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Entry: Watts and Hong
(aka: George Watts' Ginko Trees)

There is a point in every electoral cycle that where leftist voters are wooed by opportunist candidates trying to enter the two party system. Sometimes the candidates are ideological allies who are optimistic (or illiterate) of American political history. Other times they are calculating Janus-faced partisans looking to build an electoral coalition before pivoting hard right to govern.

There are structural obstacles to nominal leftist candidates who've achieved political office regardless of how they got there: by open electioneering, appointment, promotion or subversive French Turn. The zeitgeist is ripe for this type of candidate to bubble up from the back benches, academy, clergy or non-profits when the two-party impasse is unresponsive and unpopular for a prolonged period. There is an unrelated but similar impulse on the right. There is also an unrelated impulse within the "duopoly" where centrist partisans swap labels for political affect with varying degrees of political effect. These obstacles and opportunities have absolutely nothing to do with forming or running a government. A ridiculous amount of time is spent in this partisan arena. Sometimes these political obligations overtake the work of legislating and executing law.

Some revolutionary leftists pragmatically align with opportunist partisan campaigns that promise to merge Internationalist socialism with American republicanism. With a century of historical evidence starting in the Gilded Age--playing politics is romantic and vain. The organizing and momentum of these talented organizers and clear thinkers is sapped by the unlikely promise of democratic socialism from within the Democratic Party. Funneling revolutionary pressure into this electoral dead end is one way American republicanism--which is still better than British monarchy--subverts the long overdue democratic pursuit of socialism.

Wisconsin is one of many states with a Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) candidate on the 2026 ballot. This occurs in the immediate wake of Zoran Mamdani's election in NYC. It is also an inspired reaction to the Israel Lobby's infiltration of the Democratic party, made untenable by the live streamed genocide. This is particularly important in Michigan where both Kamala Harris' presidential and Haley Stevens senatorial campaign losses were contoured by Israel. Because the duopoly has failed on the Middle East and Persia, the zeitgeist is ripe for a DSA surge.

This Democratic Party faction is a political generation removed from "The Squad" caucus (2018) featuring DSAers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. A major squad plank, along with the Green New Deal and free college, was a continuation of Bernie Sanders' Medicare-for-All campaigns of 2016 and 20. Uncle Bernie inspired many in the current crop of progressives who watched him successfully navigate some of the structural obstacles of government without losing his principles or cantankerousness. All sorts of leftists have dismissed the Bernie/DSA type socialism as inadequate. One of the clearest critiques was from Murray Bookchin. He dismissed Sanders as bread-and-butter, authoritarian, patronage favoring and ultimately a turncoat who sold out to capital once Vermont's radical left put him in power. [1]

Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong is of this tradition. She is running as a DSAer from Wisconsin's 76th Assembly District--Madison's isthmus and north and near-east. If Bookchin's Bernard Sanders is the grandfather of this movement then we can expect Hong to be pragmatic, unprincipled and a republican distraction that deflates revolutionary socialist pressure. Sanders, his protege AOC and their Fighting Oligarchy Tour (2025) is embedded with a dialectical tension between proletarian class consciousness and ruling class fundraising that is as confusing as the modern iteration of DSA.

Hong is also of a different, state specific tradition, Sewer Socialism, focused on clean governance and infrastructural improvement. All Wisconsin socialists have blossomed from a seed planted by Austrian-American Victor Berger (US Rep. 1911-3, 19, 23-29) and watered by ideological offspring--Emil Seidel (MKE mayor 1910-12), Daniel Hoan (1916-40) and Frank Zeidler (1948-60). Today, Midwestern states voting for democratic socialists in primaries have caused the costal news-media (once convinced Mamdani-stan was haute couture) to rediscover basic parts of American history. The same happens when other mid western critiques of coastal partisans--like progressives, non-partisans or populists--become salient to the talking hair-dos and their tele-prompters.

This Sewer Socialist tradition is, along with the LaFollette Progressive, an outsider faction that can win and has won in Wisconsin. Hong's poll numbers surged following the Democratic Party debate and she is the presumptive nominee to run an underdog campaign against north-woods Republican, the dam man, "Youbetcha" Tom Tiffany. Though Hong has popular support the state's democratic party still remains a potential obstruction to her general election bid. They have already begun to unite behind Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. There is ample historical evidence of the power centrist consolidation has to subvert popular opinion. There are classic examples in the Wisconsin movement (as Socialist Berger was elected but refused a seat during WWI) and and the national resurgence (as Independent Bernie was undermined first by DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Shultz and then again by subsequent chair Donna Brazile).

Hong is of the tradition that Democrats have undermined and republicans (of both parties) have obstructed. It is likely this continues. These political machinations take up as much of a candidate's attention as any policy proposal or upcoming debate.

Zeidler had a protege called Wendell Harris who ran in the 2000 Milwaukee mayoral election against incumbent John 0. Norquist (1988-04). George Watts was the third man in the race. In his campaign memoir Watts described Harris as "the African-American Socialist Candidate" [2] in the chapter titled "The Betrayal" [3]. It is an unflattering and unverified instance of Sewer Socialist politics from the primary.

