In 2016, former President Donald Trump won Wisconsin by slightly more than 20,000 votes, handing him the White House. In 2020, President Biden won Wisconsin by even less than that. It was the only state to back each year’s winner by less than 1% of the vote.
Time and again, my home state has determined the political fortune of our country, and this year will be no different. In order to keep the White House, maintain our narrow Senate majority and regain control of the House, we must win Wisconsin on Nov. 5. And the contrast between Democrats and Republicans could not be clearer.
The Trump-Vance-Hovde platform isn’t just a right-wing agenda; it’s an anti-family agenda.
As Democrats from all over the country gather this week to unite around our candidates, we will continue to fight for working people and to ensure every family can get ahead. That means bringing down costs, creating good paying jobs, investing in our infrastructure, lowering the price of health care, making our communities safer, supporting our public schools and standing up for our reproductive rights and freedoms.
We’re up against a set of politicians who want to undo all that progress. People like Trump, JD Vance and my opponent, Eric Hovde, are running to put the wealthy and well-connected first and working families last.
If elected, they would repeal the Affordable Care Act, kicking millions off their health insurance. They would cut taxes for the ultra wealthy while raising taxes on the middle class and gut our hard-earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare. And of course, they’d continue their attacks on reproductive freedoms like abortion, contraception and IVF access.
In my Wisconsin Senate race, it is clear whose side Hovde is on. Hovde has said single parents put their children on “a direct path to poverty,” claimed farmers don’t work hard anymore and accused women of spending “too much time with what’s going on in Hollywood.” He has called young people and college students lazy, told a Black radio station he understands Black culture because he’s been to Africa, and claimed that “a lot of people in the minority communities, particularly young black men … no longer want to just live on just getting welfare checks.” He has suggested overweight Americans should face “consequences” and be forced to pay more for health care, and he has argued that nursing home residents shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If you’re not rich and well connected like Hovde is, he’s not looking out for you.
The Trump-Vance-Hovde platform isn’t just a right-wing agenda; it’s an anti-family agenda. These politicians want to make it harder to start and raise a family. And they sure don’t respect any family that doesn’t look like theirs. People who don’t support or respect our families don’t deserve to represent our families.
Wisconsin will decide if we have a Democratic majority in the House that respects women’s right to control their bodies or one that pushes for a national abortion ban. Wisconsin will decide if we have a Senate that wants to protect the Affordable Care Act or one that wants to gut protections for people with preexisting conditions. And Wisconsin will decide if we have a president that will protect Social Security and Medicare, or one that will gut those earned benefits. Those are the stakes this November, and it all comes down to Wisconsin.