Democratic Assembly candidate Ben Brist walked up to a suburban door this campaign season pitching himself as a moderate: Army veteran, sixth-generation Wisconsinite, first-time candidate just introducing himself.
Then a voter pressed him.
The man claimed he was skeptical of Democrats. He said he had been a Francesca Hong voter. He felt that campaign had been “robbed.” He was frustrated.
Brist did not distance himself from the Madison socialist. He did the opposite.
“I know there was a ton of excitement around Fran and what she was trying to do,” Brist said on the doorstep, according to video of the encounter. “But, you know, like, Fran Hong and I have some, like, probably different, like, vibes, but, like, man, we want to work on the same stuff, and we want to get the same stuff done.”
In one sentence, Brist dropped the moderate act and let his true policy goals shine through.
Hong is the democratic socialist state representative from Madison who ran for governor this year on a statewide pause on data centers, a state-owned bank, public grocery stores, higher taxes on “the rich,” and canceling Thanksgiving. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Assembly Socialist Caucus. She previously backed defunding and abolishing the police. She was one of just six Assembly members to vote against a 2026 anti-grooming bill that passed 93-6 after a Kenosha teacher targeted a 14-year-old.
Brist is the cleaned-up version of the same project.
He is a West Point graduate and Army captain who deployed to the Middle East, then picked up a graduate degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School. He settled in Madison but moved to Greendale to run in the Assembly District 61 against Republican incumbent Bob Donovan, a longtime Milwaukee alderman who now represents Greendale, Hales Corners, most of Greenfield, and parts of southwest Milwaukee and Franklin. Democrats need only a handful of seats to flip the Assembly. This is one of the districts they are targeting.
Brist’s public pitch is the same moderate branding that Democrats dust off every election cycle regardless of how they govern in Madison. His campaign site also lists a moratorium on data centers, the same signature demand Hong used to brand herself as the only Democrat willing to hit the pause button on AI infrastructure. That is the same agenda, sold in military fatigues.
This is how the modern left wins seats it cannot win on its actual record. Hong says the quiet part in Madison, where a socialist label is a feature. Brist says the quiet part only when a former Hong voter forces the issue, then immediately wraps it in “different vibes.” The substance does not change. There is not a dime’s worth of difference between what Hong wanted to impose on Wisconsin and what Brist says he wants to “get done.” One candidate lost a statewide primary because swing voters recoiled from the brand. The other is walking suburban lawns hoping they will not notice the product is the same.
The voter in the video already sensed the problem. He liked Hong’s energy and felt the party snatched it away. Brist’s answer was not “I am not her.” It was a confession: “We want the same stuff.”
Donovan has spent decades in Milwaukee politics and now represents a district that is not Madison’s east side. Brist is counting on the military résumé to paper over the Harvard-to-Madison pipeline and the policy overlap with the state’s most prominent socialist. The video unmasks Brist’s real agenda.
Voters in District 61 do not have to guess. Brist said it himself. Different vibes. Same goals as socialist Hong.
