This is an opinion column.
The barrage of political ads these days has become overwhelming. Wisconsin is a battleground state and basically neither red nor blue, but purple when it comes to being Republican or Democrat. Because of the state’s importance in the upcoming election, Wisconsin residents have been subjected to a multitude of television and radio ads, mailings, text messages and phone calls, all pro-this candidate or anti-that candidate.
The campaign for the Wisconsin Senate seat began slowly. Republican Eric Hovde had a few ads in which he spoke about his MS diagnosis.Hovde also mentioned his work with the homeless children in Africa to provide shelters.While the personal touch gave insight into Hovde’s background, he wasn’t going after Baldwin the way she began immediately attacking Hovde. In the initial stages of the campaign, Baldwin had a comfortable lead. It appeared that Hovde might go the way of several Republican candidates who failed to get their message out there and did not have any real traction going into to election day. Tim Michels (governor race) and Dan Kelly (Wisconsin Supreme Court) come to mind. They did not do enough to win, were outspent, and had poor ad campaigns. Both lost their races.
After a few months, Hovde has hit his stride and is surging at exactly the right time. The Hovde campaign is now going after Baldwin. Baldwin’s record is horrendous and ripe for the pickings. All she does is vote 95.5% of the time in support of the Biden/Harris agenda. She does not chair any important committees nor have few, if any, of her own proposed bills come to fruition – which is a good thing considering how liberal she is. Baldwin is the female version of Herb “do nothing” Kohl. Kohl basically bought his seat each election year, then was content to sit back and have a milk stand at the Wisconsin State Fair. Baldwin is a backbencher, sitting on the sidelines and letting others in her party do the heavy lifting.
Hovde ads have now hammered Baldwin on several topics, including her pro-open borders stance. Baldwin did vote against the border wall in 2006 and has said she is in favor of granting millions of illegals citizenship. She supports Sanctuary Cities – which provide safe haven for illegal criminals. Another topic that is concerning for many voters is her support of transgender surgeries for minors. Such is surprisingly becoming a hot topic, not just in Wisconsin but across the country. Most people in the United States think that allowing children to chop and mutilate their bodies in a quest to become another gender is simply insane.
A post by Baldwin last year supported Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers veto of a Republican bill that would have banned sex change surgeries for minors. Baldwin stated that she was in favor of the veto – supposedly because a portion of the bill did not allow doctors to advise youths on medical transitioning. Sounds a lot like Baldwin has no problem with allowing sex change operations for children, even though she wiggled around actually saying so.
So Hovde seems to be making inroads on gaining on Baldwin. The most recent polling has Hovde up by 1 percentage point. It wasn’t that long ago that Baldwin had a 7-point lead. Basically the race is too close to call and Hovde can win this race. What has happened?
Well, maybe Baldwin is being dragged down by how awful Vice President Harris has been as a candidate. Perhaps Hovde’s campaign ads against Baldwin are having an effect. Or Baldwin’s ads (aside from being deceitful) are just crass. Paid elderly actors calling Hovde names (“he’s a jerk…he’s crazy!”) seem so childish and laughable. Hovde has put out another ad in which Hillary Clinton famously called Trump supporters the “basket of deplorables,” and then Baldwin chimes in saying how offensive and hateful Trump is – and anyone who plans on voting for Trump must be the same. Funny how the left is always crying about “toning down the rhetoric” – but apparently the “toning down” only applies to conservatives and Republicans.
The one truly obnoxious Baldwin ad that plays a lot on television and radio, is regarding Eric Hovde and his remarks about nursing home residents voting. If one is in a nursing home, that usually means that they require round-the-clock medical care. The average length of stay for most nursing home residents is one year, according to several nursing home statistics sites. The average length of stay for 33% of nursing home residents is two years. Almost 50% of nursing home residents suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s. The majority of nursing home residents have some form of physical ailments and/or cognitive impairments.
The ad about Hovde’s stance on nursing home voters shows Hovde saying: “well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six months life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote.” When Hovde made his statement years ago, he was referring to issues in the 2020 Wisconsin election. Because of COVID restrictions, the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) prohibited Voting Deputies (which the law requires for nursing home voting) from going in to gather nursing home residents’ votes. Instead of Voting Deputies, nursing home staff were “trained” to “assist” the elderly with their ballots. After the 2020 vote, several adult children stepped forward to say that their elderly parents who resided in a nursing home voted, when they had no business doing so. They were not mentally fit to vote. Some even had noted that their parents had a directive on file telling nursing home staff that their parents should not be voting due to diminished mental capacity! A WinSenate ad from May on behalf of Baldwin took Hovde’s statement a bit further and interpreted it to mean that Hovde did not want seniors to vote. Such has been proven false.
I believe that many are looking forward to the day when the campaign ads will end. Ads only tell a small portion of any story, whether said ads are even true. Instead, pay attention to the actual ideology of the candidates. Are they in favor of protecting the country with closed borders and allowing only legal immigration? Are they in favor of addressing inflation and reining in spending in Washington, D.C.? Are they in favor of lower taxes? Are they in favor of continually funding a war in Ukraine with billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars, while American citizens suffer? Are they in favor of supporting police and the military and putting criminals behind bars? Are they in favor of allowing young children to have sex change operations? Are they in favor of allowing states to make their own decisions on abortions? Are they in favor of supporting Israel or Hamas?
Are they in favor of free speech? Are they in favor of allowing the United States to once again become energy independent? There are so many differences between the Republican candidates and the Democratic candidates – and political ads do not do justice to the glaring moral, patriotic, and common sense stances. Hopefully, the election in November will go the right way (no pun intended) and the United States will be back on track to becoming the great country it was before the Democrats took a wrecking ball to it.
