ICYMI: Republican Eric Hovde Blamed Societal Problems on Single Moms in His First Senate Bid. Will He Do It Again?

MADISON, Wis. — Yesterday, new reporting from The 19th revealed disparaging comments megamillionaire California bank owner Eric Hovde made about single moms, women, and families.

Hovde blamed many societal problems on single parents, suggested rolling back programs that help women and children, and “made comments that played into negative and racist stereotypes about Black women.” 

Read more below:

The 19th: Republican Eric Hovde blamed societal problems on single moms in his first Senate bid. Will he do it again? 
By: Amanda Becker

• Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has drawn a high-profile Republican challenger in Wisconsin, Eric Hovde, who has a history of attributing societal problems to single parents and suggested curtailing economic programs that support mothers and children. 

• Hovde, a wealthy bank owner and real estate developer, is the GOP establishment’s pick to challenge Baldwin in November. 

• Many of Hovde’s statements about single-parent households were made during his first attempt at the Senate, in 2012. He said in a radio interview then that he was “very concerned where this country is heading socially and morally.”

• “One of the most troubling statistics that I can quote is a social statistic: And that is, 4 out of 10 children born in America, they are born out of wedlock. That is a direct path to a life of poverty,” he continued. 

• Women, specifically millennial-aged suburban mothers, may play a determinative role in Wisconsin’s Senate race, which could impact which party controls the upper chamber. Hovde’s past rhetoric about single-parent households, the vast majority of which are headed by mothers, could be a liability in a political swing state where there are roughly 100,000 single moms heading households with minor children. 

• Hovde’s campaign could not be reached to comment on his past statements, and it is unclear whether he will shift his rhetoric about single mothers and programs intended to support them during his second Senate bid. 

• As Hovde, who has not held elected office, unsuccessfully competed in the earlier Republican Senate primary, he repeatedly talked about how raising children outside of marriage led to higher rates of depression, lower levels of educational achievement and higher incarceration rates. 

• While children in single-parent households experience higher rates of poverty, the data to support Hovde’s other claims is either decades old, spotty or does not control for economic status. 

• He also said, without offering evidence, that participants in the SNAP food program for low-income individuals and families were trading benefits for drugs at Disney World and in Las Vegas and that there was “massive amounts of food stamp fraud.” 

• Hovde urged news organizations to stop covering SNAP beneficiaries as a “sob story” and instead focus on the federal deficit. 

• In 2017, Hovde made comments that played into negative and racist stereotypes about Black women. He said in an interview that social welfare programs were leading to out-of-wedlock births among Black women, which led to societal problems in urban communities. He added that it wasn’t a Black or White issue because the same dynamic also contributed to economic struggles in Appalachia and said that Indigenous families were hampered by a “quasi-Socialist” system on native land.  “Welfare … helped destroy those families,” he said. 

• Nearly 24 million American children — or about 1 in 3 nationally — are from a single-parent family, including nearly 400,000 in Wisconsin, government data shows. Most of these single-parent families are headed by women. 

• Recent statewide races in Wisconsin have been decided by increasingly small margins. Incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson won his 2022 race against Democrat Mandela Barnes by a single percentage point, or fewer than 30,000 votes. In 2020, Democratic now-President Joe Biden beat Republican former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin by an even smaller margin. 

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