MADISON, Wis. — Last week, the Janesville Gazette wrote about how Eric Hovde is attacking  a Wisconsin mother for sharing how losing her son to the fentanyl crisis has impacted her vote. 

Read more below: 

Janesville Gazette: ‘This is our story.’ Baldwin, mom respond to Hovde’s criticism of fentanyl-focused campaign ad

By: Kylie Balk-Yaatenen

A Beloit mother who lost her son to a fentanyl overdose in 2018 has channeled her grief into a fight against the opioid crisis, partnering with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin to advocate for stronger drug trafficking measures.

Brooke, who declined to give her last name in an interview this week with The Gazette and doesn’t share it in a campaign video she appears in for Baldwin, lost her son Nikolas at age 23.

She said she’s worked in the emergency room in Beloit and thought she knew everything she needed to know about drugs, addiction and overdoses.

She speaks about her grief in the new campaign ad of Baldwin’s, that has drawn both support and backlash.

Eric Hovde, a Republican, is challenging Baldwin, a Democrat, in the Nov. 5 race for one of two Wisconsin seats in the U.S. Senate.

Since the ad’s release, Hovde has said Baldwin misrepresented her role in the passage, in April, of the Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act.

Introduced by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, the bill aimed to “choke off the profits of the Chinese precursor manufacturers and the Mexican cartels that push fentanyl across the border,” according to Scott’s website.

Hoved has also publicly said Baldwin has done nothing to stop fentanyl and has called the Baldwin’s use of Brooke’s story in a campaign ad “despicable” and “far beneath any human being.”

That heated language runs counter to sentiments Hovde has expressed since the summer, that the political rhetoric in this campaign season needs to tone down.

On stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, Hovde said the country needs to “stop putting on the red jersey or blue jersey, and start putting on the Red, White and Blue jersey” and said “it’s time to tone down political rhetoric and decisiveness.”

Subsequently, on The Morgan Ortega Show, a podcast on SiriusXM radio, in late September, Hovde said at least 5 acquaintances of his daughter, who is 25 years old, have died of fentanyl. And he said he met with a family whose son died after taking Percocet that he had bought online after hurting his back.

Hovde said on the SiriusXM podcast, regarding the Baldwin campaign ad Brooke appears in, that “Tammy has done zero. What she did is after I started criticizing her, she became the 40th co-sponsor on Sen. Tim Scott’s bill.”

Hovde further said that while Scott was visiting Wisconsin since the bill’s passage, he asked him “Did Tammy work with you on the amendment? He said ‘I haven’t spoken to Tammy in two years, she had zero role,’” Hovde said on the podcast.

Hovde has called the senator’s claims to be doing something about fentanyl “despicable” and he said using Brooke’s story is “far beneath any human being”

He also said it’s wrong to “act like she has been doing something, in my view is beneath a U.S. senator and far beneath any human being.”

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio and chair of the committee where the FEND Off Fentanyl bill originated, confirmed in an interview with The Gazette this week that Baldwin was one of the early supporters and worked to get the legislation passed into law. She was ultimately the bill’s 40th signer, Brown concurred.

“Sen. Baldwin is a leader in the fight to crack down on fentanyl and stop it from coming into our country — and she was an early and important partner in helping pass the FEND Off Fentanyl Act,” Brown told The Gazette this week. “For years, I’ve worked with Sen. Baldwin to address the fentanyl crisis — on everything from scaling up addiction treatment to ensuring border patrol can detect this deadly drug and I’m grateful for her leadership in getting this bill signed into law.”

Hovde didn’t immediately respond to multiple attempts by The Gazette this week to contact his office for a response.

A spokesperson in Sen. Scott’s Washington, D.C., office told The Gazette this week they could not confirm whether Scott had spoken to Hovde or Baldwin about the FEND Off Fentanyl bill.

Speaking this week with The Gazette, Brooke said that after her son’s death, she became close with other families who had lost loved ones to fentanyl. She started to pay more attention to legislation on the issue and beginning in 2022, got to know Baldwin.

“We started talking as families, as moms to Tammy Baldwin. We would sit down with her and we would say, ‘Well, this is our story. This is what happened. This is what we don’t want other parents to have to go through. What can we do?’” she said. “She was very diligent about listening to our stories, about (saying) what she could do, about proposing bills to stop trafficking, the FEND Off Fentanyl act.”

“She attended, I don’t know, how many countless hearings to either propose bills or support bills. We would talk to her about drug induced homicide charges. It was a group of us moms that all lost children, and she actually sat down and listened to us.”

Brooke said when Baldwin approached her about being part of a campaign ad, she agreed in hopes that other families wouldn’t have to go through the pain of losing a child.

She said her son “was smart. He had goals. He had dreams. He had traveled to all seven continents. He volunteered in Africa.”

“If you see and you hear stories like that, you’re more likely to believe. It’s personal. This is why I tell my son’s story.”

Baldwin’s concern for fentanyl is genuine, Brooke continued.

She said no one from Hovde’s campaign has reached out to her. She said the mothers she has gotten to know, who have all lost children to fentanyl, have not been contacted by Hovde, either.

“Tammy has not only significantly but repeatedly, reached out to people and families trying to figure out how to help them. Her own mother struggled with addiction,” she said. “We didn’t even know that until we sat down with her. She told us her story. It’s personal for her.”

“We told her from a parent perspective what it was like, and she told us from a child perspective what it was like, and this before it was used as a political point.”

Brooke went on to say that political affiliation doesn’t matter to her; she just wants a politician who will listen and offer solutions.

She said Baldwin has shown that she will do that.

“Tammy walks the walk,” she said.

Brooke noted that she was not paid for the ad that she took time off work to film it, travelling out of town to do so. She said she does not feel exploited and was happy to work with Baldwin on it.

Baldwin said in an interview this week with The Gazette that she was disappointed to hear Hovde’s comments on the ad.

“But perhaps it isn’t surprising from Mr. Hovde, given the insults he’s made about Wisconsinites of all stripes,” she said.

“Mr. Hovde has insulted Wisconsinites, like saying people in nursing homes shouldn’t vote, and now saying something so inflammatory about a mother who lost her son,” she said “If Mr. Hovde is serious about toning down the rhetoric, he should maybe try listening to his own advice.”

Baldwin said people should stop making fentanyl a partisan issue and seek solutions.

“Countless Wisconsin families share Brooke’s story,” she said. “This crisis isn’t a partisan issue — it’s life or death — and in order to address this epidemic, people need to put aside politics and be ready to work with anyone to solve this crisis.”

Baldwin said that she has led bipartisan efforts to combat the opioid, fentanyl, and heroin epidemic by securing funding for Wisconsin law enforcement, first responders, and addiction recovery centers, and increasing access to overdose reversing drugs like Narcan.

In 2016 she helped deliver funding to help Gov. Walker combat the opioid crisis. The next year, she worked to pass the INTERDICT Act that sought to step the sale of drugs like fentanyl through the mail.

In April, the FEND Off Fentanyl Act was passed.

“But this fight is far from over. And I’m going to remain at the forefront of this fight because no Wisconsin family should have to face this epidemic alone,” Baldwin said.

She said that this issue is very personal to her and she knows how heartbreaking a fentanyl death can be.

“I’m so proud of Brooke for speaking up about this crisis to help other families in Wisconsin and help all of us fight this crisis that is tearing our communities apart,” Baldwin said.