# CLUSTER 03 — FRESHMAN & SOPHOMORE: 2021–2022 Hub: [[Hong_hub]] Previous: [[Hong_Cluster_02_Kitchens_2009-2020]] Next: [[Hong_Cluster_04_Socialist_2023-2024]] --- ## CLUSTER OVERVIEW The Freshman & Sophomore cluster covers Hong's first term in the Wisconsin Assembly — January 2021 through January 2023, the 105th Legislature. The chamber is **Republican-controlled 60-38** (61-38 at full strength) under Speaker **Robin Vos**, who holds the gavel throughout Hong's entire Assembly career; the Senate is Republican; Tony Evers is the Democratic governor whose vetoes are the minority's only functioning lever. Structurally, Hong's freshman environment is the photographic negative of Demuth's [[Demuth_Cluster_03_Freshman_2019-2022]]: Demuth entered a DFL-run chamber as a minority-party Republican; Hong enters a GOP-run chamber as a minority-party Democrat. Neither woman will pass a bill she authors in her first term. Both build identity, portfolio, and press instead. Hong enters with the strongest transformation-narrative profile in her class: the first Asian American ever seated in the Legislature, a chef whose restaurant sits a block from the Capitol, a mutual-aid founder, a mother. Her freshman committee slate — **Audit, Labor and Integrated Employment, Rural Development, Small Business Development, plus the Joint Legislative Audit Committee** — places her simultaneously on the state's oversight apparatus and its small-business terrain, the same two lanes (oversight and small business) on which Demuth built her Minnesota profile. Her first-authored bills are wage bills; her breakout press moments are identity moments — above all the March 2021 op-ed after the Atlanta spa shootings, in which she does the single thing the Demuth dossier's diagnostic metric predicted a transformation candidate would never do: **she names the machine, in print, and indicts both parties for how it treats her identity.** --- ## 5-A ENTRIES — 2021 ### January 4, 2021 — Sworn In to the 105th Legislature; the First Is Seated **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (freshman representative, AD-76). *External:* Speaker **Robin Vos** (R, presiding); Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz (D); the 2021 freshman class including **Samba Baldeh** (first Muslim legislator); Governor Tony Evers; the statewide and national press carrying the "first Asian American" framing. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong takes the oath for AD-76 on opening day. She is the **first Asian American to serve in the Wisconsin Legislature in state history** — a first that had stood open for 173 years of statehood. Her own words in the seating window: **"I am both incredibly motivated, grateful and terrified at the same time"**; and, on the first framing: **"I know that a lot of people will associate me with (being) first, but I think that it's really important to remember that being first doesn't matter if you are the last."** And: **"Becoming the first [Asian/Pacific Islander] elected to the state Assembly, I think is really one of the first times that I am proud and stand with my Korean American identity."** **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Standard new-member entry. *Institutional:* The "first and only" status is the **structural protected-class anchor** for everything that follows — the exact mirror of Demuth's "only Black Republican in the chamber" anchor of January 2019. Hong is, from this day forward, a one-of-one asset in the Wisconsin Legislature: for two full sessions no other Asian American serves in either chamber, which means every AAPI-coded institutional need — statements, heritage resolutions, curriculum bills, caucus formation — routes through her alone. *Strategic:* Note the deployment posture: where Demuth's stock answer to the first-framing is deflection ("pick me based on my qualifications, not my race"), Hong's is **conditional embrace** ("first doesn't matter if you are the last"). Same question, same construction — the first, plus a qualifying pivot — inverted valence. The two stock answers are documented side-by-side in [[Hong_Demuth_Convergence]]. **Area or Arena — Where** Wisconsin State Capitol, Assembly chamber, Madison. **Primary Source Links** - [WUWM Lake Effect (Jan 14, 2021) — 'Motivated, Grateful And Terrified'](https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/lake-effect-segments/2021-01-14/motivated-grateful-and-terrified-wisconsins-first-asian-american-state-legislator) - [Cap Times (Reilly, Jan 6, 2021) — Into the fire ("being first doesn't matter if you are the last")](https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/into-the-fire-chef-restaurant-owner-activist-francesca-hong-brings-a-service-mindset-to-the/article_20f7b7f4-f276-59b7-bd15-8e7658b06e35.html) - [Wikipedia — 105th Wisconsin Legislature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/105th_Wisconsin_Legislature) --- ### January 2021 — Committee Assignments: Audit / Labor / Rural Development / Small Business Development / Joint Legislative Audit **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong. *External:* Speaker Vos (controlling committee structure); Minority Leader Hintz (allocating Democratic slots); the Legislative Audit Bureau, whose work the Audit committees receive. