I was going to take a few days off from writing satirical pieces because it’s a nice day outside, and I need to organize my deck. Plus, the farmer’s market was selling bouquets of purple flowers and sourdough bread. Real life beckoned. But, while going on a 2.5 mile walk around Oconomowoc’s Fowler Lake, I kept thinking about Francesca Hong’s support for abolishing prisons. In fact, when the Wisconsin Electoral Socialists endorsed her, they touted her clear commitment to the causes of police and prison abolition and stressed they will hold her to it.
I could write this up as a straight news story, but, well, I’m not going to pretend that it’s normal that the proudly anti-capitalist Democrat front-runner for Wisconsin governor isn’t being immediately laughed out of the room for actually wanting to abolish prisons and police. The governor’s race has degenerated into a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not political carnival. And this is the best way to capture the utter absurdities of it all.
Leave it to Milwaukee television reporter AJ Bayatpour to ask Hong, the Democrat gubernatorial front-runner, a rare tough question; as in, this talking point might work at a meeting of the UW-Madison socialist graffiti club, or over a breakfast of waffles with Ryan Clancy, but how will it work in, you know, real life? (I met AJ Bayatpour for the first and only time at the Milwaukee Press Club awards dinner this year, as an aside. He was standing near my award certificate for public service news reporting, and I told him, “Keep asking tough questions of both sides.” Because he’s the only reporter who consistently does that. He said, “Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?” And then I walked away. Well, yeah. But who else does it?)
Now, and for our entire past, people have committed horrible crimes, even when their basic needs are met. In a world without police and prisons, who addresses those crimes?
“There are rehabilitation services we can be investing in now to help prevent crime” pic.twitter.com/ii4qbI5Bmh
— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) May 30, 2026
Anyway, while other reporters were acting like stenographers and just repeating what Hong said, as if it wasn’t completely bonkers, Bayatpour said to Hong, as he put it on social media, “Now, and for our entire past, people have committed horrible crimes, even when their basic needs are met. In a world without police and prisons, who addresses those crimes?”
What did Hong say?
“There are rehabilitation services we can be investing in now to help prevent crime.”
That answer fries my brain. So let’s do a thought exercise and imagine Hong becomes governor and establishes a series of rehabilitation services instead of, you know, Waupun and Dodge.
Actually, this might not be that far-fetched. With all of the killers applying at warp speed for a Tony Evers commutation before he leaves office (28 in Milwaukee County alone and counting), there might be no one left in prison anyway.
But let’s imagine there is. Is she just going to let everyone go? What about Darrell Brooks, the Waukesha Christmas Parade attacker? Or people who murdered cops. Christopher Scarver? They just get to stroll out the front door and go their merry way? Does the warden hand them a token for a Francesca Hong rehabilitation service? Does the courthouse close? All trials are suspended? Can you imagine reckless driving without police? Heck, why stop there. Let’s get rid of stoplights too. Just let people do whatever they want. Why have rules?
Democrats are weird. They want paternalistic government giving everyone checks and free stuff, but they want government to back off when people hurt other people (or commit fraud.)
Of course, Hong doesn’t say how this would actually work because, as Bayatpour’s question exposed, this isn’t really a policy position. It’s a bumper sticker that makes the left feel good, and is applauded by generations too young to remember the CCCP or how society considered cops and firefighters heroes after 9/11 because they were the people who ran toward the danger when everyone else ran out. Make Red Dawn a required watch in high schools. This started with Bernie. Suddenly, people thought socialism was trendy and cool because they aren’t old enough to remember Leonid Brezhnev. Those old Soviets weren’t a lot of fun.
The left, in their own minds, are the “nice people” who want to “help” the downtrodden (ie child m*lest*rs.) It’s actually a well-worn Hollywood trope, the white savior complex.
It’s “hate has no home here” as a campaign plank.
It would all just be comical except Hong is AHEAD in the Democrat primary polls, and she is shockingly close to Republican Tom Tiffany in head-to-head match-ups. Of course, my dog Cookie could run for governor and she would get an automatic 45% as long as she had a D after her name.
