FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) gestures during a campaign event at West Allis Central High School, in West Allis, Wisconsin, U.S., July 23, 2024. REUTERS/Vincent Alban/File Photo
The Wisconsin Senate race has been called for Tammy Baldwin.
The contest, between the incumbent Democratic senator and Republican businessman Eric Hovde, was a must-win for Democrats who have already lost control of the Senate.
For most of the cycle, Baldwin, who has served in the Senate since 2013, had a hefty lead in polls, even as the presidential contest showed a razor-thin margin. Polling tightened in the final stretch of the race, however.
Hovde, a banking and real estate development executive who has suggested the commercial sale of alcohol ought to be illegal, has landed himself in a number of controversies on the campaign trail.
In April, Hovde came under fire for pushing Trump-backed conspiracy theories about voter fraud in nursing homes, suggesting it was impossible that voter turnout among nursing home residents in 2020 was as high as recorded because "if you're in a nursing home, you only have a five, six-month life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote."
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Then in June, he drew criticism for saying that people in their 20s still enrolled in their parents' health insurance are "stupid" and the provision of the Affordable Care Act granting that as a right should be abolished because "All we're doing is delaying younger people's maturation."
More recently, Wisconsin Democrats hammered Hovde over doing financial transactions with Banco Azteca, an infamous Mexican bank long accused of working with Mexican drug cartels — although there is no evidence that Hovde himself has engaged in any such illicit activity.