Eleven Days Before the Primary, Mandela Barnes Walks Away From a Race He Was Supposed to Win

Mandela Barnes launched his campaign for Wisconsin governor in December as the presumptive frontrunner. On Thursday, with absentee ballots already returned by roughly 128,000 voters and in-person early voting underway, he ended it.

The announcement came in a video posted to social media. Barnes, 39, said he had held a very difficult conversation with his staff the night before, expressed pride in what the campaign had built, and delivered the line that made his reasoning plain: it has become very clear who the nominee is going to be.

He did not say her name.

The Poll That Preceded It

A Marquette Law School survey released Wednesday found state Representative Francesca Hong leading the Democratic field with 38 percent, Barnes trailing at 16, and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley at 7. Roughly a third of primary voters remained undecided, and the margin of error was substantial — but the ordering was not close.

That poll landed the same week as the race’s only televised debate, after which Barnes described the primary as the most ridiculous race in the country.

The Reporting

Barnes’s exit also coincided with reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which said it had questioned him about allegations of inappropriate behavior that had been raised with the state Democratic Party — specifically, claims that he used his position in the party to pursue sexual encounters with young adult women.

The context around those allegations matters and deserves to be stated fully.

The state party engaged a law firm in 2025 to examine similar claims contained in a letter sent to the party, local officials and news outlets. According to a source familiar with the response, the allegations in that letter were anonymous and unspecific, and both the internal review and the outside investigation found nothing actionable.

Barnes has not been accused of any crime. A spokesperson said flatly that there are no allegations of misconduct or wrongdoing against him. His campaign did not respond to questions about whether the reporting influenced the decision to withdraw, and Barnes himself attributed the exit to the state of the race.

The Journal Sentinel has said it is continuing to report the story.

A Primary That Keeps Losing Candidates

Barnes is the third Democrat to leave the field.

Former state economic development director Missy Hughes withdrew in June. Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez ended her campaign roughly two weeks ago after revelations that her campaign’s finances and organisation were in disarray.

Rodriguez’s departure triggered the sequence that arguably sealed Barnes’s fate. Rather than consolidate behind him, Governor Tony Evers and others persuaded Crowley to re-enter the race — and Evers endorsed Crowley the same day.

Evers told reporters Thursday he was surprised by Barnes’s withdrawal, adding that Barnes needed to do what he needed to do and that he assumed something relatively important was behind it. He stood by his endorsement, saying Crowley would have been the strongest candidate even with Barnes still running.

For a man who served as Evers’s lieutenant governor through an entire term, that is a notably cold assessment.

The Symmetry With 2022

There is an irony here that Wisconsin Democrats have noticed.

Four years ago, Barnes was the beneficiary of exactly this dynamic. Rivals in the Senate primary — Alex Lasry, Tom Nelson, Sarah Godlewski — dropped out in succession and endorsed him, clearing the field on the argument that unity mattered more than any individual campaign.

He went on to lose to Republican Senator Ron Johnson by fewer than 27,000 votes, roughly a single percentage point, in a year when Evers won re-election comfortably. That narrow defeat left some in the party questioning whether he had earned another statewide attempt.

This time, he was the one stepping aside.

A Career That Moved Fast

Barnes was elected to the state Assembly in 2012, at 25, and served two terms. In 2018 he joined the ticket with Evers, and their victory over Scott Walker and Rebecca Kleefisch returned the governor’s office to Democratic control after eight years.

He became the first Black lieutenant governor in Wisconsin history and only the second Black person to hold statewide office there. He was widely seen as one of the party’s rising figures, and Senator Adam Schiff endorsed him in this race as the kind of bold leader the moment required.

His fundraising reflected that standing. Campaign finance filings from July 15 showed he had raised the most in the Democratic field — $841,358 in the first half of this year, $1.4 million across the campaign — though heavy spending left him with $204,208 at the end of June. The next reports are due August 3.

What Happens to the Race

Hong, 37, is a state legislator, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a single mother and a former restaurateur. Her platform centres on healthcare expansion, affordable housing, childcare and workers’ rights.

Crowley moved quickly to court the vacated support, telling Barnes backers on social media that there is a place for them in what he is building. One Democratic operative described the exit as opening a significant door for him, though Crowley’s campaign privately acknowledges the effort is a long shot at this stage, with Evers’s endorsement possibly arriving too late.

Hong said she was undecided about whether to seek Barnes’s endorsement.

Barnes has pledged to support the nominee and urged Democrats to unify behind defeating Republican Representative Tom Tiffany, the all-but-certain GOP candidate, over the next 96 days. As recently as Wednesday, however, he had publicly questioned whether Hong could win a general election in Wisconsin.

The Larger Stakes

If Hong prevails on August 11, the general election becomes something more than a state contest. With the 2028 presidential primary approaching, a democratic socialist carrying the Democratic banner in a must-win presidential battleground would be treated nationally as a test case — following a cycle in which candidates from the party’s left have won a series of high-profile primaries.

Joel Brennan, a long-shot candidate still in the race, offered the most rueful assessment of how the primary has unfolded: unfortunate, he said, that a contest with these stakes has drawn more attention for chaos than for what is actually at issue.

Voting is already underway.