Watts was a lapsed republican and third generation downtown business owner. He believed in free way expansion, lower taxes and community policing. Norquist's twelve years in were not prosperous for Milwaukee. He was a chief spokesman for New Urbanism which is mixed use development connected to light rail. Both Watts and Norquist were sympathetic to developers and the police. They simultaneously and ironically courted environmentalists and the poor--to whom they were the lesser of two evils. This is Bernard Sanders social democracy at work. Presumably, twenty-first century Sewer Socialists like Wendell Harris are (marginally) to the left of this and would demand mass transit, city owned housing and labor union contracts.

The results of Milwaukee's 2000 Democratic primary were such that the second-place right-wing Watts would have more votes if the third-place socialist Harris withdrew from the race and backed him. According to Watts, the two campaigns had a mutual agreement before the primary to do just this: unite against Norquist. After the election there was a contentious debate about the police commissioner. Watts wanted to fire and replace him. Harris (and Zeidler) didn't. The result was Harris withdrew from the race but abstained from supporting either candidate. To Watts, this "betrayal"--for once executed by an Democratic Socialist against a (lapsed Republican) Democratic partisan--is just one example of the political machinations grinding beneath republican government.

To get this far in the race, Hong must have engaged in this type of back-room politicking already. Clear-eyed leftists who support her should expect an appraisal of these deals. They should also demand to be part of any future agreements. Or the left can expect a centrist correction when she begins to govern and her markers are called in by capitalists and partisans.

The duplicity of the Socialists wasn't why Watts felt cheated in the 2000 election. Norquist gave him the run-around and Watts found it hard to get media attention. In his eyes, Watts was a victim of the Journal Sentinel refusing to publish me-too style allegations by a subordinate against Norquist until after the election. This is evidence of the institutional hurdles that outsider candidates must navigate to gain power. It also shows a naive sense of entitlement on the part of Watts.

Hong, like Watts, is not likely to receive traditional media deference. To her credit, she has courted national "independent media" like Hasan Piker and Breaking Points. She is also trained as a sports broadcaster with a "Bucks-in-Six" tattoo on her calf. Compared to her Democratic predecessor, "Milquetoast" Tony Evers, Hong has a seemingly authentic joie de vivre that plays on exuberant State Street, the bustling Third Ward, in laid-back drift-less farmland, raucous north-woods taverns and contemplative lakes.

Liberals like Watts are suspicious of the DSA because the DSA is suspicious of capital. There is also baggage from the 2000 duplicity. People on the left of the DSA have a different critique. The Squad inspired DSA appear, at times, to be insufferable opportunists willing to sacrifice principle for power. Anyone of the progressive 2026 candidates could--over time--prove to be pragmatic centrists riding the national DSA surge into office. Another problem identified by anarchist Bookchin is that moderate progressive gains--if they are modeled on Bernard Sanders authoritarianism--create frameworks for "Republicrats" to abuse when they inevitably retake power. Sanders calibrates his "independent" politics toward the "duopoly" center every day he is in office. This is a republican popularity paradigm rather than praxis based on observation and theory.

Strange alliances are all over the American political scene. But it is concerning for social scientist Marxists and their romantic idealist antagonists to organize with republican pragmatists--even if everyone intends to move in the same direction toward socialism. Organizing alongside someone you don't trust is fraught and the movement's pragmatic right (the DSA) is negotiating with both communists on the left and capitalists on the right. It is an untenable position to make concessions to people who celebrate capital and people who abhor it, yet this is where the DSA exists. As the political economy and the zeitgeist changes, so do the politics of entryists. This fungibility is a fine trait for a republican representative at a town-hall meeting. To be uncommitted to theory, process, the dialectic and historical material is not how Marxists--of any revision (DSA included)--are taught to see the world.

To unbracket the imperial elephant--no one should trust any American official, historical or current, regardless of their partisanship. The people who create obstacles to international democracy are the inheritors of reneged Indian treaties, justified slavery, reconstructed segregation, the torching of Europe and Asia, who domineered the Global South, and today fund a genocide in the Mediterranean while simultaneously slaughtering children in Persian classrooms, black bagging world leaders and their families, executing fishermen, blockading and sanctioning much of the world's population and fighting multiple global proxy wars. During the run up to the Democratic Primary (May 2026), the Americans sunk an unarmed Iranian Frigate (IRIS Dena) as it returned home from a peaceful International Fleet Review in a flotilla alongside US Navy ships. It was only the second torpedo attack since WWII. American leaders were internationally condemned. With any perspective, this event codes more like sinking the Lusitania than the Laconia Incident (where U-156 rescued people after torpedoing the ship). American leaders are war criminals and anyone who wants to join their ranks must continuously justify the nation's continued existence to remain legitimate. Brackets back on.

