Renee Faust, who previously went by the name Renee Olstead, is serving as deputy campaign manager for far-Left Democrat Francesca Hong’s campaign for governor of Wisconsin, according to The Heartland Post.
Faust first became known as a child television actress. She played Lauren Miller on the CBS sitcom “Still Standing” from 2002 to 2006 and later appeared on “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” She also recorded jazz albums produced by David Foster.
Around 2020, she moved into adult modeling and launched an OnlyFans account. In January 2023, she was named “Penthouse Pet of the Month,” and in March 2025, the magazine crowned her its 2024 “Pet of the Year.”
She has publicly called herself a sex worker and founded the Coalition for American Sex Workers, known as CASW-Local 304. The group lobbies for the decriminalizing prostitution and related policy changes.
In April 2025, Hong and three other progressive members of the Wisconsin Assembly — Reps. Ryan Clancy, Darrin B. Madison, and Christian Phelps — presented Faust with an official citation from the State Assembly. The document, signed at the Capitol on April 19, was delivered to her at Milwaukee’s Socialist Anti-Gala at Turner Hall. It recognized her advocacy for sex worker rights and her selection as the first person from Wisconsin to be named Penthouse Pet of the Year.
Hong went on to co-sponsor Assembly Bill 1193, introduced in March. The bill would decriminalize adult prostitution, solicitation, and the keeping of a place of prostitution — brothels — in Wisconsin. It would also create a formal sex workers’ “bill of rights.” Under the bill, people engaged in commercial sex would received the right not to be prosecuted for sex work, minimum wage and hour protections, protection against discrimination, harassment, unsafe working conditions, access to workers’ compensation and health benefits, and privacy from surveillance. The bill would further ban discrimination against sex workers in housing, public services, and healthcare.
Faust has served in a senior operational role on Hong’s campaign and, per The Heartland Post, has been a paid campaign operative since at least January of this year. Campaign finance reports show she received a monthly salary of $5,743.77 from the Hong campaign on July 1. Her X account bio reads “HONG 4 GOV” and links to Hong’s get-out-the-vote page. The outlet also reported that she has organized campaign events, coordinated logistics for high-profile surrogates including communist streamer Hasan Piker, and directed door-knocking efforts. She has appeared in Instagram videos on behalf of the campaign with Kat Abughazaleh.
Abughazaleh, a former Media Matters researcher, ran for Congress in Illinois’ 9th District on a platform built around anti-ICE activism — she faces federal charges stemming from a protest at an ICE facility, to which she has pleaded not guilty — and pro-Palestinian advocacy. She lost the Democratic primary in March, closing her concession speech with “F*ck Trump, f*ck ICE, free Palestine.”
The Hong campaign, in its statement to Fox News, described Faust as “a licensed mental health clinician who has spent her career providing care to trafficking survivors” and said he has “helped build the largest grassroots campaign in Wisconsin history” since joining in December.
Hong, a DSA member backed by several of the group’s Wisconsin chapters, is the frontrunner in the August 11 Democratic primary, leading her nearest rival by more than 20 points in the latest Marquette poll. She has built her brand on working-class rhetoric and democratic-socialist politics — though she has lately distanced herself from the national DSA, telling a debate audience she is “not here to govern by slogan.”
The Hong campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Wire’s request for comment.
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