WASHINGTON — “I'm fighting for Wisconsin people every single day.”
That’s how Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., describes her time in the U.S. Senate.
Baldwin, who is seeking a third term in the upper chamber, was a law student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when she won her first election, securing a seat on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. She then moved to the State Assembly, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in 2013. She’s held elective office for nearly four decades.
Baldwin authored the amendment to the Affordable Care Act that allows young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26.
“That used to be the most uninsured age demographic, and it was so important to give those families the security they needed,” Baldwin said.
As a member of the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Baldwin pushed manufacturers to reduce the cost of inhalers.
“Three months into our investigation, three of the four asthma inhaler manufacturers came to our committee and voluntarily lowered the price to no more than $35 per month out of pocket for asthma inhalers,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin is also proud of her “Buy America” measures that made it into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. They require federally funded projects to use American-made iron and steel.
If re-elected, she said she would push to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act to guarantee abortion access across the country, a response to the Supreme Court ending the nationwide right to abortion more than two years ago.
“We have 72 counties in Wisconsin, and there's only three in which you can access abortion care,” she said. “So there's work to be done fighting for Wisconsin families and winning our rights and freedoms back.”
Baldwin also hopes to make college more affordable, by modernizing apprenticeship laws and making sure the Pell Grant keeps pace with rising tuition costs.
Control of the U.S. Senate could come down to whether Baldwin can win re-election in November. The two-term Democrat is facing a well-financed opponent, Republican businessman Eric Hovde. He’s crept up on her in the polls after spending $20 million of his fortune on his campaign.
Baldwin was a co-sponsor on the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, but Hovde has accused Baldwin of taking “credit for other people’s work,” because Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, who sponsored the bill, said he’d “never had a single conversation with Tammy about this bill.” In response, Baldwin said Hovde “doesn’t know a lot about the Senate right now” since the upper chamber is controlled by Democrats.
“Sherrod Brown, a senator from Ohio, is the lead Democrat on the FEND Off Fentanyl bill,” Baldwin said. “I worked very closely with Sherrod Brown to get that bill across the finish line, and I think sometimes my opponent, Eric Hovde, thinks he's the first person who's ever paid attention to the issue of fentanyl.”
When asked about the back-and-forth, Brown said Baldwin was an “important partner” in helping pass the FEND Off Fentanyl Act.
“For years, I’ve worked with Senator 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,” Brown told Spectrum News 1 in a statement.
Hovde described Baldwin as a career politician and said it’s time for change, but Baldwin paints her time in Washington as an advantage for constituents.
“I would never undercount the seniority that pays dividends to people in the state of Wisconsin,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin also sits on the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chairing a subcommittee of each panel.
Baldwin said she makes a point of reaching out to new members, regardless of their party, to see if they can find common ground on issues and legislation. She co-sponsored two bills with Ohio freshman Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate this year. The Lugar Center and Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy calculated that Baldwin was the 31st most bipartisan lawmaker in the 100-member Senate last year
“Every single day in the Senate, I reach out across the party aisle and work with my colleagues on the Republican side to advance things that I know are good for Wisconsin and good for their states too,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin said a tradition she’d like to bring back in the Senate is the formal mentorship program. She reflected on having Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri, and Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, as her mentors.
“That has fallen by the wayside with our current, much more toxic atmosphere,” Baldwin said. “I think we need to bring it back.”
She said one gathering that’s been helpful is the women’s dinner, where women of the upper chamber meet for a meal.
“It's really great to get a chance to sometimes just talk about the challenges of the Senate, and the travel back and forth, and just mundane things… Or just really saying, ‘Look, all of us as women in the Senate, regardless of party, have some common interests. Maybe there's a project we should work together on.’ [To] give you one example: A couple years back, we were heading towards the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, and I brought the whole women's caucus together to sponsor a bill to make sure that we had an appropriate celebration of that 100th anniversary," she said.
If the election doesn’t go in her favor, Baldwin said she’d like to work on similar issues but in a different capacity. As for the first thing she’d do?
“I’d probably get a puppy,” Baldwin said with a laugh.
Baldwin was the only Democrat endorsed by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau this year, the group calling her a steadfast advocate for Wisconsin agriculture. Though Baldwin won her last election by nearly 11 points, this one is expected to be much closer.
“All we can do in the remaining days is remind people of how important their franchise is, how important it is to exercise their voices by voting and so that's what I'm going to focus on,” Baldwin said. “And I hope Democrats and Republicans will all agree to abide by the outcome, but the home stretch is reminding people to make a plan to vote and to ask for their vote. So I'll be all across Wisconsin asking folks for their vote.”