Sara Rodriguez

Hong, remember her, Francesca Hong, the one that had just so many crazy ideas.

Well, Crowley dropped out of the race in early July only to reenter 10 days later after his preferred candidate, Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez, ended her campaign.

With backing from departing Governor Tony Evers, Crowley saw his support surge in the final weeks against this Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary.

While they have agreed to debate, Crowley and Tom Tiffany will meet in late October for the only confirmed debate between the two candidates running in the state's first open race for governor in more than 15 years.

We're going to take our first break and then we'll come back with more.

KDAL time is 1228.

Hey, you were talking about Lisa Demuth.

Yes.

It was one of the more fascinating races that we've ever covered just because so much happened in a short amount of time.

You had all of a sudden folks began coalescing around Sarah Rodriguez, the lieutenant governor.

She was gonna be the, the, I guess, establi- quote, unquote, "establishment" candidate.

Yeah.

A Marquette poll from March showed Crowley supported by only 3% of Democratic primary voters.

He left the race believing that Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez would be the stronger Democrat.

He also didn't want to split the mainstream Democrats' votes.

When Rodriguez was later dropped out due to finance accounting problems, Crowley jumped back in.

So that boosted him in the last minute.

Sarah Rodriguez dropped out the lieutenant governor who people already knew and had name recognition.

So a lot of things changed the poll.

What was significant was that for a long stretch, Hong had a lot of the support.

They were locked in.

You couldn't have said the same about the other candidates, especially after Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez's implosion and Mandela Barnes having to bow out as well.

Mm hmm.

Interesting.

Firstly, the moderate lane, uh, quote-unquote, in this race was a total mess.

Um, uh, Sarah Rodriguez, the, I believe, current lieutenant governor, was at one point considered to be, like, the moderate favorite, but then she dropped out due to, like, a truly mind-bending, um, campaign finance mess-up involving one of her staff where, like, they were essentially, I think, systematically, like, misreporting how much money she had, and I think bank believed she had money, and she actually didn't, so she had to drop out.

Uh, then there was Man- Mandela Barnes, who, um, I think had run for Senate in Wisconsin before and come fairly close.

Um, he then dropped out, uh, in, seemingly there was some reporting that was about to drop in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about his, y- you know, relationship with, with young women in the party.