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong is seated on four standing committees — **Audit; Labor and Integrated Employment; Rural Development; Small Business Development** — plus the **Joint Legislative Audit Committee**. She will keep the audit-oversight portfolio her entire career: Audit and Joint Audit in all three sessions, joined in 2025 by the new Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency committee [[Hong_Cluster_05_Insurgent_2025]]. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Reflects her restaurant-owner profile (Small Business Development, Labor) and caucus needs. *Institutional:* Compare the two freshman portfolios directly. Demuth 2019: Early Childhood, Education Finance, Health Finance — the protected-class **spending** apparatus. Hong 2021: Audit, Joint Audit, Labor, Small Business — the **oversight-and-wage** apparatus. Each freshman is placed on the terrain her later statewide brand requires: Demuth's fraud-oversight speakership grows out of watching the spending side; Hong's anti-austerity insurgency grows out of watching the audit side. And the overlap is direct: **both careers run through the audit/oversight committee lane** — Demuth by creating Minnesota's Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee in 2025, Hong by sitting on Wisconsin's Audit and Joint Legislative Audit committees continuously from 2021. *Strategic:* Small Business Development is the institutional home of her restaurant identity — the committee assignment that lets the chef-legislator brand do legislative work. **Area or Arena — Where** Wisconsin State Capitol committee rooms. **Primary Source Links** - [WI Blue Book 2021-22 — Hong entry (committee assignments 2021)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/blue_book/2021_2022/030_state_legislators.pdf) - [docs.legis — Hong 2021 legislator page](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/legislators/assembly/2261) --- ### February–April 2021 — COVID Session Votes: The Minority NO Column **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (minority backbencher). *External:* the Republican majority passing its COVID package; Governor Evers, vetoing it; the pandemic-era Wisconsin economy her district's restaurants inhabit. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong votes **NO** on the Republican-amended COVID-19 response bill **AB 1** (February 2021; vetoed by Evers February 5); **NO** on **SB 183**, requiring legislative oversight of federal COVID relief funds (March 23; vetoed March 29); **NO** on **AB 23**, prohibiting officials from mandating COVID vaccination (March 23; vetoed April 23). **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Opposition to a majority package she and her caucus considered obstructionist. *Institutional:* The SB 183 vote deserves the cross-dossier reader's attention: it is a vote **against legislative oversight of executive pandemic spending** — the precise inverse of the posture Demuth was building in Minnesota in the same weeks, where the GOP minority demanded oversight of Walz's emergency spending. Each woman's position on pandemic-era oversight is a pure function of which party held her state's executive branch. The issue is the same; the "principle" flips with the jersey. This is the first clean entry in the party-blind convergence file's oversight-is-positional finding. *Strategic:* For Hong's own record the COVID votes are low-salience; her pandemic identity was built outside the chamber (Cook It Forward), not inside it. **Area or Arena — Where** Assembly floor, Wisconsin State Capitol. **Primary Source Links** - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 1 history (Evers veto)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab1) - [docs.legis — Hong 2021 votes list](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/legislators/assembly/2261) --- ### March 23, 2021 — The Atlanta Op-Ed: Hong Names the Machine and Indicts Both Parties **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (author). *External:* the eight victims of the March 16 Atlanta spa shootings, six of them Asian women; "top Democrats in Wisconsin," unnamed, whose response Hong found inadequate; the Cap Times op-ed page; the national Stop AAPI Hate moment. **Antecedents and Acts — What** One week after the Atlanta murders, Hong publishes a Cap Times op-ed attacking not Republicans but **her own party's leadership**: **"Asian Americans deserve much more than what we were given by top Democrats in Wisconsin last week."