Sen. Tammy Baldwin speaks during a press conference in Washington, D.C., in 2022.Francis Chung / E&E News/POLITICO via AP file
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Democrats have raised a silly campaign issue in the Wisconsin senate race between Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde. They’ve put out news releases twice when Hovde has spent his weekends in California instead of here.
It’s a silly issue. Hovde is more than capable of managing how much campaign time he spends here and when he takes a weekend off. I assure you that Tammy Baldwin spends more time in Washington than she does in Wisconsin.
But since who-is-where-and-when is now fair game, we should revisit Tammy Baldwin’s trip to the love nest in New York in November of 2020.
That was the height of the COVID pandemic. If you wanted to travel to New York, you’d be greeted at the airport by a sheriffs deputy and a health worker with a clipboard. You’d have to register where you were staying, and you were told to quarantine for 14 days. If your answer was “none of your business,” you’d face a fine or you’d be put on the next flight back to wherever you came from.
But, of course, there are special rules for special people. A group of senators were invited to a postal service sorting facility near O’Hare Airport in Chicago to see how the mail was being screened during COVID. It was a stupid trip; Senators have absolutely nothing to offer on how the U.S. Postal Service operates.
Senator Baldwin did not go on the Chicago junket. She instead went on a similar postal service tour in New York. Why? So she could stay in New York, November 5th through the 9th, to be with her girlfriend Maria Brisbane.
Anyone who can do math knows that Senator Baldwin was at the Brisbane love nest for 5 days. No 14 day quarantine for her. If you or I showed up at the airport to return home without quarantining, perhaps a siren would have gone off when we checked in for our flight, or a letter would arrive in the mail telling us what our fine was for not following COVID protocols.
Again, I think the issue of which candidates spend which weekends where and with whom is silly. But it’s the Democrats who inserted this into the campaign.
What’s the lesson from all this? In Tammy Baldwin’s world, it’s “special rules for me, but not for thee.”
Chris Conley
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