David Crowley, the Milwaukee county executive, pulled off a last-minute victory after re-entering the Wisconsin governor’s race and snagging an endorsement from Tony Evers, the outgoing governor.

The race came down to the wire, with Francesca Hong and Crowley running close to each other as each batch of results came in. Polls had shown Hong as a clear frontrunner in the race but with large chunks of voters still undecided and an ever-changing field of candidates, polling was difficult. Polls in Michigan similarly showed the progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed with a more sizeable lead than he ended up with in his victory in the Democratic primary for US senate.

Hong, a chef and former restaurant owner from Madison, ran on a platform that included childcare for all, free school meals and a one-year moratorium on the construction of new datacenters which differentiated her from her Democratic colleagues in the governor’s race.

Tony Evers, a Democrat who has served as governor since 2019, did not seek re-election. He endorsed Crowley, who re-entered the race after leaving it earlier in the cycle.

Crowley’s pitch to voters in the waning weeks of the campaign was electability: he felt he was more poised to win against Tom Tiffany, a Republican congressman and ardent Trump supporter who ran unopposed in the Republican primary. Tiffany voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost.

“We knew that the stakes were too high for me to sit on the sideline, and that we need the best candidate, not just with executive leadership, but somebody who has a proven track record of getting things done,” Crowley previously told the Guardian. “And that’s what voters want. They want someone that they can trust. And that’s why we got back into this race.”

Hong’s previous statements, including a tweet calling to cancel Thanksgiving and past support for defunding the police, had dragged her down in recent days. She had previously vowed to use her grassroots network built during the primary to aid whoever won.

Kelda Roys, a state senator, and Joel Brennan, who previously led the Wisconsin department of administration, rounded out the Democratic field.

There were entries and exits from the chaotic race in recent weeks. A previous top contender, Sara Rodriguez, left the race after campaign finance irregularities, after which Crowley re-entered the race, with Evers’ backing. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in 2022, dropped out on 31 July.

The Wisconsin governor’s race became the latest test of the progressive wing of the party’s durability with Democratic voters in the midwest, after Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan last week. Next door, Minnesota voters were also weighing a US Senate primary between a moderate and a progressive. The midwest primaries came after a wave of wins of progressives and Democratic socialists in solidly blue parts of the country.

Democrats in Wisconsin are angling for a governing trifecta, trying to win back control of both chambers of the state assembly and keep the governor’s office so they can enact a full agenda.

The governor’s race is expected to draw massive money and attention – Wisconsin is a close state for most statewide elections, and its voters are known to swing in either direction depending on the candidate or platform. Republicans already are hitting Hong on her previous positions on issues such as defunding the police, which she now does not support, and over old tweets, including one where she said Thanksgiving should be canceled, which she has since retracted.

Elsewhere in Wisconsin, voters in the western part of the state chose Rebecca Cooke, a blue dog Democrat, to advance and face the Republican Derrick Van Orden in the third congressional district, a key pickup opportunity for Democrats. Cooke previously ran for the seat in 2022 and 2024, coming close to Van Orden.

Emily Berge, a former Eau Claire city council president, ran against Cooke. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee endorsed Cooke, which angered some local Democrats who saw it as interfering in a primary. Berge’s momentum, amid a wave of anti-establishment sentiment, had other national groups spending to boost Cooke, who they believe is most poised to win the district.