** The centerpiece sentence: **"What is the difference in electing a Democrat versus a Republican, if in such a detrimental moment for the APIDA community, their silence and complacency is the same?"** And the standing-claim: **"We are and have always been more than just 'other.' No longer will we be minimized, dehumanized or silenced."** In the same weeks she introduces **AJR 38** (condemning violence against the APIDA community) and **AJR 42** (recognizing APIDA Heritage Month); both die in the Republican Rules committee without adoption. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Grief and fury at institutional silence. *Institutional:* This is the **single most diagnostic entry in the Hong dossier**, and its importance is comparative. The Demuth dossier's most diagnostic metric was the expected **zero** — a transformation candidate never speaks about the selection machine as a system. Demuth's nearest approach is the June 2025 Reformer line ("My Democrat colleagues always focus on race or gender, and in this case they chose to completely ignore it because I'm a Republican") — an observation of partisan asymmetry in identity-deployment, made from the right. Hong's March 2021 op-ed is the same observation made from the left, four years earlier, in almost the same grammatical shape: **both women state, on the record, that the parties' treatment of a protected identity is instrumental — deployed when useful, withheld when not.** The machine's two most successfully surfaced transformation candidates in the upper Midwest have each independently described the machine. Neither described her own position inside it. *Strategic:* The op-ed establishes Hong's permanent posture toward her own party: the loyalty of the movement, not of the institution. Every subsequent break — the budget votes, the ceasefire resolution, Uncommitted, the Socialist Caucus — is downstream of the March 2021 position that Democratic institutional silence is indistinguishable from Republican institutional silence. **Area or Arena — Where** Cap Times op-ed page; Wisconsin Capitol (AJR 38 / AJR 42). **Primary Source Links** - [Cap Times (Hong, March 23, 2021) — Asian Americans deserve much more than what we were given by top Democrats](https://captimes.com/opinion/column/rep-francesca-hong-asian-americans-deserve-much-more-than-what-we-were-given-by-top/article_68a72fab-eaa5-5f33-97bb-b3a1a097fb7c.html) - [docs.legis — 2021 AJR 38 (condemning APIDA violence; died in Rules)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ajr38) - [docs.legis — 2021 AJR 42 (APIDA Heritage Month; died in Rules)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ajr42) --- ### March–July 2021 — The Signature Bill Portfolio: Tipped Wage, $15, the Economic Justice Bill of Rights, CROWN, ERPO **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (first author or co-author). *External:* Rep. Lisa Subeck (co-lead on the minimum-wage bill); Rep. LaKeshia Myers (lead on the CROWN Act); the Republican committee chairs who will let every one of these bills die; the national model-legislation ecosystems (Fight for $15, the CROWN Coalition, the ERPO framework) from which the bill texts descend. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong's first-term authored portfolio is introduced across spring and summer 2021: - **AB 278 / SB 286** (April 16, first author) — **elimination of the tipped minimum wage** ($2.33/hour), her signature-issue bill, drawn directly from her industry biography. Dies without passage, March 15, 2022. - **AB 477** (July 26, with Subeck) — raising the minimum wage to $10.15 immediately and **$15 one year later**, and re-authorizing local minimum-wage ordinances. Dies in her own Labor and Integrated Employment committee. - **AJR 24** (March 31) — declaring an **Economic Justice Bill of Rights**, whose resolved clause claims for the cause "the progressive tradition of Wisconsin — a tradition cultivated historically by Progressives, Republicans, and Democrats." Dies in Rules; she will reintroduce it in every session she serves (2023 AJR 24; 2025 AJR 33). - **AB 141** (March 5, co-author; Myers lead) — the Wisconsin **CROWN Act**: "'Race' includes traits historically associated with race, including hair texture and protective hairstyles," with "'Protective hairstyles' includes hairstyles such as **braids, locs, and twists**." Public hearing April 20, 2021; dies March 15, 2022. The bill is the CROWN Coalition's model text — the same model whose Minnesota enactment (2023 HF 37: "'Race' is inclusive of traits associated with race, including but not limited to hair texture and hair styles such as **braids, locs, and twists**") **Lisa Demuth voted YES on**, 111-19, on January 11, 2023. The two candidates' only same-side bill-text