“I love my country,” Eric Hovde said. “I believe in this country and what our Constitution stands for and what it’s provided the people of this country.”

“It’s really important to me that Wisconsin and working families have somebody fighting for them,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said, “and not just have somebody in there fighting for the rich and powerful.”

The top two candidates in Wisconsin’s 2024 race for U.S. Senate were both born and raised in Madison. Both say their primary reason for running is to help their fellow Wisconsinites and Americans. But that’s where the similarities end.

Baldwin, the Democrat, has spent more than three decades as an elected official, previously rising through the ranks from Madison’s city council to the Wisconsin Legislature and then to the U.S. House of Representatives.

She said what she’s done and learned over those years is what qualifies her now for a third term in the U.S. Senate.

“The experience and the seniority matters. Oftentimes, people criticize about the years of experience, but I can tell you that it is a complicated process, and the relationships that I have across the party aisle have allowed me to do really big things for Wisconsin and for the nation,” Baldwin said.

Hovde, the Republican, said his decades of success as a real estate developer and a bank owner – as well as running a foundation to help children — gives him the insight to help lead the country in a new direction.

“I have spent my life in the real world,” Hovde said. “I’ve actually built apartment complexes around our state and do land development for single family housing, so I have a wealth of experiences that can come to apply to Washington, D.C.”

Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate — the winner in Wisconsin could tip the balance.

Given that there’s also a presidential race in 2024, the issues dominating the U.S. Senate race are driven by the top of the ticket. Those issues are inflation and the economy, immigration, and abortion.

On inflation and the economy, Hovde said Democrats’ government spending is at fault.

“We’ve gone through one of the worst bouts of inflation. It was all self-created by the excessive spending. We’re bankrupting our country,” he said.”So the first thing you have to do is pull down that spending back to pre-COVID levels. That’s the very first thing. And then you have to put a long glide path of trying to reduce spending and trying to get on top of this deficit spending.”

Baldwin agreed that the pandemic is where inflation began, but said that’s not what’s driving prices up today.

“We saw prices go up because there were supply chain disruptions, and we saw prices go up because there was a lot of demand and little supply. Now that that has rectified, it is corporate greed that is causing prices to stay high, even though their cost of production has gone down dramatically.”

The candidates also have drastically different positions and plans for how to address immigration and the southern border.

“So the southern border: We need to restore order there. And there are clear things that need to happen, including more U.S. Border Patrol officers, fixing the system whereby people seek asylum and don’t have a case processed for years. It should be months, not years,” said Baldwin.

“We have to close our southern border, whether that is with a wall, with greater security. It’s going to take a multitude of different things. We have to change the laws to allow us to remove those people,” said Hovde. “But we also have to fix legal immigration, because we do have a lot of good people that we want to come here to work in our farms, to work in our factories or work at our health care system.”

Lastly, the issue of abortion has emerged as a singular topic that’s driving many voters around the country and in Wisconsin to the polls.

“Life is a wonderful thing. I agree that there should be exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. And I agree that early on in a woman’s pregnancy, she should have a right to choose,” Hovde said.

“I am the leader in the fight to restore Roe v. Wade through a bill that I lead called the Women’s Health Protection Act. That bill would codify Roe v. Wade at the federal level — put it in our national laws,” Baldwin said.

Political science experts and pollsters around the state have noted how difficult it will be for Hovde to beat Baldwin in November.

The incumbent senator has strong name recognition and support not only in the Democratic strongholds of Madison and Milwaukee but also in some rural parts of the state.

“My way of approaching both the job as senator as well as the campaigns is to try to travel everywhere I possibly can in the state of Wisconsin and meet people where they are, listen to their concerns and their aspirations, and have that inform the work that I do and the campaign that I run,” Baldwin said.

Still, Hovde said his experience outside of politics makes him the better candidate – and he thinks he’s got a chance at winning.

“Who do you want to lead your country? Somebody who has been successful and proven to be successful. Knowing how to build and run and lead,” Hovde said.