Writes one of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde’s high school classmates:
Hovde, who has a net worth of between $58 million and $240 million, has no clue what needs his fellow citizens have. He has lived a life of comfort and has always been free from want. When he was diagnosed with MS he did not have to worry about how he would pay for treatment. He does not have to worry today about how to pay for his ongoing treatment. He has never lived paycheck to paycheck. He did not pay attention to the plight of his fellow high school students. He did not learn from the example of our principal. He claims that he would be a citizen legislator. How can he be? He has absolutely zero understanding of what it is like to live as an average citizen.
The statement that Eric Hovde has absolutely zero understanding of what it’s like to live as an average citizen couldn’t be more true; after all, Hovde’s the same guy who enjoys buying banks and flying around Wisconsin on private jet.
Eric Hovde is essentially a 21st century carpetbagger. Is Wisconsin going to now accept a man from out of state along with the corporate money that will surely follow him (as if he needs it).
To be fair to Mr Hovde, the skyscraper bearing his family’s name has stood in capitol square since 1928!
As an Illinoisan, I know quite a bit about carpetbaggers running for U.S. Senate. Eric Hovde reminds me quite a bit of Alan Keyes, the Marylander that carpetbagged his way into Illinois to run against Barack Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois. Obama won that race by 40 points over Keyes. I wasn’t eligible to vote because I was only 14 years old at the time, but my parents were never more enthusiastic about casting a vote for a candidate for public office as they were about casting their votes for Obama back in 2004. After the Republican primary winner, Jack Ryan, exited the race after being implicated in a sex scandal, Illinois Republican Party officials had all sorts of trouble finding a replacement candidate, and they ended up resorting to asking Keyes to carpetbag his way into Illinois, in fact, he only established residency in Illinois a few days before the general election.
If Illinoisans can reject Alan Keyes, Wisconsinites can reject Eric Hovde. Unlike Keyes, who had absolutely no ties to Illinois prior to his U.S. Senate campaign, Hovde did graduate from UW-Madison, however, but he lived pretty much his entire adult life prior to his U.S. Senate campaign in the District of Columbia, only moving back to Wisconsin when he realized that he and his rich buddies could try to buy a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin.
What was Herb Kohls net worth, $279,000,000, could he be considered a rich guy who bought his way to DC also?