The wife of Republican Wisconsin US Senate candidate Hovde takes aim at female Democratic incumbent

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The wife of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde is taking center stage in her husband’s campaign in the days after he secured the party nomination, directly attacking Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin in a television ad released Thursday about single mothers.

The race between Baldwin, a two-term incumbent, and millionaire businessman Hovde is one of the most closely watched this cycle. A Baldwin win in battleground Wisconsin is seen as critical for Democrats to have a chance at maintaining majority control of the Senate.

Hovde’s campaign took a marked personal turn this week, first with a pair of ads prominently featuring his wife Sharon Hovde discussing Hovde’s charity work and his battle with multiple sclerosis.

Sharon Hovde also speaks directly to the camera in the latest campaign spot released Thursday, a response to a Baldwin ad that hit Hovde over comments he made about single mothers in his previous Senate run in 2012.

That year, in an interview, Hovde said being a single mother “is a direct path to a life of poverty” that also “leads to higher drug rates, it leads to higher mental and physical health problems. And unfortunately for our young men, higher incarceration rates in jail.”

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