Vice President Joe Biden embraces Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis. during a campaign rally at Aldrich Middle School, Friday, Nov. 2, 2012, in Beloit, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)(NBC15)
MADISON, WI (WSAU) – Democratic Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, 62, will not be in attendance for President Joe Biden’s visit to Madison on Friday as internal concerns surrounding the future of his reelection campaign continue to mount.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, campaign spokesman Andrew Mamo stated that Senator Baldwin “supports the president,” but is “running her own race for the people of Wisconsin” and will be on that campaign trial this weekend, attending two Fourth of July parades that were planned before the president announced his visit as part of her “Fired Up for Tammy” tour as she seeks a third term in the U.S. Senate.
Brian Schimming, the chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, responded to the campaign announcement with a post on X saying that Baldwin’s reelection campaign should be called the “I Don’t Want to Get Fired with Joe” tour, while Baldwin’s Republican challenger Eric Hovde told the Sentinel that Baldwin’s decision to skip Biden’s visit is a “desperate and selfish move” and that she’s “making up excuses to not be seen” with the president. Hovde’s campaign further noted that Baldwin has been a staunch supporter of Biden and his legislative policies until now, citing FiveThirtyEight’s 2023 analysis that found she voted with the president 95.5% of the time.
Baldwin is not the first notable Democrat to appear to avoid questions or appear to be avoiding being photographed alongside President Biden, as the Washington Free Beacon reported on Tuesday that both Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), who also face very competitive races this cycle, avoided answering questions this week about Biden’s reelection future or if they would ask him to stump for them in the coming months.
According to the New York Times, which cited an unidentified source, Biden has staked the future of his reelection campaign on an upcoming interview on ABC News with George Stephanopoulos and Friday’s Wisconsin visit over the long holiday weekend, which said if the appearances don’t go well, Biden knows he will need to drop out of the race, which was disputed by White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, who claimed in a statement on Wednesday that the Times report was “absolutely false.”
Baldwin is ahead of Hovde by 7.8 percentage points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average, while the latest New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump ahead of Biden by 6 percent nationally with likely voters, which represents an eight-point swing toward Trump in their poll since December. The latest Yahoo/YouGov poll also shows Trump now has a four-point lead nationally over Biden, mainly due to the rise of independent voter support for the former president, which shows they support Trump by 19 percentage points over Biden.
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