Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) will represent Wisconsin for another term in the Senate after she fended off a Republican challenge from businessman Eric Hovde on Tuesday night.
Senate Republicans spent heavily in Wisconsin, a perennial battleground whose races are typically decided by razor-thin margins.
Polling showed Baldwin’s Senate race to be no different. In the campaign’s closing weeks, she was virtually tied with Hovde, a bank CEO who put $20 million of his own money into the campaign.
But Baldwin was able to narrowly secure a third term on Tuesday night, winning 49.4% of the vote when the Associated Press called the race Wednesday. Hovde received 48.5%.
The race marks Baldwin’s closest statewide race yet. In her prior two runs, she defeated her Republican opponent by 5 and then 11 points.
Baldwin announced the win before the AP called the race, saying, “The people of Wisconsin have chosen someone who always puts Wisconsin first, someone who shows up, listens, and works with everyone to get the job done. And they rejected the billionaires and the special interests who want to come to our state, spread hate and division, and buy their way into power.”
It also marks a second political setback for Hovde, who attempted to challenge Baldwin when she first ran for Senate in 2012. He lost the Republican primary that year to former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
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Wisconsin was not a must-win state for Republicans, who invested more in flipping Democratic-held seats in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But Baldwin’s return to the Senate means Republicans will have a smaller margin for error when they take the majority next year.
The political dynamics that decided the race in Wisconsin were similar to other Senate battlegrounds. Baldwin was able to survive, in part, by campaigning on abortion access, a topic that continues to have sway with independents after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Meanwhile, Republicans painted Baldwin as a rubber stamp for Vice President Kamala Harris whose votes fueled a border crisis and decades-high inflation.
But the tenor of the race also became increasingly personal as each candidate accused the other of lies and misrepresentations. In the closing weeks, Baldwin’s girlfriend even became the target of Republican attacks.
The Hovde campaign said the relationship presented a conflict of interest. Her partner, Maria Brisbane, is a wealth manager whose connections to Wall Street led them to demand she submit financial disclosure statements.
But Democrats said the emphasis amounted to a “dog whistle” meant to turn voters against Baldwin on the basis of her sexual orientation, not her policies.
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Brisbane came up at their October debate and featured heavily in campaign advertising, with one commercial accusing Baldwin of being “in bed with Wall Street.”
On the other side, Hovde’s connections to California came under relentless scrutiny from Democrats. Hovde, a real estate magnate from Madison, Wisconsin, was born and raised in the state but owns a home in Laguna Beach, California.