Wealthy businessman Eric Hovde on Tuesday announced his long-awaited campaign against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a declaration that finally gives Republican Senate leaders the recruit they want in Wisconsin. But while Hovde is the first serious Republican to launch a campaign, he may still have a battle on his hands in the Aug. 13 primary.
That’s because fellow rich guy Scott Mayer has spent months saying he’s interested in running even if he needs to get past Hovde, telling NBC News on Friday that he expects to decide within “one month.”
A spokesperson for former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke also informed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel just before Hovde’s kickoff that his own decision would be “coming within weeks.” The candidate filing deadline isn’t until June 3so it may be a while before the field fully takes shape.
Last week, Mayer also previewed the strategy he might use against Hovde when he told the paper“I don’t know that Wisconsin voters are keen on having a Wisconsin senator that lives in California.”
Hovde, the Journal Sentinel reported in May, paid close to $7 million in 2018 for a “luxurious hillside estate” in Orange County, California; starred in ads for his bank that were filmed in California and even featured the would-be candidate dressed in Old West garb; and had the honor of being designated by the Orange County Business Journal as one of the 500 most influential people in the county in 2020.
Hovde, who is active in real estate and banking, has sought to defend his Wisconsin bona fides, though he didn’t provide a direct answer when Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice asked which state he spent most of his time in.
“OK, I’m born in Wisconsin, raised in Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin,” he said in the spring. “My home is Wisconsin. I have a business in Wisconsin. So that’s my response.” However, as the Associated Press’ Scott Bauer noted, Hovde failed to mention Wisconsin in a video that accompanied his campaign rollout.
Just hours before Hovde’s kickoff, Bice also reported that the candidate had transferred ownership of his $2.3 million home in Washington, D.C. to his brother in August. The Republican’s team told Bice that Hovde made this move to fix an error from two decades ago that wrongly gave ownership of the house to trusts made in his name instead of his sibling’s.
This isn’t the first Senate campaign in which Hovde will be on the defensive about his ties to the Badger State, however. Bice notes that Hovde lived in the nation’s capital from 1987 until 2011, when he bought a $1.75 million home back in his native state and announced he was joining the busy primary to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl a few months later.
Hovde’s intraparty opponents were only too happy to brand him as an interloper. “Eric Hovde hasn’t lived here for 24 years and hasn’t voted here in 24 years and now wants to be the United States senator,” the front-runner, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, proclaimed at one debate.
Hovde fought back by self-funding $5.8 million (about $7.8 million in 2024 dollars), but his hefty personal investment was not quite enough. Thompson, waging a comeback 14 years after he’d last appeared on the ballot, outpaced Hovde 34-31 before losing the general election to Baldwin.
After that race, writes Bice, Hovde purchased a home back in Washington, a decision his campaign says he made because he had elderly in-laws in the area. Over the next decade, Hovde would buy and sell several other multimillion-dollar homes in the Beltway even as he mulled runs for office in Wisconsin, though he ultimately sat out the 2018 Senate race and 2022 contest for governor.
“Other than visiting my family, I spend very limited time in D.C. since I moved or transferred my businesses there in 2012 and 2013 to Madison,” he told the paper.
One influential group that doesn’t seem at all bothered by Hovde’s peregrinations is the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has backed several other wealthy candidates this year with questionable ties to the state they’re running in.
Hovde became the GOP establishment’s favored recruit shortly after its first choice, Rep. Mike Gallagher, decided not to challenge Baldwin (Gallagher later announced that he would retire from Congress), and the NRSC was quick to endorse his candidacy on Tuesday. Baldwin, for her part, immediately dubbed her new foe “an out-of-touch megamillionaire.”
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to include details on Eric Hovde’s launch video.
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