Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin Wins Reelection, Holding Key State For Democrats

Baldwin defeated GOP businessman Eric Hovde.

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin was projected to win a third term in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, dispatching Republican businessman Eric Hovde in one of the nation’s hardest-fought Senate races.

The victory is a key step toward Democrats limiting their losses in the Senate, where Republicans are set to have a majority in 2025.

Her win, along with former President Donald Trump’s victory in Wisconsin, makes Baldwin only the second senator in the past decade to win reelection in a state where a presidential candidate of the opposite party triumphed.

Baldwin, the first out lesbian elected to the Senate, ran a campaign focused on protecting abortion rights and reaching out to the state’s rural voters, even earning the endorsement of the traditionally GOP-leaning Wisconsin Farm Bureau. She relentlessly attacked Hovde, a Wisconsin native who owns a bank based on the West Coast, as an out-of-state and out-of-touch billionaire. She used past clips of him disparaging farmers and other groups as a way to paint him as a “jerk.”

Hovde, who put $20 million of his own money into the race, ran on the signature issues animating Republican campaigns this cycle, including inflation, border security and transgender participation in youth sports.