Bill Lueders wrote this article at the Never-Trump site called “The Bulwark.” He asked the question that is the title of this post. Lueders is editor-army-large for The Progressive. He says that Eric Hovde, who is challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin, has “high hopes and low scruples.”

He writes:

ERIC HOVDE’S CAMPAIGN IS “running out of money.” He told me so the other day. He’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But apparently he can’t afford to keep up with the cost of his own attack ads.

“Fellow Conservative,” began his recent email, addressed to me. “I need your immediate help to keep this ad running 24/7 online in Wisconsin through Election Day!” He said it was very important that this particular ad continue to run, as it represents “our best opportunity to expose undecided Wisconsin voters who will decide this TOSS-UP election to Tammy Baldwin’s willingness to line her own pockets at the expense of Wisconsin voters.” 

I don’t know if Hovde’s campaign scared up the $50,000 that he said was needed within 48 hours in order for the ad to keep running, but the ad was definitely not pulled. You can watch it here. It pictures Baldwin, the first openly lesbian (or gay) senator in U.S. history, alongside her partner, Maria Brisbane, who is described in a voiceover as “a Wall Street exec who makes millions advising the super-rich how to make money off of industries Tammy regulates.” 

A still from Hovde’s ad.

The ad, part of a tsunami of political spending on the race that has been going on for months, says Baldwin often doesn’t make it home to Wisconsin on weekends because “she’d rather be in New York at Maria’s $7 million condo.” For this reason, the narrator intones, “New Yorkers have given Tammy more than $1.3 million. Tammy Baldwin is not Wisconsin’s senator anymore, she’s the third senator from New York.”

As he heads into what is seen as one of the most competitive and potentially pivotal races for the U.S. Senate on the November 5 ballot, Hovde is doing his darnedest to shake off the image some people have of him as an elite outsider and somewhat of a jerk. He insists this is a false impression. 

Just because he is a California banker with listed assets of between $195 million and $563 million, lives mostly in a $7 million oceanview mansion in Laguna Beach, was for three straight years named one of Orange County’s most influential people by a local business journal, and has frequently not even bothered to vote in Wisconsin elections, doesn’t mean Hovde is not intimately connected to the state’s working stiffs. In February, he even jumped into the icy waters of Lake Mendota in Madison to prove it.

Hovde in a still from his video from Lake Mendota.

“So the Dems and Senator Baldwin keep saying I’m not from Wisconsin,” he says in the video while shirtless in the freezing lake. “Which is a complete joke. All right, Sen. Baldwin, why don’t you get out here in this frozen lake and let’s really see who’s from Wisconsin.” Like most sensible Wisconsinites, the senator stayed out of the frigid water.

Baldwin keeps most of her relatively meager assets, reportedly worth around $1.2 million, in a blind trust. Hovde has not committed to doing so, although he has vowed to “step out of any management role” at the Utah-based bank where he now serves as chairman of board. (The bank, ingeniously named Sunwest Bank, has branchesin five states, not including Wisconsin, and some $3.4 billion in assets.)

And so even though his own financial conflicts are much greater and less well safeguarded, Hovde is going after Baldwin on this score, claiming she’s somehow helping the super-rich “make money off of industries Tammy regulates.” Hovde groused to the Wisconsin State Journalthat Baldwin “doesn’t report what her partner is doing. If she was married, they’d have to report that, right? So she’s, again, trying to confuse people.”

But who is trying to confuse whom? Baldwin and Brisbane are not married, so under the law, neither has to report Brisbane’s assets. Hovde, in contrast, has potential conflicts that are genuinely concerning, including his bank’s decision to accept money from a Mexican bank that has been tied to drug traffickers.….

Hovde, meanwhile, has tried to paint Baldwin as a dangerous radical. In a pair of similar ads that began airing last week, the ominous voiceover accuses Baldwin and Vice President Kamala Harris of being birds of a feather in, as one of these ads puts it, “allowing men to compete in girls’ sports, funding a clinic that offers transgender therapy to minors without parents’ consent, giving stimulus checks to illegals while Wisconsin families struggle.”

A still from one of Hovde’s attack ads.

To finish reading, open the link.