“He is carrying out a run-of-the-mill MAGA campaign that has included grumbling about electric vehicles,”
California multimillionaire and GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde’s hypocrisy continues as HuffPost recently uncovered Hovde’s latest capital gains from investing in electric vehicles (EVs) after publicly criticizing them. This revelation comes just a week after Heartland Signal exposed Hovde for investing in “meme stocks” after criticizing them. Hovde has blasted government subsidies for EVs during his campaign, deriding them as “tax games” and dismissing EVs as “not even that environmentally friendly.” Despite these criticisms, Hovde’s recent personal financial disclosure shows he has earned up to $5 million from his EV investments. This financial gain highlights the disparity between his public stance and personal interests and underscores the fact that he would be one of the wealthiest members of the Senate if elected.
“California mega-millionaire Eric Hovde continues to show Wisconsinites exactly who he is – a profit-driven hypocrite with no integrity. His pattern of hypocrisy regarding his investments only underscores why voters will reject him in November,” said American Bridge 21st Century Senate Communications Director Nico Delgado.
HuffPost: This GOP Senate Hopeful Is Railing Against Electric Vehicles. He Made Big Money Off EV Stocks.
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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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.
Read the entire story in HuffPost.
Published: Aug 5, 2024 | Last Modified: Aug 13, 2024