WASHINGTON — A month ago, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., was fighting for her political career. She crisscrossed the state to speak with voters as she faced her toughest re-election bid yet against Republican businessman Eric Hovde.
Baldwin beat him and will begin her third term in the U.S. Senate in January.
“I’d rather be working on policy than raising money,” she said on Wednesday at an event hosted by WisPolitics in Washington, D.C.
Though she often appeared at events to campaign for Kamala Harris for president, Baldwin declined Wednesday to say whether or not Harris should give it another go in four years.
“I'm not looking out that far,” Baldwin said. “I know that we have a very excited bunch of individuals who have had a chance to meet with over many years, some of whom I serve with in the Senate, some of whom are governors and other leaders who are looking at possibly running in 2028.”
President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin by around 30,000 votes. Baldwin credited her win, by a similar margin, to consistently showing up across the state.
“And it's not that Kamala Harris did not do that in her campaign,” Baldwin said. “She paid a lot of attention to Wisconsin. But she had 107 days, and I've been able to build those relationships over many, many years.”
Top of mind for Baldwin is Trump’s promise to enact a mass deportation operation for undocumented immigrants. Many such immigrants work on farms in Wisconsin.
“We need to do everything we can to make sure that the law is followed,” Baldwin said. “And so the idea of having the military used to round people up is just not acceptable or legal in the United States of America.”
On Capitol Hill, Baldwin said some of her Republican colleagues are quietly speaking about some of Trump’s nominations for Cabinet positions, such as Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, not making it through the Senate confirmation process. The Fox News host is under scrutiny over allegations of sexual assault.
“I'm not sure the cast we have right now will be the cast we have in January,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin praised the decision by a Dane County judge to repeal Act 10, the more than decade-old Wisconsin law that stripped away the collective bargaining right for some public workers.
“The right to join with others, to have a louder voice, a bigger voice, is, I think, a pretty fundamental right,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin added that the biggest battle Democrats will face in the next Congress is the tax package. She anticipated that Republicans will push big breaks for the wealthy at the expense of funding for other benefits like Social Security.