Eric Hovde’s anti-trans attacks against Baldwin may not be a winning strategy, but they’re still dangerous

Wisconsin elections are decided in the margins. This time, they could also be decided by the marginalized.

Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin faces a serious challenge in November. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently shifted the race from “Leans Democratic” to “Toss Up” for the first time this cycle in her match-up with Republican businessman Eric Hovde. 

There are many factors shaping the race, most notably that it’s a presidential election year and Wisconsin is always a 50/50 state, with statewide races often decided by less than a percentage point. It’s going to take consistent, proactive messaging and outreach to get every possible voter out to tip the scales one way or another. So, which issues are the candidates focused on? 

According to a recent Gallup poll, the economy ranks as the No. 1 issue in the upcoming presidential election. After that, democracy in the U.S., terrorism and national security, the types of Supreme Court justices candidates would pick as president, and immigration all rank as next highest in the list of 22 possible issues. Dead last? Transgender rights.

You wouldn’t know that based on how much money and energy Hovde and his GOP counterparts are pouring into anti-trans advertising and rhetoric. The multi-millionaire real estate developer and California bank owner, who would become one of the wealthiest senators if he beats Baldwin in November, has invested heavily in ads specifically targeting the incumbent with overtly transphobic messaging. 

The ads are part of a whopping $65 million in spending by the GOP on anti-trans ads in swing states like Wisconsin. One ad accuses Baldwin of supporting “providing puberty blockers and sex change surgeries to minor children,” while another claims that she “ensured hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars went to a Madison nonprofit that pushes an aggressive LGBTQ agenda on kids.” All of this is false and/or misleading, not to mention the fact that it paints Baldwin’s very real and consistent support for LGBTQ+ people and our rights as a bad thing. 

The nonprofit they’re referring to is Briarpatch Youth Services, which does incredible work to support young people facing housing insecurity. The freak-out is related to one program of Briarpatch that specifically supports LGBTQ+ youth who are unhoused and/or dealing with hostile home environments. The money Baldwin helped secure for Briarpatch went specifically to their housing services and not to that program. A small detail like that never seems to stop someone determined to gin up a fake moral panic for political gain, though.

Hovde himself has made bigoted and false statements about transgender people, including during an appearance on right-wing talk radio where he claimed that transgender youth have the highest rates of suicide in the country because they regret transitioning. This is, of course, untrue. All available evidence from medical professionals and testimony from trans youth points to the biggest stressor being the rejection, medical gatekeeping, and bullying they’re subjected to by a transphobic culture. 

Instead of talking about policies he would support to lower the cost of living, improve healthcare, secure our democracy, or any of the other issues people are far more concerned with, Hovde and the GOP have decided to double down on spreading hateful lies about an already marginalized group of people.

Why? It certainly hasn’t proven to be an effective strategy for them at the ballot box. Previous attempts to campaign on anti-trans rhetoric were roundly rejected by voters across the country. 

Erin Reed, who does excellent reporting on trans issues, summed it up:

The problem for Republicans is that, universally, turning to transgender issues in a general election is a gamble that rarely pays off. In Michigan’s 2022 elections, Republican ad dollars flowed into anti-trans campaigns, and they lost the trifecta in the state. This led to the GOP state chair admitting that Republicans spent more money on anti-trans ads than on core economic issues, and blaming their loss on that decision. Similar patterns were seen in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, legislative races in Pennsylvania and Virginia, Georgia’s Herschel Walker vs. Raphael Warnock election, Andy Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky, and the 2023 losses of 70% of Moms for Liberty and Project 1776 school board candidates across the U.S.

While it might be comforting for Democratic candidates and their supporters to know that this line of attack is unlikely to move the needle much, it’s still doing damage to some of our most vulnerable community members while spreading lies that catch on and confuse even some people who might otherwise be allies.

Simply allowing airtime for this kind of overtly transphobic and hateful messaging has a significant impact on trans adults and young people. According to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control, a heartbreaking one in four trans youth attempted suicide in the past year. Take that alongside a recent study published in Nature Human Behavior, which found that anti-trans bans led to an increase of up to 72% in suicide attempts by trans youth in those states that passed anti-trans legislation. Bathroom bans, sports bans, and gender-affirming care bans were all to blame.

Those of us in the trans community don’t need studies and surveys to tell us what we already know: Being trans is and should be joyful, and that it’s only made difficult because we live in a society that is still largely ignorant and fearful of difference. 

While Hovde yells about trans people for doing nothing more than existing, Baldwin champions the Equality Act, which would amend “federal anti-discrimination laws to explicitly add sexual orientation and gender identity to longstanding bans on discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, jury service, access to credit, federal funding, and more.” She has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ and women’s rights while in office.

Still, that may not be enough. Too many prominent Democrats have largely remained silent on transgender issues in the past year, seeming to opt for an “ignore it and it won’t impact my race” strategy based on the polling numbers and previous election results mentioned above. A few have even capitulated to anti-trans dogwhistles themselves. In cases where people’s lives are at stake, however, there should be nothing less than full-throated condemnation of Hovde and the GOP’s cynical attacks.

People who identify as transgender only make up somewhere around 1% of the U.S. population. But in a state that went for Biden over Trump by less than one percentage point in 2020, and went for Trump by less than one percentage point in 2016, it’s worth noting that trans people alone have the potential to make or break a candidacy. Baldwin and her fellow Dems would do well to take note.