In a tight Senate race in Wisconsin, Republicans are pouring money into GOP nominee Eric Hovde’s campaign for ads targeting incumbent Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and her longtime partner.
Asked by CNN whether she believed Hovde is trying to remind voters that the two-term senator is gay, Baldwin replied, “I think he is.”
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They’re minors and he used their pictures without their parents’ permission, seemingly calling them “boys in girls’ sports.”
After a failed strategy trying to compete with Baldwin on the issues, Hovde turned to tactics intended to galvanize his base and move the needle. Polls show they’re having an effect. Baldwin sat on a comfortable lead for most of the race, but Hovde has narrowed her margin to two points, according to the latest polls.
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The ads use Baldwin’s longtime partner, Maria Brisbane, who runs the Brisbane Group, a private wealth management division of Morgan Stanley, to call Baldwin’s ethics into question and remind voters along the way that she’s gay.
“Baldwin’s in bed with Wall Street,” a woman sitting in her kitchen says not so subtly in one Hovde ad referring to the senator’s relationship with Brisbane. In others, Brisbane is referred to as Baldwin’s “girlfriend.”
The ads all share the same dual messages, paid for with a huge influx of cash from Republican party sources and Hovde’s own personal fortune.
While Democrats will outspend Republicans for the year in the Senate race, Hovde and his allies have booked $51 million on-air from October 1 through Election Day, compared with $39 million for Democrats.
Hovde’s latest ad uses Baldwin’s words against her, taken from a 2009 Senate hearing on domestic partner benefits.
“Married members must file very important information about their spouse income, their investments, gifts, and debts. Surely the public interest would require that these obligations apply also to partners of gay and lesbian office holders,” Baldwin says in a clip taken from C-SPAN.
“But wait, here’s Tammy today when asked to disclose the finances of her own partner,” the ad’s narrator says, followed by a quote from Baldwin on stage at a debate with Hovde last week. Baldwin and Brisbane are not married.
“Stay out of my personal life,” Baldwin says bluntly.
The senator went on to add a remonstration not included in the clip, addressing reproductive rights: “And I think I speak for most Wisconsin women that he should stay out of all of our personal lives,” she continued.
But the former lawyer has a tough case to make when it comes to financial disclosures concerning her longtime partner. Baldwin told CNN that, unlike a previous domestic partnership she was in, she’s not obligated to disclose Brisbane’s clients over conflict-of-interest concerns because the two aren’t in a relationship codified by law. The pair own a condominium in Washington together worth $1.3 million.
Baldwin called Hovde’s tactics a dog whistle and a distraction from his own financial conflicts as the owner of a $3 billion bank.
“I disclose everything I’m required to,” she said. “I think he’s also trying to distract from his sort of judgmental weaknesses.”
“Think of him on the Banking Committee, setting regulations for banks,” she added. “I mean, this is a horrifying conflict of interest that I think he wants to deflect attention from.”
Hovde’s ad blitz goes after the transgender community, as well, tying Baldwin to Harris for “allowing men to compete in girls’ sports” and “funding a clinic that offers transgender therapy to minors without parents’ consent,” a claim proven to be false.
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