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Dem. Frontrunner for Wisc. Gov. Has Concerning History of Mental Illness

Richard BakerBy 6 Mins Read
Dem. Frontrunner for Wisc. Gov. Has Concerning History of Mental Illness

(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A newly resurfaced interview from 2023 shows that Francesca Hong, the frontrunner to win Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, has mental health issues.

Following the withdrawal of former Lt. Gov. (and failed 2024 Senate candidate) Mandela Barnes, the socialist-aligned Hong was enjoying a decisive lead going into the Aug. 11 Democratic primary to replace out-going Democrat Gov. Tony Evers.

Hong’s lead should concern conservatives for numerous reasons—not just because of her radical stances on issues like defunding the police, but also due to her history of recurring mental-health issues.

Hong, first elected to the state legislature in 2020, conducted an interview with Meal Magazine in 2023 to reflect on her experiences going from the owner of a ramen restaurant to the first Asian‒American in the Wisconsin Assembly.

She also spoke candidly about her mental illness, saying she had been institutionalized early in her adult life.

“At 18, I had a mental breakdown,” she told interviewer Steve Marsh.

“I didn’t actually walk at my high school graduation because I had been hospitalized for a week at a child psychiatric hospital,” she continued. “I just felt like nothing had meaning anymore. … And I found myself self-harming to feel something.”

She claimed that her desire to cut herself stemmed, in part, from the sense of isolation she felt as a first-generation American with Korean parents.

But her doctors seemed to think it was more of a psychotic mental imbalance.

“I was diagnosed with bipolar disease,” Hong said. “I was taking SSRIs and I’d overdosed on lithium. I didn’t know why I couldn’t connect with people deeper, and that pushes you into isolation.”

The disorder is clinically considered to be a “lifelong condition,” according to the Mayo Clinic.

It reared its head again in 2019, according to one X post in which Hong claimed to have had an anxiety attack at McDonald’s due to “old white people.”

Moreover, Hong reportedly cited the strains on her mental health as one of the factors that led to the 2024 closure of her restaurant, Morris Ramen, in downtown Madison.

But others noted that the restaurant was failing financially — due, in large part, to Hong’s insistence on paying a “living wage” by giving employees their “full salaries” during a partial COVID shutdown.

Hong and her then-husband, Matt Morris, relied on the Paycheck Protection Program to keep the restaurant afloat through the pandemic, but rising inflationary costs during the Biden administration took their toll, with employee salaries skyrocketing to a rate of $23-$25 per hour.

After the restaurant closed, Hong was sued by Capitol One over $30,000 in remaining debt. Her parents reportedly wound up footing the bill.

Critics now suggest Hong’s bipolarism is once again manifesting in her gubernatorial campaign, even though she may have gotten better at masking it.

Hong has been criticized for backpedaling on several alarming statements, including her prior public support for defunding police.

Showing clear hallmarks of dissociative disorder when questioned Tuesday about her stance on the controversial subject, she insisted that her Republican counterparts in the state Assembly were the real ones defunding the police.

A few days later, in an interview Friday with Fox News host Dana Perino, she claimed that the unpopular and inflammatory BLM slogan was simply dog-whistle language used by socialists to convey populist economic principles.

“I believe that as a democratic socialist, what that means is that I would like to put working-class people first over mega corporations,” she claimed.

She also insisted that “people can evolve.”

Hong went on to repudiate a key component of the Democratic Socialists of America platform that advocates for abolishing several branches of the federal government, including the U.S. Senate.

While she declared the position “nonsensical” during the Fox News interview, that was at odds with her past statements supporting the DSA proposals, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley.

The mental health of candidates notably came into play in the 1972 presidential election, when Sen. Thomas Eagleton, D-Mo., was forced to withdraw as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate after his history of electroshock therapy became public. Republican incumbent Richard Nixon won in an epic landslide.

While the stigma over psychotic disorders has somewhat abated in recent decades, critics including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and independent journalist Michael Shellenberger argued that the diagnosis should be “disqualifying when untreated.”

Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.



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