match, documented at token level in [[Hong_Demuth_Convergence]]. - **AB 638** (October 21, co-author) — Wisconsin's **extreme risk protection order** (red-flag) bill, petitioners "a law enforcement officer or a family or household member." Dies. Its Minnesota counterpart — same order name, same petitioner class — passed in 2023 over Demuth's NO vote, and by February 2026 was the statute protecting Demuth from a firearms threat [[Demuth_Cluster_06_Governor_2026]]. Hong's version never became law; the author of Wisconsin's red-flag bill has no red-flag law. - Plus the July 12 policing package (AB 447–458), housing/tenant bills (AB 738, SB 500), abortion-rights bills (AB 712/713), the bump-stock-style **SB 656**, marijuana legalization co-authorship (AB 846), and the bipartisan **AB 381** (with Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder) directing school boards to teach Hmong American and APIDA history — the bill that will finally pass, in its second life, in 2024. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* A worker-first freshman agenda from the only service-industry member of the chamber. *Institutional:* Every operative bill dies; the portfolio's institutional function is **profile assembly**, exactly as Demuth's freshman CCAP bill (HF 1680, died in a DFL House) assembled hers. Note the structural rhyme in the signature picks: Demuth's first chief-authored bill regulated **child-care attendance records** — the program terrain of her later fraud brand; Hong's first-authored bill abolished the **tipped minimum wage** — the wage terrain of her later class-war brand. Freshman bills are brand declarations, not legislation, in both dossiers. *Strategic:* The model-legislation layer (CROWN, ERPO, Fight-for-$15) means portions of Hong's authored/co-authored text exist **verbatim or near-verbatim in Minnesota statute and Minnesota bills** — the raw material of the Part 2 convergence file. A legislator's language, in the model-bill era, is a national supply chain; the two states draw from the same warehouse. **Area or Arena — Where** Wisconsin Capitol; Labor and Integrated Employment, Rules, and Constitution and Ethics committees. **Primary Source Links** - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 278 (tipped minimum wage)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab278) - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 477 ($15 minimum wage; bill text)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/proposaltext/2021/REG/AB477.html) - [docs.legis — 2021 AJR 24 (Economic Justice Bill of Rights, text)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/proposaltext/2021/REG/AJR24.html) - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 141 (CROWN Act, text and history)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/related/proposals/ab141) - [MN Revisor — 2023 Minn. Laws ch. 3 (HF 37 CROWN Act enacted text)](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2023/0/Session+Law/Chapter/3/) - [MN House — HF 37 roll call (111-19, Demuth yea)](https://www.house.mn.gov/votes/Details?SessionKey=300&BillNumber=HF0037) - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 638 (extreme risk protection orders)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/related/proposals/ab638) - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 381 (Hmong/APIDA instruction, bipartisan)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab381) --- ### June 16, 2021 — NO on AB 195 / AB 196: The First Girls-Sports Votes **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (minority NO vote). *External:* the Republican majority (59-38 passage on each); the national model-bill wave of 2021 sex-designation sports legislation; the Senate committee where both bills die; Governor Evers, whose veto threat shadows the exercise. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong votes **NO** on **AB 195** (restricting UW and technical-college sports by sex) and **AB 196** (the K-12 version), each passing 59-38 and dying without Senate action. The bills are Wisconsin's entries in the same multistate bill family whose Minnesota entry — **HF 12, the Preserving Girls Sports Act** — Demuth will champion to a one-vote floor failure as Speaker in March 2025, and whose 2023/2025 Wisconsin revivals (AB 377; AB 100) Hong will again vote against [[Hong_Cluster_04_Socialist_2023-2024]] [[Hong_Cluster_05_Insurgent_2025]]. