Wisconsin's leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate voted against a bipartisan child-grooming law that passed 93, 6 and was signed by her own party's governor, and her campaign won't say why.
Francesca Hong, a 37-year-old state legislator running in Tuesday's Democratic primary, was among just six Assembly members to oppose a measure that bars adults from engaging in a deliberate pattern of conduct designed to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child into sexual activity or pornography. The bill cleared the Assembly with overwhelming support. The state Senate passed it by voice vote. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed it into law in March. And prosecutors have already used it to charge a man in Janesville accused of grooming a cognitively impaired girl, the New York Post reported.
Hong's campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment about her vote. Some colleagues who also voted no suggested the measure was redundant under existing state law, but Hong herself has offered no public explanation. That silence lands differently when the bill's origin story involves a Kenosha schoolteacher who sent more than 600 messages to a 14-year-old girl on Snapchat.
The legislation grew out of the case of Christian Enwright, a former Kenosha school teacher who began contacting the student on Snapchat in June 2023. Over the months that followed, Enwright exchanged more than 600 messages with the girl, including sexualized comments about her appearance and images of himself in bed without a shirt. Staff members at the school had privately raised concerns about Enwright's behavior toward female students, and he had a reputation for giving "long hugs."
The school district's human resources team received an anonymous tip about Enwright in February 2024. Roughly three months later, he was arrested, charged, and fired.
A school district investigator's report, published by the Cap Times in December 2025, described the conduct in plain terms:
"[Enwright] engaged in classic grooming behavior, preying on the vulnerability of at least one female student, under the guise of being a mentor, to foster and further a predatory relationship with her."
Enwright pleaded guilty in April 2025 to 15 misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct. In July 2025, a judge sentenced him to 15 months in jail and three years of probation. Fifteen misdemeanor counts, not felonies. The case exposed a gap in Wisconsin law: existing statutes did not specifically target the grooming pattern itself, the slow-drip manipulation adults use to isolate children before abuse begins.
The new law was written to close that gap. And it passed with near-unanimous support, except from Hong and five unnamed colleagues.
The statute did not sit on the shelf. After Evers signed it, prosecutors in Janesville charged 36-year-old Joseph W. Cook under the new grooming law. Authorities allege Cook communicated with a cognitively impaired girl through the encrypted messaging app Signal for nearly three years. The girl told investigators that Cook planned to have her move in with him when she turned 18, Fox47 reported.
Cook allegedly used a Signal setting that made messages and images disappear after roughly 30 seconds. When the girl tried to change that setting, Cook would "get mad," she told authorities. After his arrest, a search of his home turned up multiple knives and machetes, boxes of ammunition, and a Glock handgun with a laser attachment.
The Cook case is exactly the kind of conduct the law was designed to reach, a sustained, deliberate pattern of manipulation aimed at a vulnerable child. It is the kind of case that makes a legislator's "no" vote worth explaining. Hong has not explained hers.
The grooming vote is not the first time Hong's record has drawn scrutiny. In October 2021, she posted on social media:
"Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can't be an option."
Hong later backed away from that position. Addressing reporters, she framed the post as a youthful error, saying she had originally pursued sports journalism in college: "I was actually trying to become a sports journalist when I first went to college, so I learned you sometimes have bad takes on Twitter." The quote surfaced through Rep. Tom Tiffany's campaign account, the Republican congressman who would likely face Hong in a general election.
Dismissing a call to abolish the police as a "bad take on Twitter" is a convenient reframe for a candidate who needs moderate voters in a general election. But the grooming vote is harder to wave away. It was not a tweet dashed off late at night. It was a recorded floor vote on a bill that 93 of her colleagues supported, including members of her own party and her own governor.
Hong has faced repeated scrutiny over her social media history, a pattern that raises a fair question about whether her public positions reflect conviction or impulse.
The Wisconsin governor's race has already seen turbulence on the Democratic side. Mandela Barnes exited the race after misconduct allegations surfaced, reshaping the primary field and leaving Hong as the frontrunner heading into Tuesday's vote.
Wisconsin's law is part of a broader national push to give prosecutors tools specifically aimed at grooming behavior. Florida's Parental Rights in Education law sparked one of the highest-profile corporate-political fights in recent memory when Disney publicly opposed it. Disney's returning CEO Bob Iger later expressed regret over the company's involvement, telling employees at a townhall, "I was sorry to see us dragged into that battle", a reversal from his earlier stance encouraging CEOs to take political risks on social issues. Florida ultimately revoked Disney's self-governing Reedy Creek district, a privilege the company had held for nearly five decades.
The political lesson from Florida was clear: opposing child-protection measures carries real consequences, even for billion-dollar corporations. Hong, running for statewide office, cast her vote anyway.
The broader progressive wing of the Democratic Party has struggled with exactly this kind of positioning. Internal tensions between progressive and centrist Democrats continue to surface over how far left the party can move without losing general-election voters.
Hong's candidacy sits squarely in that fault line. She has positioned herself as a progressive champion, but her record includes votes and statements that even members of her own ideological camp have hesitated to embrace. Bernie Sanders declined to endorse her in the governor's race, a notable absence of support from the senator most associated with democratic socialism.
Wisconsin voters heading to the polls Tuesday will decide whether Hong's record is an asset or a liability. But one fact will follow her into any general election matchup: when 93 legislators voted to give prosecutors a new tool against adults who groom children, and her own Democratic governor signed the bill, Francesca Hong voted no.
Voters who care about protecting kids from predators deserve to know why. So far, Hong has not bothered to tell them.
