said. “You just have to start realizing that those middle class voters are struggling and they’re just looking for somebody who’s going to understand their issues and problems.”
The race for 2026
November will offer a major test of whether each party’s working class pitch is working, carrying implications that extend into 2028.
Candidates in both parties are racing to flex their working class bonafides this cycle, leaning on their biographies to signal ties to these voters. Trump pushed that playbook to extremes in 2024, when he briefly worked the fryer and drive-through window at McDonald’s as part of a campaign swing through Pennsylvania.
Republicans have continued that approach, with candidates and administration officials emphasizing their blue-collar roots on the campaign trail. Vice President JD Vance recently returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, where he spoke at the steel plant where his grandfather worked.
In battleground Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins — the state’s GOP Senate nominee — often touts his background as a trucker. And GOP Sen. Susan Collins has broken with Trump on tariff policy, saying his trade fight with Canada hurts working families and small businesses in Maine, where she’s locked in a competitive battle for reelection.
These efforts come against the backdrop of increasing concerns about the economy, fueled by the ongoing Iran war.
Democrats, meanwhile, are divided over which flank of the party can best appeal to working class voters, a fissure that burst into public view during primary season, when a slate of progressives prevailed in high-profile contests.
“The working class are giving Democrats another look and we better not blow it,” said Kessler of Third Way. “Donald Trump got reelected based on the notion he was going to fight for you, working class men and women, and his first year and a half has been anything but that.”
Some Democrats have made their working class background central to their pitch: Sam Forstag, a union leader and former smokejumper, is running in an open district in western Montana that Trump won by double digits in 2024. Bob Brooks, a firefighter union chief, is challenging GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in Pennsylvania.
But some progressives are still running into limits: In Michigan, one of Democrats’ must-hold seats in November, the state’s divisive Senate primary illustrated that debate in real-time. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination, performed best in the state’s wealthiest and most highly educated areas, while moderate Rep. Haley Stevens did better in places with lower average incomes and where fewer votes have college degrees.
Jessie Blaeser contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump’s Arab American allies in Michigan are jumping ship. Mike Rogers could pay the price.
Four days before the 2024 election, Donald Trump declared in Dearborn, Michigan that “the Muslim population” is “liking Trump.” On Election Day, the state’s Arab Americans helped deliver Trump a victory.
Now, they want nothing to do with him — and are souring on the GOP overall.
Many Detroit-area Arab Americans, who swung hard to Trump over the war in Gaza and cost-of-living issues, are now saying they’re fed up with the ongoing war in Iran and slow peace process in Gaza. It’s a shift that could have direct consequences on the battle for Senate control, with former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers fighting to hold onto Trump’s 2024 gains against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim whose parents are Egyptian immigrants.
Trump’s perceived broken promises — exacerbated by GOP attacks against El-Sayed that some see as Islamophobic and racist — are pushing these voters out of reach for Rogers.
“[Trump] promised to make America great again,” said Albert Abbas, who presented a peace prize to Trump during his 2024 Dearborn visit. “Did he do that? Did he put American interests first? It’s the complete opposite.”
A dip in support from Arab American former Trump voters could hurt Rogers’ path to election in what’s shaping up to be a tough year nationally for the GOP. And it could offset gains he makes in other communities — including with some Jewish voters who are wary of El-Sayed for his harsh criticism of Israel and comments from him and his allies that some see as antisemitic. Both communities matter significantly in close elections, and Michigan has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the country, with nearly 400,000 living in the state, as well as more than 100,000 Jews.
Michigan Republicans — who, just two years ago, dreamed of building sustainable support among the state’s Arab American population — now see community leaders shifting ranks.
“Once the administration got into the White House, everything we were told kind of flip-flopped,” said Hassan Nehme, who served as the Michigan Republican Party’s vice chair during the 2024 cycle and helped lead outreach to the Arab American community. “We lost all traction. Republicans are kind of dead in the water in the area right now.”
Dearborn-based Imam Husham Al-Husainy backed Trump in 2024 and was slated to offer a benediction at the inauguration but was removed from the program after complaints from pro-Israel conservatives. He said he now backs El-Sayed because Trump recanted on his promise for “no new wars.”
Amer Ghalib, a former Democratic mayor of Muslim-majority Hamtramck, backed Trump in 2024, and was later nominated by Trump to serve as ambassador to Kuwait, though he didn’t get confirmed in the face of bipartisan concerns about a history of allegedly antisemitic remarks. He said Republicans “should be more concerned about losing the long-term trust of the Arab American community than about losing the gains they made in 2024.”
“There is a tremendous work that needs to be done … to address people’s concerns and regain their trust,” Ghalib said.
And Faye Nemer, who leads the Dearborn-based Middle Eastern and North African American Chamber of Commerce, said the midterms will mark a “change in sentiment” in her community toward Republicans.