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Opposition to discrimination against transgender students. *Institutional:* The girls-sports bill family is the single cleanest **shared-text, opposite-vote** structure in the two dossiers: one bill family, drafted from common national models, introduced in both states across 2021–2025, with the Minnesota candidate as its champion and the Wisconsin candidate as its adversary. The comparison file treats it as the type-specimen of party-blind convergence: identical legislative language flowing through both candidates' careers, each candidate's "position" fully predicted by jersey, the language itself indifferent to both. *Strategic:* For Hong the votes are cost-free in AD-76 and asset-grade with the movement base; for Demuth the mirrored votes are cost-free in HD13A and asset-grade with hers. Symmetry again. **Area or Arena — Where** Assembly floor, Wisconsin State Capitol. **Primary Source Links** - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 195 history](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab195) - [docs.legis — Hong 2021 votes list (AB 195/196)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/legislators/assembly/2261) --- ### June 29, 2021 — NO on the 2021-23 State Budget Her Own Governor Signs **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (NO vote). *External:* the Republican majority passing AB 68 (64-34); the four Democrats voting yes (Andraca, Doyle, Meyers, Vruwink); Governor Evers, who signs the budget with partial vetoes on July 8, 2021. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong votes **NO** on the 2021-23 biennial budget, which Evers — her own party's governor — then signs. She will vote NO on **every** budget of her Assembly career: 2021 (64-34), 2023 (63-34, the full Democratic caucus), and 2025 (59-39, against seven Democratic yes votes and against Evers' signature) [[Hong_Cluster_05_Insurgent_2025]]. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* The budget shortchanges schools, workers, and healthcare. *Institutional:* The budget NO column is the Hong record's **anti-institutional constant** — the running proof that her loyalty runs to movement rather than party administration. The 2021 and 2023 votes are caucus-normal; the 2025 vote against a budget her governor negotiated and signed is not, and it is the vote her establishment critics will carry into the 2026 primary. The structural point for the convergence file: **both candidates' statewide brands are built on a documented break with their own party's leadership** — Demuth's November 2022 caucus coup against Daudt, Hong's escalating budget defection arc against Evers. *Strategic:* In a gerrymandered chamber where no Democratic vote changes any outcome, a NO on the budget is free — and compounding — brand equity. **Area or Arena — Where** Assembly floor; Wisconsin Capitol. **Primary Source Links** - [docs.legis — Assembly Vote 115, June 29, 2021 (AB 68 passage 64-34, Hong N)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/votes/2021/av0115) - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 68 history (Act 58)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab68) --- ### July 27, 2021 — The Pandemic-UI Floor Speech: "This Is Political Theater" **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (floor speaker). *External:* the Republican majority advancing bills to cut pandemic unemployment benefits; the 17,459 Wisconsinites then on pandemic UI; the hospitality-industry workforce debate ("workforce woes") in which restaurant-owner legislators are the featured voices. **Antecedents and Acts — What** During the majority's push against pandemic unemployment benefits, Hong takes the floor: **"Do you know how many people are actually on pandemic UI right now? 17,459. Out of 3.1 million people in the Wisconsin workforce. That's who you're going after. This is political theater."** **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Defense of unemployed workers against a symbolic cut. *Institutional:* File the phrase. "Political theater" is Hong's standing dismissal of majority-party oversight-and-accountability exercises — she will use the same frame on the GOAT committee in March 2025 (**"I think this committee is performative at best"**) [[Hong_Cluster_05_Insurgent_2025]]. Set beside Demuth's fraud-oversight brand ("I am not buying what was said about why the fraud might have gone on so long"), the pair completes the convergence file's oversight finding: **each candidate treats oversight as sacred when her party wields it and as theater when the other party does.