Wisconsin’s GOP senate candidate, Eric Hovde, is, at this point, refusing to concede to Sen. Tammy Baldwin and blaming a third-party candidate who netted a vote count of almost exactly Hovde’s loss margin.
“We’re certainly disappointed that the Democrats’ effort to siphon votes with a fraudulent candidate had a significant impact on the race, with those votes making up more than the entire margin of the race right now,” Hovde said in a press release from his campaign on Wednesday morning. “We will continue to monitor returns and make sure that every vote is counted.”
The “fraudulent candidate” in question is Thomas Leager, an “America First” candidate who told the Associated Press last month he was recruited by operatives with the Patriots Run Project. The AP found that some Democratic donors were giving to Leager and others “supporting a plan to boost Democrats and siphon votes from Republicans.” The AP also found PRP to be supported by Democratic firms and donors.
Politically, Leager is more conservative than Hovde and is a former lobbyist for the Wisconsin Gun Owners Inc., a gun rights group to the right of the NRA. But he’s most infamous for saying he was an unindicted co-conspirator in the unsuccessful 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
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As of Thursday morning, Baldwin was up 28,958 votes on Hovde, per the AP. Leager had received 28,717 votes. Despite Donald Trump’s win in Wisconsin (and throughout the country), Hovde was one of the few Republican candidates who Trump didn’t carry over the line.
“It’s unfortunate if the Democrats wouldn’t have put a plant, this probably would have been called some time ago,” Hovde told supporters. “But you know what? It is what it is.”
Hovde’s not the only one blaming Leager. State Assembly Majority Leader Robin Vos posted on X that some people “cost us the US Senate seat by supporting the 3rd party.” Jim Piwowarczyk, a Republican who declared victory in a state Assembly and founder of the conservative media site Wisconsin Right Now, also blamed the other third-party candidate in the race in a post: “The Hovde loss is so infuriating. The fake Dem plant Thomas Leager and the ‘fakriot’ push for Phil Anderson solely led to his loss.” Anderson, a libertarian third-party candidate in the race, received over 42,000 votes.
Democrats pushed back on the characterization of Leager as a spoiler.
“That is absurd. There are millions of reasons why Wisconsinites didn’t vote for Eric Hovde. Hovde should stop being a whiny baby and admit he lost this election,” a Democratic strategist in the state said. Democrats “didn’t recruit a man who tried to kidnap Gov. Whitmer.”
Leager didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Experts said sure, Leager wasn’t good news for Hovde, but that’s not ultimately why he lost.
“The Leager campaign was part of the environment in which Baldwin won, but his vote alone is almost certainly not enough to cost Hovde a victory,” Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told NOTUS in a text. “Supporters of a minority party candidate always split to some degree in their preferences between the major parties. And some of Leager’s voters would have skipped the race had he not been running.”
Brandon Scholz, former executive director for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said he heard “nada, crickets, zero, zilch” about Leager from colleagues, strategists and Republicans in general in the state throughout the year as Hovde campaigned.
Scholz said directly blaming Leager for an anticipated Hovde loss was a tough sell: It seems entirely possible that people voted for him “for the same reason double haters didn’t vote for Trump or Harris. They didn’t care for Baldwin or Hovde.”
Scholz also pointed to Anderson, who hasn’t faced the same criticism as Leager from Hovde — “Why are Phil Anderson’s votes legitimate?”
But Scholz ultimately empathizes with where the Hovde campaign is coming from. They have “an obligation to work through all of these things, because you just don’t want to leave it on the table and walk away, especially at a close race like this,” he said.
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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