Hovde Blasted for ‘Bigoted’ Comments on Black Men

Eric Hovde.

Eric Hovde loves going on conservative talk radio and offering red meat to right-wing listeners. That includes comments that may not be as well received by other voters and are definitely not sitting well with Black officials in Milwaukee.

On the Jay Weber show on WISN on April 5, Hovde declared that “a lot of people in the minority communities, particularly young black men… are moving in the conservative direction” and “no longer want to just live on just getting welfare checks. They want to be part of the American entrepreneurial dream.”

Hovde repeated these kind of statements on other programs, including on Fox News on April 4, where he said that “Young Black men… want to get off of welfare, they don’t want to be stuck with handouts.”

Back in 2017 Hovde went on the Vicki McKenna show and blamed welfare for “what happened like to the Black community in parts of the inner city, you know, in 1960, what was it 6% of all black children were born out of wedlock. After welfare, by the time you got into the late 70s, 80s. It was well over 70% of all children born out of wedlock, helped destroy those families.”

His solution, as he explained to Tory Lowe on the 101.7 FM The Truth radio station on March 19, is “to turn a lot of the black community into entrepreneurs” with “opportunities zones where somebody wants to start an apparel business, or whatever, a service business, or a barbershop.”

When asked for a reaction to Hovde’s views, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told Urban Milwaukee “the comments seem weirdly out of touch. Just what kind of handouts or welfare does he think Black men are receiving?”

The old AFDC system of welfare was eliminated in 1996, in favor of the TANF program, and is used by states to provide non-welfare services, including educational services, job training and pregnancy prevention services.

As for the idea that welfare increased the percentage of out-of-wedlock births in the Black community, research has shown “welfare benefits could not have played a major role… because benefits rose sharply in the 1960s and then fell in the 1970s and 1980s, when out-of-wedlock births rose most,” as the Brookings Institution noted. The causes are far more complex and one key factor was the devastating post-1970s decline of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

“Eric Hovde’s understanding of Black people in America is informed by tropes and stereotypes,” said Rep. Gwen Moore, the veteran Democratic congresswoman from Milwaukee, in remarks shared with Urban Milwaukee. “He’s an unserious candidate and clearly doesn’t understand Wisconsin communities.”

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley called Hovde’s comments “deeply troubling,” adding that “his rhetoric is not only harmful but also rooted in a lack of understanding of the systemic issues our community faces.”

“The challenges Black men are overcoming are many,” Johnson noted. “When economic opportunities are available, people of all racial groups seize those opportunities. That is the best path forward, rather than offering naïve and bigoted characterizations.”

Urban Milwaukee reached out to the Hovde campaign for comment, but has not heard back.

Hovde has also made comments about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) efforts. On the Vicki McKenna show on April 8th, he declared “they want to get rid of meritocracy in our country… I shudder at the effects that they’re doing to our medical schools and passing people not based upon skill sets and achievement levels, but on other factors….I mean, we’re talking about people that will be operating on ya.”

To which Crowley offered this reaction: “By dismissing the importance of diversity in professional fields, Hovde demonstrates a narrow and prejudiced perspective that has no place in our society. Milwaukee County values diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are committed to providing opportunities for all residents to thrive and addressing the real challenges our communities face. Hovde’s offensive remarks ignore these complexities, undermine our efforts towards genuine equity, and simply don’t reflect what DEI actually is. Unlike business leaders across Wisconsin, he just doesn’t understand it.”

It should be noted that Crowley, Johnson and Moore are all Democrats and support Hovde’s opponent, incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. For that matter, there’s a political tilt to Hovde’s view of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, whom he reduced to a kind of DEI stereotype on the Jay Weber show on July 22.

Hovde suggested that Harris had advanced in her career “through political appointments” and “she can’t string sentences together.” She has become the presidential candidate only because of a “Democratic Party that has pushed this identity politics,” he charged, “where get rid of a meritocracy, the Peter Principles, you know, depending on whether your-your gender, your race, whatever is the paramount thing. Now, they have to be hoisted on their own petard with that because they have a person who is just not capable of being the president, which is scary.”

Hovde has often made comments that he intends to campaign hard for support by Black voters. “I have spent a lot of time in the Black community,” he noted of his campaign. “Look I’m a Ronald Reagan Republican, I believe in the broad tent. We got to bring everybody over to us.” His appearance on The Truth radio station, which calls itself “an audio platform that embraces Milwaukee’s black community,” is clearly part of that outreach. His comments in other media venues, however, may not help him with this effort.