Businessman Eric Hovde still weighing whether he’ll enter U.S. Senate race.
Businessman still weighing whether he’ll enter U.S. Senate race
MADISON – Republican investor Eric Hovde is interviewing candidates for top jobs in a potential U.S. Senate campaign — the clearest sign yet that the businessman wants to turn the GOP primary into a three-way race.
With two other Republicans already in the Senate race, Hovde isn’t guaranteed to run and faces challenges in recruiting talented staff and launching a campaign. But multiple sources said that in recent weeks Hovde has been seeking the political pieces needed for a potential run.
“He’s in a very serious and intentional place,” one of the sources said.
Hovde didn’t respond to a phone message but in a December interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel indicated he was weighing a run.
“Basically, I am going to take certain steps to put things in place if I do it,” Hovde said then. “I still haven’t finalized the decision.”
A Hovde campaign wouldn’t want for money. The Madison developer and banker spent more than $5 million of his own money in the 2012 Republican primary for U.S. Senate.
Last summer, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Hovde had sold more than $14 million worth of stock in a single company, putting him in a position to self-fund a primary and general election campaign in 2018.
State Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) and businessman and former Marine Kevin Nicholson are already locked in a competitive GOP primary to take on U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Both GOP candidates — neither of whom offered reaction — already have professional campaigns, as well as substantial super PACs, behind them.
Hovde’s entry into the race would certainly shake up the field.
He came in second in the 2012 GOP primary, nearly besting former Gov. Tommy Thompson — one of the state’s most successful politicians of the past generation. And the Madison businessman actually did beat two other more established politicians — former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and then-Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald.
Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in
Washington, D.C., said that Hovde would need to do some catching up with Vukmir and Nicholson but that Hovde’s personal wealth would make that easier to do.
A deeper question, Duffy said, is how Hovde would position himself in a race where Nicholson is already running as a political outsider and Vukmir is running as a proven conservative.
“Where does Hovde fit in?” Duffy said. “He’s going to have to get into the race in a way that creates this space ... from day one.”
Joshua Karp, a spokesman with the liberal group American Bridge 21st Century, called Hovde a “has-been.”
“He’s only thinking about joining this dysfunctional race to the bottom because the other two candidates have struggled for a year to gain traction. That tells you all you need to know about this weak field,” said Karp, whose group does opposition research into Republican candidates.
Hovde’s potential effect on the race is difficult to predict, but he could upend some plans for either Vukmir, who has been angling for the state GOP endorsement, or for Nicholson, who has leaned more on his funding edge over Vukmir.
Sources familiar with Hovde’s thinking say that he has been less focused on winning a GOP primary and more on whether he can unseat Baldwin.
“If he gets in, he’ll spend what it takes to win,” a person close to Hovde said last year.
But there is no guarantee that Hovde will run — or that he will win if he does.
One source who talked to Hovde recently said that the businessman was leaning toward a run but hadn’t made a decision at the time.
“He still truly doesn’t know what to do,” the source said.