CNN
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Sen. Tammy Baldwin will win reelection in Wisconsin, CNN initiatives, in a victory for Senate Democrats attempting to defend the so-called blue wall states regardless of shedding them on the presidential degree and having already misplaced their majority within the chamber.
Baldwin is projected defeat Republican Eric Hovde in a race that attracted a late flurry of consideration after initially showing much less aggressive than a couple of different states the place Democrats had been on protection.
Baldwin will likely be returning for a 3rd time period to a dramatically shifted Senate. Republicans are presently projected to manage 52 seats subsequent yr, having flipped West Virginia, Ohio and Montana. CNN has not but projected the opposite “blue wall” Senate races – in Pennsylvania and Michigan – as of Wednesday afternoon.
Republicans got here residence late to Hovde, however Democrats had labored to outline him early, seizing on a few of his controversial feedback to color him as a California banker who didn’t have Wisconsin voters’ greatest curiosity at coronary heart. (The CEO of Sunwest Financial institution owns a house in Laguna Seashore, California, however was born and raised within the Badger State.) Democrats additionally leaned into the problem of abortion to choose up nontraditional Democratic voters.
Hovde, who’s additionally CEO of a distinguished Madison-based growth firm bearing his title, poured thousands and thousands of {dollars} into his marketing campaign and had vital exterior firepower from GOP teams. However Baldwin – a widely known incumbent first elected to the Senate in 2012 after seven phrases within the Home – raised substantial cash that additionally allowed her to order promoting time on the extra favorable candidate price.
Her marketing campaign attacked Hovde, for instance, for saying that the majority nursing residence sufferers aren’t in a situation to vote, whereas touting her work within the Senate, together with efforts to go the PACT Act, which expands well being care advantages for veterans uncovered to burn pits.
The 2-term incumbent had expertise courting ticket-splitters – she received her earlier reelection in 2018 after former President Donald Trump had carried Wisconsin two years earlier. However Hovde posed a harder problem than her opponent from six years in the past. Baldwin made an effort to journey to rural and conservative components of the state to attempt to slim Hovde’s margins, even in locations the place Democrats had been prone to lose. She additionally scored the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, a notable get for a Democrat operating statewide.
For a lot of the race, Hovde had a defensive posture on air responding to Democratic assaults – attempting to put out his Wisconsin roots or name out Baldwin’s spots for being “nasty.” However the GOP nominee – whose marketing campaign underwent an early fall shake-up – additionally tried to nationalize the race, making an attempt to tie Baldwin to President Joe Biden after which Vice President Kamala Harris on inflation and the border.
And within the remaining stretch, Hovde and his GOP allies accused Baldwin, the primary out homosexual senator, of a battle of curiosity as a result of her associate of six years is a monetary adviser for high-end shoppers. The cost, which Baldwin strongly denies, lacks proof. Republicans additionally attacked her over transgender points, attempting to color the senator as too liberal for the state. Baldwin took to the airwaves to say that Hovde was “mendacity” and that he was “not for us.”
Whereas these GOP traces of assault might have helped Hovde consolidate the bottom with which he was lagging for a lot of the race, it wasn’t sufficient to win over the final voters.
