Francesca Hong is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin. She is a sitting state assembly member, backed by several DSA chapters, and, per the RealClearPolitics aggregate as reported by the New York Post, she leads Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley by double digits going into Tuesday's primary. She would be the next name on a list that already includes Zohran Mamdani in New York and DSA-aligned primary winners in Maine and Colorado.

She is also, this week, in the middle of unsaying almost everything she is on record saying. So before the record is scrubbed, here it is, in her own words, with the dates attached.

On policing. On August 24, 2020, Hong wrote: "I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police." That was not a one-time post. On October 8 of the same year she wrote: "Police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can't be an option." Read that one twice. Not defund. Not reform. Abolish, with reform explicitly ruled out.

Here is the walk-back. Pressed on Pod Save America about how her views had changed since 2020, Hong said: "My views have only become stronger in that I'm serious about public safety and I will not abolish the police." She said she now wants to give law enforcement "the resources and the training that they need."

On ICE. This one she has not reversed. At a panel this year with the Main Street Alliance Action Fund, Hong said: "Abolishing ICE is a meaningful policy if we want to keep each other safe." She has held that position as her poll numbers rose. The abolition she still endorses is the one she thinks a Wisconsin general electorate will tolerate.

On Thanksgiving. In November 2020, Hong told the public: "Please DON'T gather for the colonizer holiday." Asked about it by Politico this year, she said: "I don't want to cancel it. I actually love it." A former chef, she also filed Valentine's Day under capitalist manipulation, posting in 2022 that the holiday was "another day capitalism tells you how to show love." The colonizer holiday is now a holiday she loves. Take her at her word, whichever word you prefer.

On taxes. This one has a paper trail beyond the posts. Earlier this year Hong floated a bill to create a new top income tax bracket: 17.3 percent on individuals earning at least $750,000 and married couples over $1 million, more than double the state's current top rate. The bill failed in March. By a late-July debate, the number had moved. She now backs an 8.65 percent rate on millionaires. The tax she wrote into legislation in the spring is roughly half the tax she will admit to in the summer.

That is the whole file. Five positions, four reversals, all of them her own words, all of them dated. The method here is not interpretation. It is a timeline.

What the timeline shows is not a woman who changed her mind through argument. It is a candidate discovering that a 50/50 state does not vote the way a Madison assembly district does, and adjusting the record accordingly. Hillary Clinton said this summer that Republican messaging on "communist, socialist" candidates would be "a very effective attack" in the midterms. Hong is the test case for whether a DSA candidate can pass through a statewide general election by disowning the platform that won her the primary base.

The Democratic officials cheering the DSA's statewide winning streak, and the reporters covering the Wisconsin race as a straight frontrunner story, now have a simple question to answer. Which Francesca Hong is on the ballot Tuesday: the one who wrote the posts, or the one walking them back this week? She has told you both. The record only lets you keep one.