Hong’s positions are naive and dangerous to the extreme. She assumes these mythical rehabilitation services would prevent all crime. If Jeffrey Dahmer had only had the luxury of a Francesca Hong rehabilitation service, he wouldn’t have committed all those murders! What about child m*lest*rs? They don’t need punishment! Just rehabilitation services. Ted Bundy, if he had come to Wisconsin? Give him a rehabilitation service!
Stop calling her a “Democratic socialist.”
Start calling her what she is.
She’s an anarchist.
My God. What if Francesca Hong becomes governor? Is that possible? Well, she has a real shot of getting out of the Democrat primary in August, due to her strategic use of digital media, the crowded field, and her unconventional campaign tactics in a world that increasingly despises conventional politicians. Two prominent Republicans told me they see her campaign lit all over northern Wisconsin in coffee shops and the like, in non-typical places, college students randomly bring her up, and those DSA types can organize. Of course, the establishment Democrat machine wants her out because Tom Tiffany has his best shot against Hong. It’s hard to imagine any independent over 35 voting for her. The establishment on the Democrat side knows this. But she may serve the purpose of making Mandela Barnes look briefly more moderate than he really is. After all, he just said reducing prison populations is sexy. Sounds relatively mainstream by comparison.
She has a host of goofy positions, from wanting to legalize prostitution to calling mothers “birthing bodies.” She actually wrote, “Birthing bodies have the right to freedom.” The post is still up.
The former restaurant worker recently voted to allow government to keep taxing workers’ tips and overtime. She voted against criminalizing grooming of minors. It goes on and on. She’s wrong on almost everything.
But it’s her abolish police and prisons rhetoric that is the most jarring.
She’s assuming that people who commit crimes are all on the system’s radar. She’s assuming they can be rehabilitated versus some of them just enjoying committing crimes or being downright evil. She’s discounting crimes of passion and the need for punishment. And she still hasn’t explained exactly what would happen if the “rehabilitation services” (ie the latest grift) didn’t work.
Let’s say Killer A murders his wife because he didn’t care to partake in rehabilitation services. Where would society put him without prisons? Who would catch him without police? Please don’t tell me unarmed social workers would make him go through a counseling session.
She doesn’t explain.
What happens to repeat offenders?
She doesn’t explain.
This is not a serious position.
But I’ll tell you what would happen. It would be Lord of the Flies. People can’t govern themselves. Haven’t you seen the Walking Dead? It’s not really about zombies. It’s about society without any centralized government at all. That’s all collapsed. And what happens? The people form into groups and police themselves. They quickly become tyrannical and the strong prey on the weak.
Heck, just look at what happened in Kenosha. Leadership made the disastrous decision to push rioters from the semi-controlled park in front of the courthouse and into the business and residential districts, where they were allowed to roam free. This quickly degenerated into arson fires and the Rittenhouse shooting. He was guarding a used car lot because the guy’s other lot was torched because the police decided not to control the streets.
Hong’s vision for Wisconsin is dystopian. Would she disband the state patrol? Free everyone who applies for a commutation? How far would she actually take this? Who knows? But I guarantee Wisconsin would end up with no businesses. And there would be a mass exodus to Florida. She has said she would use the National Guard to arrest ICE agents who are trying to arrest violent illegal criminals.
Even weirder, Hong has called Tiffany a “f*cking traitor.” So she wants to hold the hands of vile killers, and let them roam free. But that former tour boat operator? He’s the bad guy!
She recently touted an appearance with a Twitch streamer who said America deserved 9/11 and that Ham*s was the lesser of two evils.
Hong isn’t catchy and fun.
She’s dangerous.
Since Ferguson, the left has flipped right from wrong. Cops are the bad guys and criminals the victims, much of it based on myth.
While it’s tempting to write her off as a faddish anomaly, her ascendancy to Democrat Party front-runner (per the polls) says something important about the modern left. Trump has provoked such extreme reactions from his opponents that they’ve moved to the far regions of the left. This is not your father’s Democrat Party. Is Francesca Hong the center of the modern Democrat Party?
Time will tell.
