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. “I think we got to get our morals and our ethics back. And I think we got to, you know, get this country turned around.”

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. Research shows that women are more likely than men to believe that being raised in a single-parent household does not have much of an impact on society. Younger Americans are more likely to agree than older people. 

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. 

Policymakers must “do everything we can to support the family unit, and we have to stop government policies that reward those that are having children out of wedlock and harming people that are having children in marriage,” Hovde argued during a 2012 primary debate. 

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. Black and Indigenous children are the most likely to live in single-parent families, followed by Latinx and multiracial kids. In 2021, about 30 percent of single parents were living in poverty, compared with about 6 percent of married couples. Single mothers are more likely to be poor than single fathers, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on the well-being of children and youth.

Shortly after Hovde’s first Senate attempt, research published by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center showed that 64 percent of U.S. adults said single mothers were a “big problem,” down from 71 percent five years before. In 2021, 47 percent agreed that “single women raising children on their own is generally a bad thing for society,” 43 percent said it made no difference and 10 percent said it was a good thing for society, according to another Pew study. 

In the earlier study, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats or independent voters to say that childbirth outside marriage was a “big problem.” White Americans were more likely than those of other races or ethnicities to say it was a “big problem.” The 2021 research showed that 56 percent of men said single motherhood was bad for society versus 37 percent of women. Meanwhile half of women said being raised by a single mother didn’t impact society versus 34 percent of men. 

Single women, including single mothers, have become a Democratic-leaning voting bloc. In 2008, 74 percent of single moms supported Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain. Four years later, Obama’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney softened his rhetoric about single mothers during the final weeks of the White House race, saying they were “living for something bigger than themselves,” after previously emphasizing the importance of two-parent families. It wasn’t enough for him to erode support for Obama among single mothers. 

Baldwin, who is running for her third term, has made mothers central to her organizing strategy. Hovde recently pledged that if elected he will donate his Senate salary to a Wisconsin charity. 

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.