The race between U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican businessman Eric Hovde has reached a sort of stasis.
For months, the two campaigns have traded the same attacks. Baldwin has battered Hovde for questioning the voting capabilities of nursing home residents and suggesting overweight people pay more for health insurance. She also has argued Hovde’s extraordinary wealth leaves him incapable of looking out for everyday voters.
Hovde, meanwhile, has tried to tie the senator to President Joe Biden. He blames Baldwin for last year’s soaring inflation and an unsecured southern border. He also argued that the work of Baldwin’s partner, a financial adviser, is a potential conflict of interest.
But in a political cycle focused on change, Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race hardly feels like a referendum on Baldwin — despite her nearly 26 years in Washington. Most of the time, it seems like the two candidates are talking past one another, even as they court Wisconsin’s fussy independent voters.
Baldwin has consistently had the advantage in recent polling. A Wisconsin Watch poll conducted by The MassINC Polling Group found Baldwin leading Hovde 52% to 44%.
A month out from Election Day, Democrats, nonpartisan analysts and even many Republicans consider Baldwin the favorite. But neither party is ready to call the race.
Baldwin stepped onto the buzzing factory floor of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry’s expansive Manitowoc facility on a recent September afternoon full of questions about the wide range of metal products produced by the foundry. Days spent touring Wisconsin businesses help inform her work as a senator, she told a group of WAF employees after the tour.
And those tours, which often happen during her frequent trips outside Democratic strongholds, have helped her remain relatively well-liked among rural and blue-collar voters.
“The way Tammy Baldwin keeps winning, and winning by more than the average Democrat, is by refusing to write anyone or anywhere off,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “One of her great strengths is being able to disagree without being disagreeable.”
Baldwin has been tough to beat. She’s never lost an election, dating back to the 1980s when she was elected to the Dane County Board. And she’s faced formidable opponents, like former Gov. Tommy Thompson in her first Senate campaign in 2012.
Baldwin attributes her success, at least in part, to two things.
“First of all, it’s a question of whose side you’re on, and voters have a choice for somebody who’s on their side,” she said, “or somebody who’s for the…rich and connected.
“Secondly, I think (it’s) partly because I do show up,” she continued. “Word gets out that I’m up there and that I’m fighting for folks who tell me what it is that challenges them.”
Sporting his now-signature mustache and a red “USA” baseball hat, Hovde hovered at the edge of a barn at the Manawa Rodeo Grounds while he waited to take the stage at the Waupaca County Republican Party’s “Rally for Liberty.”
He was greeted on stage to hearty applause from members of the party faithful.
“I’m standing here for the same reason you are all here today — it’s because I love my country,” Hovde said.
The Republican businessman is in the race for four reasons, he said.
First, out-of-control spending in Washington — which Hovde says has caused inflated prices — needs to be pared back.
Second, Hovde said, Democrats have threatened the nation’s domestic security through the Defund the Police movement and immigration policies that have allowed millions of people to enter the country illegally, straining the country’s housing, health care and justice systems.
Next, Hovde argued the U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan showed adversaries the United States was weak. “Their incompetence has put the whole world at greater risk.”
And finally, “we’ve got to come together,” Hovde said.
He received a standing ovation from the crowd. Afterward, he greeted a line of voters. It was here, and not on the stump, that he was most comfortable — an important quality in a race against a seasoned veteran of retail politics.
With voter after voter, he happily shook hands, looked them in the eyes, heard them out and posed for a photo.
That’s the formula some of the state’s top Republicans believe he needs to employ to close the gap on Baldwin. “He’s got to contrast against her,” said Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. “And secondly, he has to get voters comfortable with him.
“If he does those two things,” Schimming said, “I think he can win.”
Democrats have leveled near-nonstop attacks against Hovde.
Their favorite attack line is charging that Hovde isn’t from Wisconsin, reminding voters frequently of his multimillion dollar home in Laguna Beach, California.
“The thing about Tammy is that she’s authentic,” said state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, comparing the two candidates. “She is who she is, and she’s not pretending to be something else.”
Hovde bristles at those attacks. Sitting at The Outpost Pub & Provisions in Sherwood, he said “every single one of (the Democrats’) ads is just a complete, fabricated lie.”
“The biggest constant lie is trying to tell people I’m a Californian,” Hovde said. “Are you kidding me? Do you think I sound like a Californian?”
He further noted that he’s a fourth generation Wisconsin resident, was born and raised in the state, graduated from Madison East High School, and earned his bachelor’s degree from UW-Madison.
