From a luxury building in Wisconsin last week, mustachioed multimillionaire and accused carpetbagger Eric Hovde made the case for his election to the U.S. Senate in his run against two-term he was interested in running for Senate.
At the time, he claimed to have $100 million in assets and dismissed the idea he could buy an election. “I’m taking my hard-earned money because I care about my country passionately and I’m worried it’s going to go through a financial collapse,” he told the AP. “And I’m being criticized for making a big investment that’s a giant negative return for me?”
During the 2012 primary bid, Hovde campaigned on repealing former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. He also shared his support for overturning Roe v. Wade, saying he was “totally opposed” to legalized abortion. His former campaign website declared, “We must defend and protect all human life from conception to natural death.” (The site also announced he believes “that marriage is between one man and one woman.”)
He tweaked his abortion stance last week, saying he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life.
At one point, he was dinged for arguing reporters should stop writing “sob” stories about people who “couldn’t get their food stamps or this or that.” He added, “I’m like, but what about what’s happening to the country and the country as a whole? That’s going to devastate everybody.” Hovde later used the backlash to his remarks in a fundraising letter, saying he’d been taken out of context by liberal outlets including the Huffington Post and even suggested Ariana Huffington had attacked him.
“I will gladly debate Ms. Huffington any time and any place in front of a room full of journalists on what she has done for the less fortunate versus what I have done,” Hovde said, referring to his charity building homes for the poor in Central America and Africa.
At a forum in Madison, he further defended himself: “I have done more for people that are economically disadvantaged than probably—and I’ve never talked about it publicly because I keep it very low-profile—than all but for a very few people in our society.”
Hovde drifted out of the public eye after losing the primary to former Gov. Tommy Thompson (who lost to Baldwin).
In 2018, he purchased his Laguna Beach home in a gated community where billionaire Warren Buffet and actress Lori Laughlin had properties. The California mansion is a short drive from Hovde’s $2.9 billion multibank holding company, H Bancorp, and its flagship Sunwest Bank—for which Hovde stars in Old West-style TV commercials as the hero in a showdown with a “big banker.”
Indeed, opponents relish pointing out that the Orange County Business Journal named Hovde one of its 500 most influential people from 2018 to 2020.
They also seized on a Journal Sentinel report revealing Hovde was absent for 17 of the 30 Wisconsin elections in the last decade. (In the 2023 spring election, however, he and his wife voted by absentee ballots sent to their West Coast getaway.)
Hovde re-emerged in 2020, looking tan in a TV ad he filmed in California and paid to broadcast in Wisconsin against Governor Tony Evers’ COVID-19 stay-at-home order.
Last year, Hovde transferred his $2.3 million Washington, D.C., home to his brother and business partner, Steve Hovde—just months after the Journal Sentinel revealed his Laguna Beach digs. His spokesman said the sale had nothing to do with the upcoming Senate race.
Asked where he spent the most time, Hovde said, “This is laughable. OK, I’m born in Wisconsin, raised in Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Wisconsin. My home is Wisconsin. I have a business in Wisconsin. So that’s my response.”
But when the NRSC’s chair confirmed Hovde’s candidacy last December, the mogul was photographed tossing money into the air and wearing a viking helmet prop in a video booth at his bank’s holiday party in Newport Beach.
Democrats also latched onto Hovde spending the end of October in California, sending someone in a cow costume to his door on Halloween. “Trick-or-treaters who tried to get candy at Hovde’s house in Madison yesterday were disappointed to find that Hovde wasn’t home,” Democrats said in a press release. “Instead of toughing out the first snow of the season in Wisconsin and handing out candy to Wisconsin trick-or-treaters, Hovde is getting ready to give his keynote speech at his 14th annual California Economic Forum at a luxurious resort in Orange County, California.”
Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said Hovde “isn’t a visible person” and has the “carpetbagger problem,” so Democrats will be working hard to shape his introduction to potential voters.
He weighed a run against Baldwin in 2018 and a bid for governor four years later but sat both out. “He dips in when he wants to think about dallying in politics,” Dolan said, adding, “Does it look like he’s just wondering what his best thing for himself is?”
“Is it just about his own sort of self-aggrandizement, or does he really want to be Senator from Wisconsin?” Dolan asked.
She said Hovde is up against Baldwin, a popular incumbent who is a “workhorse, not a show horse” and constantly delivers for constituents. “She is visible in the state,” Dolan said, “but it’s always in connection with what she’s doing for Wisconsin.”
While Hovde didn’t mention Trump in his 19-minute Sky Club speech, Dolan said Hovde would eventually have to kiss the Donald’s ring, especially at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “For him to generate interest, and for him to help generate that turnout, I think he’s got to be more of what the Republican voters here are going to expect,” Dolan said.
“He doesn’t want Trump to think that he isn’t as loyal as he can be,” Dolan added. “He doesn’t want Trump to question him at all.”
“His best chance of getting elected is to ride on Trump’s coattails and ride on any Republican wave here in Wisconsin if it appears, and he can’t do that as successfully by taking this middle road.”
