Frederica Freyberg:
Candidates for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin square off in a statewide debate a week from tonight. Incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin and Republican Eric Hovde appear on the televised debate Friday, October 18 at 7 p.m. You can watch that here and then join right after for “Here & Now” for highlights and analysis. Tonight, reporter Steven Potter tells us about the candidates and where they stand.

Eric Hovde:
We need to put on the red, white and blue jersey. I love my country and come together as Americans. I believe in this country and what our Constitution stands for and what it’s provided the people of this country.

Tammy Baldwin:
And hey, Wisconsin, it’s really important to me that Wisconsin working families have somebody fighting for them and not just somebody in there fighting for the rich and powerful. State motto is forward.

Steven Potter:
The top two candidates for U.S. Senate were both born and raised in Madison, and both say that their primary reason for running is to help their fellow Wisconsinites and Americans. But that’s where the similarities end between Eric Hovde and Tammy Baldwin.

Tammy Baldwin:
I will be a senator for all of Wisconsin.

Steven Potter:
Baldwin, the Democrat, has spent more than three decades as an elected official. Previously rising through the ranks from city council to the state legislature and then to the U.S. House of Representatives. She says what she’s done and learned over those years is what qualifies her now for a third term in the U.S. Senate.

Tammy Baldwin:
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.

Steven Potter:
Hovde, the Republican, says 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.

Eric Hovde:
I have spent my life in the real world. 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, you know, Washington, D.C.

Steven Potter:
Democrats currently 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 this year, the issues dominating the U.S. Senate race are driven by the top of the ticket, and those are: inflation and the economy, immigration and abortion. On inflation and the economy, Hovde says Democrats’ government spending is at fault.

Eric Hovde:
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. 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.

Steven Potter:
Baldwin agrees that the pandemic is where inflation began but says that’s not what’s driving prices up today.

Tammy Baldwin:
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.

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

Tammy Baldwin:
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.

Eric Hovde:
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. 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 look at our health care system.

Steven Potter:
And 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.

Eric Hovde:
Life is a wonderful thing, and 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.

Tammy Baldwin:
I am the leader in the fight to restore Roe v. Wade. It’s 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 into our national laws.

Steven Potter:
Political scientists and pollsters around the state have noted how difficult it will be for Eric Hovde to beat Tammy Baldwin in November. The senator has strong name recognition and support not only in Democratic strongholds of Madison and Milwaukee, but also in some rural parts of the state.

Tammy Baldwin:
My way of approaching both the job as senator, as well as the campaign, 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.

Steven Potter:
Still, Eric Hovde says his experience outside of politics makes him the better candidate, and he thinks he’s got a chance at winning.

Eric Hovde:
If you want this country to go in a better direction and have somebody who is doing it because he loves his country, he realizes the country is failing economically and we have to get people who understand our globalized, financialized economy today and who understands real life experiences.

Steven Potter:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Steven Potter.