“Her whole campaign has been about lies and deceptions,” he said.
Nonpartisan election analysts believe the race is tipping toward Baldwin. The Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Split Ticket all rate the race as “leans Democratic.”
Her status as the incumbent, strength among rural voters, and prior electoral success puts her ahead of Hovde, said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
“It would be a pretty decent surprise if Baldwin ended up losing,” Coleman said in an interview. But he noted, Wisconsin almost always features close elections.
Baldwin’s significant fundraising advantage — despite Hovde’s considerable personal wealth — allowed her “to get out and define Hovde early,” said Jessica Taylor, U.S. Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report.
The race has been about Hovde, not Baldwin, Taylor said, presenting a challenge for a candidate who wants to make the race a “change” election.
“I think he needs to chip away at Baldwin,” Taylor said of Hovde. She said she’s been hearing in recent focus groups of voters a “distrust with career politicians,” which gives Hovde an opening.
Gov. Tony Evers said Baldwin has “done a lot for Wisconsin.” During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Baldwin pushed to bring back federal dollars, the governor said. He also said her work to establish the simplified 988 suicide prevention hotline and secure funding to replace the Blatnik Bridge between Superior and Duluth, Minnesota, shows she’s focused on addressing pressing needs.
But Republicans see a weakness in Baldwin’s Washington record.
“Tammy has a fairly unremarkable track record in the Senate in terms of achievement — that’s putting it generously,” Schimming said.
Her voting record is also to the left of the state, Schimming said, something that makes her even more vulnerable.
“I would not want to be a 95% or 96% vote with Joe Biden right now,” Schimming said of Baldwin’s voting record.
Hovde said pushing a “change” message will help him win.
“Has Sen. Baldwin, who’s been in Washington for 26 years, made your life better?” he said. “I think the answer is pretty clear. If you look at where our country has gone, by any measurement and means, it has not gone in the right direction under her tenure.”
“I am very proud of my record,” Baldwin said when asked about the GOP attacks.
She pointed to a provision she authored in the Affordable Care Act that allows Americans to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26, her support for Buy America rules, which mandate that American-made materials be used for certain federally funded projects, and her work to bring down the costs of inhalers, something she says has had real results over the past year.
Baldwin also pushed back on GOP assertions that she’s been a rubber-stamp vote for Biden’s agenda.
“I work for only Wisconsin,” she said. “I don’t work for a president. I work for the state.”
The senator was among a group of Democrats that pushed Biden to halt talks of a trade deal with a series of Indo-Pacific nations over concerns it could harm American workers. She also highlighted that she led a bipartisan effort to get the Food and Drug Administration to stop allowing imitation “dairy” products like almond milk to be mislabeled.
Both Baldwin and Hovde offered windows into their policy priorities in interviews with Wisconsin Watch.
To rein in costs, Hovde said, lawmakers need to “pull spending back to pre-COVID levels.” The country then needs to reduce regulations and cut back on government mandates, he added.
On border policy, the Republican businessman said the U.S. should revert to Trump-era rules, such as reinstituting the so-called “remain in Mexico” policy, which forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court dates, revoke broad rights granted to migrants who enter the U.S., and finish building a southern border wall.
One issue he doesn’t believe the federal government should be involved in is setting abortion policy. Abortion laws should be established through referendums, he said.
He said he believes in exceptions to abortion bans for rape, incest and medical emergencies, and that women should be able access abortion services early on in a pregnancy. He pointed to European countries that ban abortion anywhere from after 12 weeks to after 18 weeks, and said “those all seem like reasonable ranges to me.”
He also accused Baldwin of supporting abortions after fetal viability.
She disputed the premise.
“The type of abortion that Eric Hovde describes does not happen in America,” she said. “If there is a woman presenting late in her pregnancy for care, it is because something has gone catastrophically wrong.”
She pointed to her Women’s Health Protection Act to demonstrate her stance on abortion policy, which would restore Roe v. Wade protections that allowed states to ban abortion “after fetal viability” with exceptions for medical emergencies.
Getting the bill passed would be one of Baldwin’s top priorities — though it would likely face an uphill battle with Republicans expected to retake the majority.
She also would continue to push policies like the Dairy Business Innovation Act, which created a grant program aimed at helping dairy farmers expand their operations and diversify their businesses, or another bipartisan bill she helped author that would provide funding for rural communities to test their wells for PFAS chemicals.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.
