With just a month elapsed since Wisconsin’s epic recall election, the state is poised for yet another close, high-profile race. As the Senate contest emerges from the recall’s shadow, one Republican candidate is rising quickly thanks to his own fortune and an aggressive media blitz.
Businessman Eric Hovde started turning heads earlier this week when a new survey showed him edging out the longtime frontrunner, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, by 2 points. Another poll this week found Thompson still in the lead, but Hovde gaining ground.
Hovde’s surge is thanks in part to the $3 million he has dropped on TV ads, pitching himself as an outsider — much of which came from his own pocket. Hovde contributed $1.5 million of his own funds in the first quarter of 2012; his campaign declined to say how much he’s chipped in since then.
Hovde began running one ad way back in late April — at the height of the state’s gubernatorial recall election — that decried a certain kind of money in politics.
“The guys on Wall Street give millions in campaign contributions to politicians in D.C,” Hovde says in the ad. “Wall Street calls it ‘cheap insurance.’ Wall Street committed fraud, Washington turned a blind eye — and when it all fell apart, our taxpayer money bailed them out.”
In another more recent spot, Hovde calls for cutting corporate taxes in order to create jobs: “We always want America to be first — but in this case, the top spot is horrible for our country.”
Hovde’s presence on TV, and his corresponding surge in the polls, is finally attracting some attention in the Aug. 14 race. The tea party-affiliated FreedomWorks PAC endorsed Hovde Friday.
“Just like in 2010, our activists want to send new blood to Washington — not the recycled politicians of a bygone era,” Executive Director Max Pappas said in a statement — a clear knock against frontrunner former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
Hovde is also being taken more seriously by his opponents: Club for Growth, an influential outside group supporting Rep. Mark Neumann, attacked Hovde in its latest ad. The group had previously focused attacks solely on Thompson.
Hovde is an executive in community banking, with holdings around the country, and also runs the family’s real estate development company in Madison as well as a charitable foundation. He was born and raised in Madison — but his opponents like to point out that he’s lived in Washington for more than 20 years, and only just recently relocated back to the state.
Hovde press secretary Sean Lansing told TPM suggested there was hypocrisy at work in such attacks. “That is a favorite line of attack from Gov. Thompson who, oddly enough, spent years living in Virginia while he profited off his time in office as a corporate lobbyist.”
Hovde’s rising poll numbers are likely welcome news for a campaign that has so made headlines for two big missteps: At a Chamber of Commerce event in June, Hovde complained that media coverage focused too much on “another sob story” about individual tales of woe in the economy, instead of the big picture about the federal deficit.
A few days later, he said the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, bases her political philosophy on “Marxism, communism, socialism [and] extreme liberalism.”
Lansing said both instances were taken out of contest.
“He never called her a communist. He said her philosophy is noted in a number of liberal teachings, including communism, he included others, it never happened,” Lansing told TPM. “And on the ‘sob story’ one, yeah it was taken out of context — it was a five-second clip from a 14-minute speech about the economic issues we face, and the need to reform our entitlement system.”
Marquette polling director Charles Franklin said Hovde’s advertising blitz, coupled with virtually no counter-advertising from the competition, has helped vault the businessman to the front of the race.
“This has been an interesting tactical race, in that the recall election certainly competed with any attention to the Senate race,” said Franklin. “Hovde, as a complete unknown, went ahead and spent quite a bit of money during the recall time.”
In the run-up to the June recall, Franklin said, Hovde was positive, talking about himself and issues he wanted to emphasize. But there was no one else sending any counter messages.”
The PollTracker Average shows Thompson with 32.7 percent, Hovde with 27.7 percent, Neumann with 13.7 percent and state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald with 7.3 percent.
