And it seems to be… working? At least as far as the primary goes, where she is currently the front-runner, much to the chagrin of establishment Democrats, who perhaps fear that what makes Hong popular among her own demographic will work against her in the midterms.

It’s a perennial problem: what plays well with the base is anathema to the general public. And the base, in this instance, is an assortment of Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering, hyper-woke, university-educated urbanites – many of them no doubt women with similarly sour takes on heartland Americana. The district Hong represents in the Wisconsin state assembly – a neighbourhood in the famously lefty college town of Madison – is described with words like ‘colourful’, ‘eclectic’, ‘vibrant’ and ‘sourdough’.

Much was being made this week by Republicans and conservatives on social media about Hong’s old tweets, but no one needed to go back far into the past to find her incendiary views. Only last month, her own district was teetering on the edge of a woke race war, after local police shot and killed Corey Ruiz, a homeless man who had stabbed an officer with a knife. This kicked off weeks of far-left protests and an ‘encampment’ similar to the ones that plagued Seattle and Minneapolis after the 2020 George Floyd shooting.

Hong was very much on the side of the protesters, not the forces of law and order – a tricky position to take when it comes to winning over centrist and independent voters in a General Election. She called the shooting ‘an execution’ – even though police say Ruiz pulled a knife on them and he had a history of fighting with local police. She accused police of ‘inflicting “harm and terror”’ upon black people. She paid tribute to Ruiz, who had an extensive rap sheet with more than two dozen criminal complaints, as ‘a member of our community’.

When, after weeks of noise, filth, destroyed livelihoods, anti-social behaviour and violent crime, the protesters were finally cleared out by the authorities, Hong tweeted that she was ‘deeply disappointed’… in the police.

At least she is consistent with her insane woke takes.
Hong wrote on X in a (now deleted) post in 2020:

‘Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621. If it takes a pandemic to realise that we should stop celebrating colonialism and the original superspreader event that killed Indigenous folx and women, so be it.’

Her attempt this week to explain herself on Kaitlan Collins’s CNN show somehow made her seem like even more of a killjoy. She said: ‘Thanksgiving is also a time that’s incredibly painful for many people in our communities.’ If by ‘communities’ she means people in her own family who will be forced to endure her tiresome woke lectures as they try to enjoy their Thanksgiving turkey, then sure.

In another resurfaced video from 2021, she frets about her ‘proximity to whiteness’, referring to her own white husband and mixed-race son. And she just generally comes across as highly strung, brittle and somehow – for a person of such small size – quite menacing.

I know likeability is not the most important quality on which to judge a politician, but she really does seem like a person determined to piss in everybody’s stew. Take the time when she both denied her kid a delicious treat in a local eatery, and was simultaneously racist against the majority of voters in her state (which is over 80 per cent white) while also revealing her own mental instability. That’s a lot of work for one single tweet!

‘I had two bites of my kid’s cheeseburger… and I told him they ran out of ice cream’, she wrote. Mostly just wanted to leave [the restaurant] because I was on the verge of an anxiety attack… too many old white people who didn’t think we spoke English.’

She has also made implied threats against the president: ‘I’d say it’s about fucking time we 86’d Trump.’ Call me old-fashioned, but I preferred it when potential governors a) didn’t swear publicly and b) didn’t make oblique references to assassinating political opponents. Feels like a red flag!

She has since attempted to replace her more incendiary policy goals, to defund the police for example, with gobbledegook platitudes about being pro ‘public safety’. Which is about as insightful as a candidate saying they are pro-rainbows.

For now, Republicans are relishing the thought of taking the Hong show on the road. Her potential opponent, Republican Tom Tiffany said, with some justification, that she wants to ‘destroy the traditions and culture that unites us’. Wisconsin may have liberal and woke enclaves, but the state is also home to a large number of blue-collar workers and farmers, who’ve shown time and time again that they do not want hard-line woke policies. If Hong wins her primary next week, the people celebrating the most might just be the Republicans.

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.

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