The fight for a Wisconsin Senate seat between Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Republican rival Eric Hovde is turning increasingly personal in the battleground state.
Hovde has enlisted his wife, Sharon Hovde, in a new ad to rebuke criticism from the Baldwin campaign about past comments he made about single mothers and societal problems.
The contentious race is one of more than a half-dozen races Democrats must win to retain control of the Senate.
“Senator Baldwin, your dirty campaign has gone too far,” Sharon Hovde says in the ad. “Your latest attack on my husband is about single mothers. I was a single mom when I met Eric. It was hard. Eric saw the difficulty I faced just trying to afford childcare.”
Sharon Hovde attributes her experience as the reason her husband supports state housing programs available to single mothers before turning back to condemning the Baldwin campaign’s rhetoric on the subject.
“Your whole campaign has been about lies and personal attacks,” Sharon Hovde says. “The people of Wisconsin deserve better. It's time for change."
During an unsuccessful 2012 Senate bid, Eric Hovde said during a radio interview that “4 out of 10 children born in America, they are born out of wedlock,” which he added “is a direct path to a life of poverty.”
In a 2012 primary debate, he cited the same statistic and said policymakers must address it.
“We know that leads to higher poverty rates, higher incarceration rates, for those young children, higher dropout rates, higher rates of depression,” Eric Hovde said. “It is devastating to them. We have to do everything we can to support the family unit, and we have to stop government policies that reward those that are having children out of wedlock and harming people that are having children in marriage.”
Baldwin featured some of those past remarks in an ad of her own last week. She enlisted the children of single mothers, one of whom says Eric Hovde “thinks if you have a single mom, you’re going to be poor or a drug addict.”
In response to Eric Hovde’s latest ad featuring his wife, the Baldwin campaign told the Washington Examiner in a statement that “Eric Hovde’s words speak for themselves.”
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“He insulted the children of single mothers just like he has insulted Wisconsin seniors, farmers, and those struggling with their weight,” said Baldwin campaign spokesman Andrew Mamo in reference to other 2012 comments made by Eric Hovde, such as those in nursing homes may be too elderly to vote or overweight people should pay more for healthcare .
“Wisconsinites deserve a senator who respects them, not one who demeans them,” Mamo added.
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