Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong refused to say whether she still wants Thanksgiving canceled when pressed on CNN, offering instead that "views can evolve" and that the holiday is "incredibly painful for many."
Host Kaitlan Collins put the question plainly during a Monday broadcast of CNN's "The Source": Do you still believe Thanksgiving should be canceled? Hong, a former restaurant owner and chef now seeking the governor's mansion in Madison, never said yes and never said no. She talked about cooking, community, and the pain the holiday causes, and left the actual answer hanging.
The exchange matters because it captures a pattern now familiar in Democratic primary politics: a candidate stakes out a far-left position to build progressive credibility, then tries to sand it down once a broader electorate is watching. Hong's prior tweet calling for Thanksgiving's cancellation, referenced by Collins as the basis for the question, was never quoted, dated, or retracted during the segment. Instead, Hong pivoted to biography.
Collins asked the question without ambiguity. Breitbart reported the full exchange, including Hong's verbatim response:
"I'm a chef, and one of the first meals that I made that was for the community, when I was 16, was a Thanksgiving meal. I always think my hospitality background in owning a restaurant for seven, eight years, that, bringing folks around the table to share conversation and build community, is always a good thing. But Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there, I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve. And the position that I'm running for right now, and I think my background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that's able to bring more people to the table."
Count the words. Not one of them is "no." Not one is "I was wrong." Not one is "I no longer believe that." Hong answered a question about a national holiday by reciting her work history and then gesturing vaguely at evolution, the political equivalent of running out the clock.
The phrase "views can evolve" does a lot of heavy lifting in modern Democratic messaging. It asks voters to accept that a position was held, that it may or may not still be held, and that the candidate deserves credit for growing, all without ever specifying what changed, when, or why. It is a non-answer dressed up as maturity.
Hong also introduced a frame that has become standard among progressives who question traditional American holidays: the idea that Thanksgiving is "incredibly painful for many people in our communities." She did not name those communities. She did not describe the pain. She offered the claim as self-evident and moved on. For millions of Americans who gather around a table every November to give thanks, many of them working families who look forward to the day all year, the suggestion that the holiday itself is the problem lands as an insult to a shared tradition.
Hong is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin, a state that decided the 2020 presidential race by fewer than 21,000 votes. Wisconsin is not a progressive stronghold. It is a swing state full of voters who hunt on Thanksgiving morning, watch football in the afternoon, and eat turkey with their families at night. Telling those voters that their holiday causes pain, or that it should be canceled, is not a winning message outside a faculty lounge or a Madison coffee shop.
That political reality likely explains why Hong did not repeat the call to cancel Thanksgiving on national television. But her refusal to disavow the original tweet is just as revealing. A candidate confident in her current position would have said flatly: "No, I don't believe Thanksgiving should be canceled." Hong chose not to.
The pattern is not unique to Hong. Across the Democratic Party, candidates and officeholders have learned to float radical positions on social media, where progressive activists reward them, and then retreat into vague language when a mainstream audience tunes in. The strategy depends on voters not noticing the gap, or not caring. Progressives within the party have pushed to abolish institutions from the Senate to ICE on national television, making Hong's Thanksgiving gambit look almost mild by comparison.
Collins, to her credit, asked the question directly. But the CNN host did not follow up when Hong failed to answer it. A viewer who watched the full exchange learned that Hong once cooked a Thanksgiving meal at age 16, that she owned a restaurant for seven or eight years, and that she believes her hospitality background will make her a better governor. What the viewer did not learn is whether the woman running to lead Wisconsin's executive branch thinks a holiday celebrated by roughly 90 percent of American households should exist.
Hong leaned hard on her identity as a chef and restaurant owner throughout her answer. She described cooking for the community as a teenager. She referenced bringing "folks around the table." She used the word "table" twice, once literally, once as a metaphor for inclusive governance.
None of that addressed the question. Owning a restaurant does not explain why someone would call for canceling a holiday built around a meal. If anything, it deepens the contradiction: a chef who made her living feeding people on Thanksgiving once publicly argued the day should not be observed. Hong treated her professional background as proof of good faith without acknowledging that her own public statement cut against it.
The Democratic Party's internal tensions over cultural issues have produced increasingly awkward moments like this one. Some members have broken with progressive orthodoxy entirely, Senate leadership has scrambled to keep dissenters in the caucus, while others, like Hong, try to straddle both sides of a divide that does not lend itself to straddling.
Wisconsin voters will decide whether Hong's evasion matters. But the exchange on CNN tells them something concrete about how she handles a straightforward question on a subject most Americans consider settled. Thanksgiving is not controversial in Waukesha County or Green Bay or Eau Claire. It is controversial in a narrow slice of progressive politics that views American traditions through a lens of grievance.
Hong wants to govern a state where those traditions still mean something. Her inability to say so plainly, or her unwillingness to, is the kind of tell that sticks with voters long after the interview ends.
The broader pattern of progressive figures testing radical rhetoric and then retreating when challenged has consequences beyond any single race. When politicians float the idea of canceling holidays, abolishing institutions, or rewriting cultural norms, and then refuse to own those positions under questioning, they erode the basic trust that self-government requires. Voters deserve to know what a candidate actually believes, not what she believed before her views conveniently "evolved."
Accountability in politics starts with answering the question you were asked. Hong was asked a simple one. She still hasn't answered it.
If you can't tell Wisconsin voters whether you think Thanksgiving should exist, you have no business asking them to make you governor.