Eric Hovde, the billionaire banker who has taken a tough stance on China in his bid to unseat Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, said in a statement that his brother and a business partner once tried to set up an investment firm in China, according to corporate records.
Shortly before Eric first ran for U.S. Senate in 2012, his brother Steven founded Hovde China Ventures LLC in the notoriously secretive state of Delaware. The company was shuttered four years later, according to the few publicly available records.
While the brothers have frequently worked together on real estate and finance ventures, Eric Hovde’s team said Stephen took on this project alone, including the water park.
“Eric has never done business in China,” Ben Voelkel, a spokesman for Hovde, told The Daily Beast. “Steve’s investment ultimately yielded no return.”
Voelkel added that Steven “was trying to help the Wisconsin water park industry expand into China. The project ended with meetings and no investment. Eric had nothing to do with it.”
Steven Hovde himself, reached for comment, was as opaque as his Delaware company filings. “Eric is not involved in any way. I have nothing to do with him,” Steven said in an email. “Furthermore, I have done nothing in China. The effort was a failure and a waste of time.”
When asked to elaborate further on the venture, such as whether it has anything to do with technology or manufacturing, Stephen added: “No money has been invested in it. My efforts have been a waste of time and money. It has nothing to do with technology or manufacturing.”
Stephens gave most of his money to the Hovde PAC to help his brother’s election in battleground states, but added that his views on China were “irrelevant.”
Still, Eric Hovde, whom his opponents have slammed as a wealthy California real estate mogul with a $7 million mansion in Laguna Beach, has made the U.S. economy a central focus of his candidacy and frequently sounded warnings about China.
“We have a big problem” with China buying up farmland, the mustachioed businessman said during a tour of a Wisconsin dairy farm last month.
“If I were a senator, I would be very focused on what China is doing and why we are allowing them to come into our communities and buy land, especially around military bases,” said Hovde, who sports a Tom Selleck mustache and appears in television commercials for Utah-based Sunwest Bank.
And in March, Hovde went on Fox News to criticize Baldwin, arguing that he supports tax and regulatory policies that will ultimately move manufacturing jobs to China.
This week, he told a local TV station that the solution to the fentanyl crisis was to “attack” China, the drug’s main manufacturer.
According to Delaware records obtained by The Daily Beast, Hovde China Ventures was incorporated in December 2011. The state canceled the LLC’s registration in 2016 for failing to pay $1,702 in back taxes, but the outstanding taxes remain unpaid.
The entity had a similar name to other Hovde family companies, including Hovde Group and Hovde Capital, and provided the same registered agent services as other companies with ties to Eric, including Sunwest Bancorp and the bank’s charitable foundation.
While the Hovde family has swears off the Republican candidate’s involvement in the China project – and in fact there is no public documentation linking him to it – Eric and Stephen have led or teamed up in several family-owned businesses over the years.
Among them are the Eric and Steven Hovde Foundation, the $2.9 billion multibank holding company H Bancorp and Madison-based Hovde Properties, whose employees were recently featured as voters (but not as company directors) in election ads.
Stephen introduced Eric at a campaign kickoff in February at the Hovde family’s upscale Madison building, assuring the crowd that his brother “has Wisconsin Badger blood in him.” [red] And the Green Bay Packers.”
This event is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Eric revealed in August last year that he had transferred his $2.3 million Washington, DC home to a trust controlled by Stephen.
The next day, a committee supporting Mr. Hovde, called Fix Washington PAC, was formed, to which Mr. Stephens donated $1 million and others contributed the remaining $31,000. The group spent $1.5 million on ads attacking Mr. Baldwin, according to campaign finance records.
Meanwhile, Hovde loaned his own campaign $8 million earlier this year, claiming that his wealth proves he “cannot be bought.”
“I don’t need or want to take special interest money,” he tweeted in March.
As Hovde was considering running for Wisconsin governor in 2022, he spoke again about China with local radio host Vicki McKenna, fuming that China was “trying to take away our position as the most powerful country in the world.”
Hovde claimed to know several people who had horrific experiences trying to set up companies in communist countries.
“There was a pretty big company here in Madison that came in to set up a factory,” he said. “Soon a factory opened across the street. They stole all of his intellectual information. They started producing the same products at a much lower rate. In the end, he lost millions of dollars.”
“I know a lot of stories like that,” he added.