** The posture is identical; only the direction of fire differs. *Strategic:* The speech is also the chamber debut of her signature rhetorical mode — the worker's arithmetic delivered as indictment — that reaches full scale in the 2025-26 campaign. **Area or Arena — Where** Assembly floor, Wisconsin State Capitol. **Primary Source Links** - [PBS Wisconsin — State lawmakers who own restaurants confront workforce woes (the UI speech)](https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/state-lawmakers-who-own-restaurants-confront-workforce-woes/) --- ### January 4, 2022 — The Healthy School Meals for All Act (AB 805): The Signature Cause Is Launched **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong (second author, with Rep. Kristina Shelton lead; Sen. Chris Larson Senate lead). *External:* the Wisconsin Healthy School Meals for All coalition; the Republican Education committee where the bill dies; the parallel national universal-meals wave that will produce, among others, **Minnesota's 2023 universal school meals law** — enacted over Demuth's NO vote. **Antecedents and Acts — What** Hong co-launches **AB 805**, the **Wisconsin Healthy School Meals for All Act** — state reimbursement so that every public and private school "that provide[s] free meals to all pupils" is made whole, i.e., free breakfast and lunch for every student. Her introduction quote: **"All across this state, from our farmers and teachers to our students and school staff, we have learned that we must provide our children with more support during the school day."** The bill dies in committee on March 15, 2022. She will reintroduce it as lead or co-lead in 2023 (AB 754) and as **first author** in 2025 (AB 48) — dying in committee each time. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* No child should learn hungry. *Institutional:* The universal-meals cause is the sharpest **mirror-image legislation** pairing in the two dossiers. Minnesota's HF 5 (2023) — "providing free school lunch and breakfast for students" — passed 70-58 with **Demuth voting NO**, and is law; Wisconsin's AB 805/AB 754/AB 48 — "free meals to all pupils" — has **Hong as its author**, and has died in committee three consecutive sessions. The two states' children thus live under opposite outcomes of the same bill family: Minnesota's kids eat under a law its 2026 GOP frontrunner opposed; Wisconsin's kids don't eat under a law its 2026 Democratic frontrunner wrote. The convergence file's Killshot 5 is drafted from this entry. *Strategic:* For Hong the bill is the perfect fusion of her three identity legs — chef, mother, worker — in a single legislative object, which is exactly why it leads her campaign policy page in 2026. **Area or Arena — Where** Wisconsin Capitol; Committee on Education. **Primary Source Links** - [docs.legis — 2021 AB 805 (Healthy School Meals for All; died in Education)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab805) - [WisPolitics — Reps. Shelton, Hong, Sen. Larson introduce the Wisconsin Healthy School Meals for All Act](https://www.wispolitics.com/2021/reps-shelton-hong-sen-larson-democratic-colleagues-introduce-the-wisconsin-healthy-school-meals-for-all-act/) - [MN Revisor — 2023 HF 5 (universal school meals, enacted)](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF5&version=latest&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0) - [MN House — HF 5 roll call (70-58, Demuth nay)](https://www.house.mn.gov/cco/journals/2023-24/J0209020.htm) --- ### 2022 — WEDC Board Appointment; Unopposed Reelection (98.39%) **Architects and Actors — Who** *Hong Internal:* Hong. *External:* Assembly Minority Leader **Greta Neubauer** (appointing authority for the WEDC board seat); the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation board; the AD-76 electorate, which returns her unopposed. **Antecedents and Acts — What** In 2022 Neubauer appoints Hong to the **Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation Board of Directors** — the state's flagship economic-development authority. Hong: "Thank you to Leader Neubauer for giving me the opportunity to serve on the WEDC Board." In November she is reelected without a Republican opponent: **27,702 votes, 98.39%**. The 2022 cycle statewide returns the Republican Assembly majority at 64-35, its high-water mark, under the last cycle of the old maps. **Agendas or Appropriations — Why** *Stated:* Caucus recognition of her small-business profile; routine safe-seat reelection. *Institutional:* The WEDC appointment is Hong's **assistant-minority-leader moment** in miniature — the caucus leadership formally investing in her, placing the movement freshman inside the state's most establishment economic body. It is the pre-clearance step that says the institution considers her advanceable. (She leaves the board by the 2025 session — the exit coinciding with her turn toward the Socialist Caucus.) *Strategic:* The unopposed reelection completes the district's conversion into pure platform: from November 2022 forward Hong faces no electorate narrower than the whole state, and behaves accordingly. **Area or Arena — Where** WEDC board; AD-76. **Primary Source Links** - [WisPolitics (2022) — Rep. Hong appointed to WEDC Board of Directors](https://www.wispolitics.com/2022/rep-hong-appointed-to-wisconsin-economic-development-corporation-board-of-directors/) - [Ballotpedia — Francesca Hong (2022 results)](https://ballotpedia.org/Francesca_Hong) --- ## CLUSTER PERSONNEL ADDITIONS (2021–2022) | Name | Role(s) | Entered Record | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Robin Vos | Assembly Speaker (R) across Hong's entire tenure | 2021 | The permanent majority counterparty | | Gordon Hintz → Greta Neubauer | Assembly Minority Leaders (D) | 2021 / 2022 | Neubauer makes the WEDC appointment | | Kristina Shelton | Co-lead, Healthy School Meals for All Act | 2021 | The signature-cause partner (departs Legislature 2024) | | Lisa Subeck | Co-lead, $15 minimum wage bill | 2021 | Madison caucus ally | | LaKeshia Myers | Lead author, 2021 CROWN Act (AB 141) | 2021 | Hong co-authors the model text | | Patrick Snyder | R co-lead, Hmong/APIDA instruction bill (AB 381) | 2021 | The bipartisan channel that later produces Act 266 | | Chris Larson | Senate lead on school meals; later ceasefire co-sponsor and gov-race endorser | 2021 | The most durable Senate ally | | Tony Evers | Governor; signs the budgets she votes against | 2021 | The intra-party counterparty of the entire arc | --- ## CLUSTER METRICS (2021–2022) - **Election margins AD-76:** 2020 +76.25; 2022 unopposed (98.39%) - **Bills as author/first author:** AB 278 (tipped wage), AB 477 (with Subeck), AJR 24, AB 1053, AB 1106, AB 1148, AB 1187–1192 (tenant package), plus AB 805 (second author) — **zero enacted** - **Committee assignments:** Audit; Labor and Integrated Employment; Rural Development; Small Business Development; Joint Legislative Audit - **Budget votes:** NO (2021-23 budget; Evers signed) - **Appointive bodies:** WEDC Board (2022, by Minority Leader Neubauer) - **Public statements on the identity-selection machine as a system:** **one — the March 23, 2021 Cap Times op-ed** (the diagnostic count Demuth's dossier holds at zero, Hong's holds at one by year one) --- ## OPEN RESEARCH QUESTIONS (Cluster 03) 1. **Complete 2021-22 floor-speech record** — WisconsinEye holds video of the AB 195/196 and budget debates; no transcript of a Hong girls-sports floor speech has been located in accessible press. 2. **The WEDC board record** — meeting attendance, votes, and the reason for her exit by 2025. 3. **Caucus-internal role 2021-22** — whether she was offered or declined any leadership-track position; the record between the 2020 win and the 2023 committee upgrades is thin. 4. **The full "top Democrats" referent of the Atlanta op-ed** — which officials' responses she was indicting; contemporaneous reporting does not name them. 5. **Donor composition 2020 and 2022 cycles** — Wisconsin Democracy Campaign profile is JS-gated; Transparency USA totals ($27,217 raised, top donors including her father Jinkuk at $1,250) are period-ambiguous. 6. **Whether the 2021 policing package (AB 447–458) drew on national model bills** — the George-Floyd-era reform packages shared drafting across states; the supply chain is undocumented for the Wisconsin versions. --- ## SOURCES (Cluster 03) - [docs.legis — Hong 2021 legislator page (committees, authored, votes)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/legislators/assembly/2261) - [WI Blue Book 2021-22 — Hong entry](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/blue_book/2021_2022/030_state_legislators.pdf) - [Cap Times (Hong, March 23, 2021) — the Atlanta op-ed](https://captimes.com/opinion/column/rep-francesca-hong-asian-americans-deserve-much-more-than-what-we-were-given-by-top/article_68a72fab-eaa5-5f33-97bb-b3a1a097fb7c.html) - [Cap Times (Reilly, Jan 6, 2021) — Into the fire](https://captimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/into-the-fire-chef-restaurant-owner-activist-francesca-hong-brings-a-service-mindset-to-the/article_20f7b7f4-f276-59b7-bd15-8e7658b06e35.html) - [WUWM Lake Effect (Jan 14, 2021)](https://www.wuwm.com/podcast/lake-effect-segments/2021-01-14/motivated-grateful-and-terrified-wisconsins-first-asian-american-state-legislator) - [PBS Wisconsin — restaurant-owner lawmakers / UI speech](https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/state-lawmakers-who-own-restaurants-confront-workforce-woes/) - [docs.legis — Assembly Vote 115 (2021 budget)](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/document/votes/2021/av0115) - [docs.legis — bill pages: AB 278, AB 477, AJR 24, AB 141, AB 638, AB 381, AB 805, AB 195](https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2021/proposals/ab278) - [WisPolitics — Healthy School Meals for All introduction](https://www.wispolitics.com/2021/reps-shelton-hong-sen-larson-democratic-colleagues-introduce-the-wisconsin-healthy-school-meals-for-all-act/) - [WisPolitics — WEDC appointment](https://www.wispolitics.com/2022/rep-hong-appointed-to-wisconsin-economic-development-corporation-board-of-directors/) - [Ballotpedia — Francesca Hong](https://ballotpedia.org/Francesca_Hong) - [MN House roll calls — HF 37 (CROWN), HF 5 (school meals) for the cross-state pairings](https://www.house.mn.gov/votes/Details?SessionKey=300&BillNumber=HF0037) #Actors_and_Architects