On the campaign trail, Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde has repeatedly attacked electric vehicle subsidies, describing them as part of a broader green energy “tax scheme” and “corporate welfare.”
Yet when it came to investing his own vast wealth, Hovde has bet on EV manufacturers like Rivian, Lucid Motors and Nikola Corp. In the last year alone, he raked in as much as $5.26 million in capital gains from investments in EVs, including in companies that have received massive government subsidies and tax breaks, according to financial disclosures reviewed by HuffPost.
Hovde, a multimillionaire bank executive who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2012, is challenging incumbent Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin. He is carrying out a run-of-the-mill MAGA campaign that has included grumbling about electric vehicles and the Biden administration’s green energy agenda.
In radio and podcast interviews since announcing his campaign in February, Hovde has condemned EV and green energy initiatives as “just corporate welfare for a lot of people making a ton of money off of it.” He’s dismissed so-called EV “mandates” as products of a “liberal fantasy land” that will “be a bloodbath for the automaker.”
In an April interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Hovde painted EVs and wind turbines as not economically viable, and called tax credits to support these technologies “tax games” and “tax schemes.”
Shortly before his official campaign announcement, Hovde told the Vicki McKenna Show that “EVs aren’t even that environmentally friendly” and railed against their reduced efficiency in cold weather.
“It’s all a charade,” he said of EVs. “They’re great at gaslighting.”
EVs have become a favorite target of the GOP. But Hovde’s posture is complicated by the fact that the EV “charade,” as he called it, has been a boon for his own bank account.
“Eric made smart investments because the stocks were trading below cash value, but he doesn’t believe in government picking winners and losers and he opposes the Biden-Harris EV incentives,” Ben Voelkel, a spokesperson for Hovde, said in an email response.
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Over the last year, Hovde reported capital gains earnings of between $202,501 and $2,005,000 from his holdings in California-based EV manufacturer Rivian, according to his Senate campaign financial disclosure, which reports assets in broad ranges rather than specific figures. Certain Rivian models qualify for $3,750 in federal tax credits, and the company has received nearly $2.4 billion in state and local subsidies, according to the Good Jobs First subsidy tracker.
Hovde earned another $202,503 to $2,005,000 in capital gains from stock in Lucid Motors, a California-based luxury EV manufacturer that has received state and local subsidies valued at $113 million. That includes the more than $54 million in incentives, tax credits and grants it secured in 2016 to build an EV factory outside Phoenix, Arizona.
Horde also raked in between $151,002 And $1,102,501 from stock in Nikola. The Arizona-headquartered company manufactures both battery-powered electric and hydrogen fuel cell-powered electric commercial trucks. On its website, Nikola advertises a $40,000 per vehicle federal tax credit, as well as several state incentives, and has reportedly received more than $14 million in federal, state and local subsidies.
Finally, Hovde last year pocketed between $65,201 and $151,000 from his holdings in Faraday Future, a California-based EV startup. The company received but later forfeited large tax incentive packages in Nevada and California.
The EV investments were made through Financial Institution Partners III, L.P., an investment management company. On a form that Hovde filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in late 2022, he noted that he is “the managing member of Hovde Capital Ltd., the general partner to Financial Institution Partners III LP.” Hovde also has significant investments in fossil fuel giants, including as much as $6 million worth of stock in both ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.
If elected, Hovde would be one of the richest people in Congress, with a net worth of between $195.4 million and $564.5 million, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As the chairman and CEO of Sunwest Bank, he was paid a salary of more than $1 million last year, his financial disclosure shows.
While Hovde has been out in public slamming an EV industry that he’s personally profited from, allied political action committees and right-wing organizations have been working to paint Baldwin, his opponent, as an unwavering supporter of the Biden administration’s “radical agenda” on climate.
Earlier this year, Restoration PAC, a super PAC funded largely by GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, ran an ad that accused Baldwin of voting to “cut Medicare funding and use that money to subsidize electric vehicles,” the Journal Sentinel reported. The attack ad was referring to Baldwin’s vote in support of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included policies to reduce Medicare costs but did not cut benefits.
As the Journal Sentinel reported, attorneys for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accused Restoration PAC of blatantly lying about Baldwin’s record and demanded the ad be pulled from TV. The ad was ultimately replaced with a similar one claiming Baldwin voted “to use Medicare money for electric vehicle subsidies, instead of seniors” — a change that a spokesperson for Baldwin called “just as false” as the original.
