Corey Ruiz pulled a knife on Madison police officers Wednesday. He injured an officer and the officer returned fire, killing Ruiz. That is the sequence according to the police chief. What followed was the familiar Madison ritual: candles, megaphones, and politicians racing to the scene before the facts had even been discussed.
State Representative Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist running for governor, showed up with a bullhorn on Willy Street to show solidarity with the group. As she began speaking, she called the shooting “state sanctioned violence.” The crowd wanted more and voices pushed her to say the word they had already decided on: murder. Hong paused. The gears turned as the political calculus began. She eventually called it an “execution” and stayed with her prepared language from campaign statement. She did not cross the line the mob demanded, but execution certainly satiated them.
That pause is the story.
Hong has spent years inside the Madison bubble on the Isthmus, which might be the safest area for a progressive. She has called for defunding and abolishing the police. She assumes every police use of force as systemic racism until proven otherwise. Yet when the cameras were rolling she understood that it was a delicate moment and she needed to be calculated. She understood that “murder” is still a word that carries legal meaning and political risk. Even she understands America is tired of the 2020 vocabulary. Hong knows it, even if her base does not.
Hong’s formal statement was already extreme enough. She declared an execution before any independent investigation had begun, before any additional-camera footage could be reviewed, and while an injured officer was still recovering. That is not caution and the temperament of someone who should be Governor.
Still, the crowd’s demand for the harder word revealed the trap she is in. Say too little and the activists who form her base will turn on her. Say the full radical script and half the state writes her off as unelectable. Hong has lived her entire political life in the Isthmus. The rest of Wisconsin is not the Isthmus. Property taxes, school quality, and basic public safety matter more to most voters than the latest social-justice slogan the left conjured up.
This is not 2020. The country watched cities burn, watched crime spike, and watched the activists shout “abolish the police.” This brand, although popular with the progressive base, has become more and more toxic as the years go on. Hong’s hesitation at the vigil shows she has noticed too. That is a difficult balance to hold for an entire primary let alone general campaign.
Wisconsin does not need another governor who treats police officers as the problem the moment they defend themselves. We need leaders who understand that a man with a knife who injures an officer is not a victim of “state violence.” Francesca Hong’s careful pause told us she understands the political danger of her own rhetoric. The question is whether she can keep that discipline through November, or whether the bubble eventually reclaims her.