Hong is in the tradition of the socialists who reneged on Watts. The point of contention, according to Watts, was the firing of a police chief. Tough-on-crime community policing and anti-drug policies were major parts of Watts' right wing Democratic campaign and his memoir of it. This issue split the presumptive capitalist-socialist coalition and their adversary, the New Urbanism liberal, won. Followers of Michael Parenti would be relived that this Red-Brown alliance didn't take hold in Milwaukee. Through that historical lens Harris and Zeidler were probably right to abstain from further Democratic partisanship in this electoral cycle.

Supporting a capitalist like Watts was wrong because his ideas about wealth, labor and the mode of production are irreconcilable with socialism. Even so, Watts civic pride, wide (but not deep) reading list and effusive love for others make him a remarkable man and asset to Milwaukee's commercial community.

His (presumably) kid, Sam Watts--on the other hand--is of a different generation raised in American business downtowns who would rather live off the interest produced by their family's principle within skyscraper penthouses and on private islands. They hire bankers to maximize the personal returns of their portfolio and civics are only a distant part. Sam's eulogy for George Watts & Son Inc. stresses the "increased profitability" of their "hard assets and the maximization of our other real estate endeavours." [4] This is the type of anti-social behavior that George Watts' two campaigns for mayor were against. But seemingly, everybody (even Uncle Bernie) is destined to sell out to developers. Economic development, after all, is an immutable Marxist principle even if the Luddite urge to move to Walden Pond feels better.

Today there is a parking garage on top of Watts & Sons Teashop, Watts--the freeway shill--would have liked that. New Urbanism inspired apartments were built next door, Watts would not have liked these. The ginkgo trees (that Zeidler helped him plant in 1953) have apparently all gone but there is a new generation planted along the street and they look healthy enough. Watts died in 2005. Sam's investments are private and no longer part of Milwaukee's community history.

A generational detour into Wisconsin's democratic politics helps to clarify continuing themes like centrist consolidation. It also highlights evolving coalitions--Watts was a conservative Christian Scientist born into a retail family selling of objets d'art to wealthy Milwaukee clientele and Hong is a socialist Korean American millennial who started as a dishwasher, line cook, sous chef, executive chef and then owner of Morris Ramen in Madison (2016-24). A shocking divergence of conservative and progressive pressures exist within the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. In today's zeitgeist, with the failure of the "duopoly" and sometimes literal comatose state of America's leadership, Hong is the type of candidate that can excite lapsed democrats and invite leftists to a big Democratic tent. Just like the Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football--we will end up on our butts.

At this point in nearly every electoral cycle leftists are asked to abandon their third parties, righteousness and apathy and vote for the lesser of two evil parties. In Wisconsin 2026 we have a bone fide DSA-er in pole position for the Democratic nomination. Supporters of Hong must confront "Youbetcha" Tom Tiffany's larger campaign fund. They also must prepare for the historical likely-hood that Democratic partisans and their agents (like Neera Tanden) start shenanigans. It seems there is a segment of centrist Democrats that would rather a fascist Republican win than a socialist Democrat (possibly because they know they can't beat a progressive incumbent). Governing in this mess--without a DSA specific majority--is another matter. The tendency might be to cut idealist Hong some slack--but she is choosing the position, asking for our support and must have plans for these seeming inevitabilities.

An aside on Wisconsin's August 11 partisan primary. Leftists have the choice to vote for either Democrat Hong for Governor or Green Peter Karas for Secretary of State. Karas is a long time Green that is participating in liberal republicanism through a less likely path without as many compromises. This is commendable. His likely poor showing in the unnecessary Green primary--of which he is the only candidate for any office--doesn't mean much for the general election.

I'm pretty sure (one week before the polls close) Karas got one vote for the unofficial fusion ticket in the Democratic Party primary from Oneida County and I hope this doesn't mess up anybody's funding schemes or electoral plans. This subversion is just another mystery of democracy in action and also why the whole thing is suspect.

notes:

[1] Murray Bookchin "The Bernie Sanders Paradox: When Socialism Grows Old" (November-December 1986) Socialist Review 90.
Bookchin is concerned with Sanders' consolidation of power, patronage positions, and sympathy for capital. He describes the evolution of Sanders' coalition from north end radical hippies and libertarians to developers.

[2] Watts framing is different than the WISPOLITICS Feature titled "Tuesday's primary sets stage for historic mayoral election in Milwaukee" (14 February 2022) which included a retrospective, "Retired factory worker Wendell Harris, running as a Democratic Socialist in the officially nonpartisan contest, took 18% to finish behind Norquist and conservative businessman George Watts in 2000." (my emphasis). The numbers are the same between sources Watts and WISPOLITICS. But, there is a difference between the labels "democratic socialist" and "socialist" that matters to a few pedants in even fewer contexts--this note is one.

[3] George Watts "The Betrayal circa 29 March 2000" Insurrection in Milwaukee: The Right to Rise USA: George Watts, 2003. 85-90.

[4] quoted by OnMilwaukee "George Watts closing store and tea house, remaining online" (18 November 2016).