GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) – Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race is one of the most competitive in the country right now.

Republican Eric Hovde hopes to unseat Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is seeking a third term in office.

Baldwin has been leading the polls throughout the race, but Republicans believe that if former President Donald Trump can win the state, Trump has a strong chance of pulling Hovde across the finish line.

No Republican has won this Senate term since Joseph McCarthy in 1952, the longest Democratic streak of any US Senate term in the nation. Hovde hopes to beat the odds, but to do that, he’ll likely need some help, right from the top of the ticket.

In the race for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, Eric Hovde largely played defense as a barrage of political attack ads he tried to define from the moment he announced his campaign, including one claiming he didn’t even he doesn’t live here

So Action 2 News asked Hovde about it. He blames Sen. Baldwin for misleading voters.

“I live in Wisconsin. I moved back in 2011. I do my taxes here. I live here. I vote here. As for California, I bought a business there. I have never been a legal resident of the state of California for a year in my life,” said Eric Hovde, candidate (R) for US Senate. “And yet she’s orchestrated a whole campaign of me talking about me being a Californian, which is just absurd and preposterous.”

Hovde now lives in Shorewood, after previously living in the East, as a result of his father’s decision to work under former President Ronald Reagan. He attended public school as a child and graduated from UW-Madison.

On those issues, Hovde says inflation and the need to control spending are big reasons he wants to go to Washington and force a change in direction.

“It’s very easy to tackle inflation. The bigger issue is addressing the government spending problem, because we’re now adding another trillion dollars in debt roughly every four months, and the interest cost on our debt is now higher than our defense department budget,” Hovde said. “I don’t want to scare people, but that’s how big companies have always failed.”

However, Democrats say corporate greed is also a factor driving up prices, which I asked Hovde about.

“If this was true, then why didn’t inflation occur before 2021?” Hovde asks.

On the issue of abortion, Hovde says he supports letting the state decide, a position adopted by Donald Trump.

“I said it even before I entered this race and I repeated it in every interview. I had videos, I do not support the national ban on abortion. I do not support a federal ban on abortion. Period,” Hovde said.

Hovde also supports fixing the problem, in a way Sen. Ron Johnson campaigned for two years ago.

“In my opinion, the people of Wisconsin should decide this through a referendum,” Hovde said.

We also asked Hovde about issues involving seniors, including the possibility that the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money in the next decade.

“The first thing we’re going to have to do is for anyone who’s on Social Security or approaching retirement, you can’t touch it, they depend on it, it’s very important to them. So then you’ll have to look at things like people like me who have been lucky in life and have been successful, maybe I’ll have to give up some of my social security so other people can have theirs and then you’re going to have to look at the overall framework with federal spending and how to supplement Social Security there,” Hovde said.

Other ads, led by the Baldwin campaign, accuse Hovde of wanting to disenfranchise seniors. Hovde claims the ad also tries to mislead voters by taking his words out of context.

“I was asked about the integrity of the elections in an interview. I listed four different issues that were of concern and one of them was about the Racine sheriff’s investigations into voter fraud going on in nursing homes, we were talking about people who were at the end of life, who were adult children. I would go to the sheriff and say someone voted for my parent who either has dementia or is dying and is unable to vote. So we were talking about how people at the end of life are being taken advantage of,” Hovde said.

That race could also decide who controls the U.S. Senate next January, which has resulted in more than $100 million spent by outside groups on behalf of Hovde and Sen. Baldwin.

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