MADISON — The candidates in Wisconsin’s race for U.S. Senate were right back on the attack after Tuesday’s partisan primary, with a focus on the money flowing into the battleground face-off.
Multimillionaire businessman Eric Hovde easily won the Republican nomination on Tuesday, taking home 86% of his party’s vote. At a luncheon Wednesday hosted by WisPolitics, he accused incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of serving special interest groups and lying about him in attack ads.
“I’m not taking all that special interest money like she’s taking. You know, she’s taken money from every special interest group known to man,” Hovde said.
Hovde ran his primary campaign like a general campaign, focusing his attacks on Baldwin and attempting to label the two-term senator as beholden to lobbyists. Last week, he sued a liberal political action committee and several Wisconsin television stations alleging that the PAC’s attack ad against him constitutes defamation.
Baldwin, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, has worked to brand Hovde as an out-of-touch carpetbagger.
“My opponent Eric Hovde is a multi millionaire California bank owner who has insulted our seniors, our farmers, our moms, and just about everyone else in our great state,” Baldwin said in a statement Tuesday evening. “While he runs to put the wealthy and well connected like himself first, I will always stand up for the working people of Wisconsin.”
Hovde is CEO of a real estate company based in Madison, where he was born and raised. But he also leads Sunwest Bank, based in Utah, and owns a $7 million mansion in California in addition to his Madison residence.
“Everybody here knows – I’m not a Californian. I’ve never been a resident of the state of California one year in my life,” Hovde said on Wednesday.
Hovde has put up $13 million in his own money to help fund his campaign, but he’s been outspent by Baldwin, who had fundraised more than $34 million as of July. At Wednesday’s luncheon, Hovde said he expects Democrats to spend more than $100 million on the race and that he won’t be able to keep up with that money by self-funding.
Despite lagging behind Baldwin in fundraising and in the polls, Hovde said he’s optimistic ahead of November.
“I feel really good about where I am,” he said. “The heart of this campaign will now start getting litigated.”