“Many voters, including myself, are now asking whether the policy promises we received bear any resemblance to the reality that we’re seeing on the ground,” said Nemer.
Rogers has not shied away from branding his opponent as a Muslim extremist. He’s hammered El-Sayed for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a prominent and controversial left-wing influencer who’s drawn accusations of antisemitism, as well as slamming El-Sayed for responding to an attack on a Michigan synagogue earlier this year by condemning it but saying “hurt people hurt people” because members of the attacker’s family had been killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon.
El-Sayed has condemned antisemitism throughout his campaign; in a statement distancing himself from Piker last week, he said “Antisemitism is a scourge, and we need to address it in all its forms”) On Saturday he apologized for his remarks after the synagogue attack,telling a group of Jewish Democrats that he’d “made a mistake” and that “nobody deserves to have their pain trampled on.”
Rogers’ allies have also circulated reports from conservative outlets that seek to link El-Sayed’s father-in-law to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“El-Sayed wants to represent Palestine,” Rogers said at the Michigan GOP convention last week. “I want to represent Michigan.”
Trump has weighed in, too: The week El-Sayed won the Democratic primary, the president told reporters in the Oval Office that the country is seeing “jihadists being elected all over the place.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s first ad of the general election called the Democratic nominee by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
The NRSC ad will “alienate and distance” potential Arab American supporters, said Nemer.
“I most certainly will not support a candidate that is alienating and vilifying my community,” said Nemer, who met Trump during his 2024 visit to Dearborn. “I was fully prepared to support Mr. Rogers. … But after seeing the direction that he chose to proceed in, that’s given me a lot of pause.”
Nehme, the former state GOP vice chair, said many Arab Americans are drawn to El-Sayed because of his background, even though many are far more socially conservative than the Democratic nominee. “They’re not even really looking at politics anymore,” Nehme said.
During Rogers’ unsuccessful 2024 Senate bid, he acknowledged that his outspoken support for Israel caused some consternation for Muslim voters. That cycle, Trump won Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that is the only Arab-majority city in the U.S., by six points; Rogers ran behind him, losing in the city by two points. It was a significant improvement over 2020, when President Joe Biden and Democratic Sen. Gary Peters each won the city by around 40 points.
Monica Yatooma, who helped the Trump campaign’s outreach to Muslim and Arab American voters in 2024 before launching a failed bid for secretary of state this cycle, said she doubts Republicans can match Trump’s gains in Arab-majority areas in the current environment.
“The only reason [Arab Americans] voted for Trump is because they were voting against [Vice President] Kamala [Harris],” she said. “They weren’t voting for Trump, so they’re not really conservative voters, and there’s no value there for them with Mike Rogers that aligns with their values.”
It is unclear what, if anything, Rogers is doing to reach out to the community. Yatooma and Nehme, both Republicans, said they have seen little outreach from Rogers’ campaign.
“I’m hoping that they pull through and they come out and at least try to address the community,” Nehme said. “But in all actuality, I’m not sure how much good it’s going to do.”
Rogers’ campaign, when asked several questions about his outreach to the Arab American community, said “the Chaldean community has been a strong ally,” referring to a Christian ethnic group with Iraqi heritage whose largest community outside the Middle East resides in the Detroit area. Yatooma, who is Chaldean, said her ethnic community has historically voted for Republicans.
“Mike Rogers welcomes all Michiganders, regardless of faith, socioeconomic status, or background, to our campaign to Get Michigan Working Again,” said Alyssa Brouillet, spokesperson for the Rogers campaign, in a statement. “The same can’t be said about Abdul El-Sayed, who continues to fan the flames of antisemitism, sympathizes with the terrorist attacker who tried to mass murder 140 kids in a Michigan synagogue, and refuses to disavow Hasan Piker, who calls Jews ‘inbred.’”El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak called attacks invoking El-Sayed’s faith and identity “cheap.”
“Mike Rogers is resorting to cheap attacks to distract from his deep record as a corrupt career politician who has taken millions from Big Pharma,” Wozniak said in a statement. “Michiganders see right through it, and they’re not going to let Mike Rogers distract from the fact he’s spent thirty years in Washington making himself and his billionaire donors richer while selling out working families.”
Without hearing directly from the Rogers campaign or state party leaders, Arab American voters say their community is likely to swing back to the left this election.
Could Rogers “go into Dearborn and have those conversations and fix that?” asked Yatooma. “I think yeah, absolutely. I just don’t know if he’s doing it.”
The night after verbally sparring with Abdul El-Sayed on primetime television, Fox News host Jesse Watters had kind words for the progressive Michigan Senate nominee.
“I like him,” Watters remarked Tuesday to his co-hosts on “The Five,” albeit right after saying he doesn’t trust him. “I don’t want to like him, but I like him.”
Less than 24 hours prior, the two had engaged in an adversarial, wide-ranging interview in which Watters pressed El-Sayed to explain his stance on transgender women in sports and his support for the Green New Deal. For his part, El-Sayed tried to spin Watters’ pointed questions into opportunities to recite his core campaign slogan and call his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a “beta” male.
Who exactly won the interaction is less relevant than the fact that El-Sayed, a progressive, went on one of the nation’s top conservative-leaning cable news shows to spar with one of Fox News’ stars.
His performance, in which El-Sayed gave little ground to Watters — regularly talking over him to finish a point and negging him for the pointed nature of his questions — presents a new model for how some progressives, hot off a string of primary victories, are looking to market themselves to a wider range of voters while also showing they can withstand scrutiny, or even fight back, on America’s marquee conservative network.
“Even if you only get 30 seconds, that’s the length of a political campaign ad, and they’re basically handing you air time to speak to a couple million people, potentially,” said Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of progressive magazine Current Affairs and occasional guest on the network.
Those appearances, however, are fraught with risk. Every second-too-long pause, jumbled response or nodding agreement on live television can be instantaneously clipped and become fodder to delegitimize their platform. It’s already happened a handful of times this cycle.
“When you don’t do well is when you go on and hand them exactly what they want, by appearing to not know what you’re talking about,” Robinson said.
Democrats have long appeared on Fox News as a way to reach conservative audiences who otherwise might prove unreachable.
But those trudging to Fox News’ green rooms had, in the past, broadly been more centrist Democrats trying to make a general election case than progressives gearing up for a brawl, particularly with the network’s primetime lineup of conservative opinion hosts.
Potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, considered one of the party’s strongest communicators and a self-described moderate, has been a regular on the network dating back to his 2020 run — a strategy he cast in 2024, at least, as an effort to argue on behalf of Democrats for viewers who don’t usually hear their side of an issue.
Progressives now say they see a similar value proposition. Conservative media has spent much of the ongoing election cycle scrutinizing progressives and, specifically, the Democratic Socialists of America — who have endorsed multiple candidates running in November. Going on Fox News, some argue, simultaneously gives the left an opportunity to vouch for itself while also giving the movement more visibility.
“It’s very exciting for us as leftists to finally have to think about these things,” Robinson said. “They didn’t used to invite us on cable news shows.”
When reached for comment, Fox News spokesperson Jessica Ketner pointed to viewership data from Nielsen indicating its spot as the most viewed cable network in the U.S., with an average of 2.5 million viewers during primetime.
A host of progressive candidates and figureheads accepted interviews with the network’s hosts this summer. Democratic socialists like Pennsylvania House nominee Chris Rabb and Wisconsin state Rep. Francesca Hong, then in the closing days of a tightly contested gubernatorial primary, both appeared on the network, as did Gustavo Gordillo, a co-chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA— which endorsed several primary winners in the city’s cobalt blue districts.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another occasional guest on Fox, said in a text message to Blue Light News that, rather than going on to try to show up the host, he wants the network’s audience “thinking that I deeply love our country, have ideas about how to build the future economy for every American and am a decent guy worth having a meal with.”
The purpose of those interviews, he continued, “is to try to find some common ground in our toxic political culture.”
Monday’s interview with Watters marked El-Sayed’s third interview on the network, and first since winning his primary in early August.
In a statement, El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said that “while Mike Rogers refuses to debate and ducks requests from media outlets, Abdul isn’t afraid of a fight.” He added that El-Sayed has been “showing up, taking tough questions and making his case directly to voters” throughout the campaign.
But progressives have also had their fair share of stumbles on the network.
DSA co-chair Megan Romer was widely criticized for an August interview in which she provided one-word affirmations to Fox host Shannon Bream’s inquiry into the group’s platform — which soon provided ammunition to conservatives looking to paint the organization as dangerously extreme.
“Replace the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them?” Bream asked.
“Yep,” Romer responded.
Such misfires, Democratic consultant Mark Longabaugh said, can partially be attributed to the relative inexperience of some progressives who haven’t taken interviews with similarly adversarial outlets.
“You just may not be aware of the way that interview’s gonna unfold and how tough it’s gonna be,” said Longabaugh, who advised Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign.
The DSA didn’t make Romer available for an interview, but the group’s spokesperson, Priscilla Yeverino, said in an interview that “we see the feedback, and we see the blowback.”
“The co-chairs absolutely take that responsibility, and they take it in stride,” Yeverino added. “That’s what they use to continue to improve and fine tune our messaging and to try to broaden our audience.”
Still, progressives say the reward outweighs the risk — as long as the candidates come prepared. Corbin Trent, a Democratic consultant who cofounded Justice Democrats and a former communications director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said that a candidate greatly benefits from having time to develop a cohesive worldview that makes answering off-speed questions easier.
Trent, who has appeared on the network multiple times, added that the short nature of the TV hit gives little time to debate the nuances of political ideology — making every second count.
“You can’t go into there and have a conversation about what they want to have a conversation about,” he said. “You have to talk about the things that you think are important in your platform.”
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