Eric Hovde Is Running For Senate In Wisconsin. His Digital Launch Did NOT Go To Plan.

Eric Hovde has run for the US Senate in Wisconsin before. So you’d think he’d be better prepared this time around.

But in fairness to him, he hasn’t spent a whole lot of time in Wisconsin over the last decade or so.

He’s been spending most of his time in California. And while he has occassionally voted in Wisconsin, he’s missed 17 of the last 30 elections.

Plenty of people have already looked at his problematic policies and the fact he doesn’t really spend time in Wisconsin.

This post is specifically about his very bad digital launch.

Hovde is a wealthy businessman, presumably running on his ability to manage people and get sh*t done. So you’d think he’d have a better handle on his launch, which was months (if not years!) in the making.

But you’d be wrong.

His rollout was comically inept.

Let’s look at some highlights.

He rolled out a slick enough video, showing him wandering through an unnamed neighborhood in an unnamed city somewhere in Wisconsin. Well, presumably it was in Wisconsin!

He failed to mention the word Wisconsin — you know, that place he hopes to represent in the US Senate! — even once in his announcement video or accompanying tweet.

Notice that his first ad and tweet make no mention of WI. https://t.co/n1FQYUPNAv

— Daniel Bice (@DanielBice) February 20, 2024

OOPS!

His website is nice enough. But he started airing ads announcing his candidacy before making his website live. That’s just a rookie mistake for a statewide political campaign!

Update: https://t.co/Mzymx89maN website now reads “coming soon” https://t.co/Fq25OIyhL9

— Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg) February 20, 2024

And once it went live, well the problems didn’t end there.

He has a page on his site called “facts.” But the facts listed on his page are lorum ipsum! (AKA gibberish placeholder text.)

.@EricHovde‘s website features a page called Facts.

Thanks for the Facts Eric!https://t.co/DHhj55i6Ce pic.twitter.com/pn8WicK3gp

— Andrew Mamo (@AndrewMamo5) February 20, 2024

He has since removed the gibberish text. But he replaced it with… a 404 message!

And I stumbled into a particularly bizarre glitch while looking through his site.

He has these nice enough looking image blocks that flip over when you hover over them. But something in the tech stack is broken, and is causing them to… bump into each other… when switching from one to another.

Check out this short screencast I took of them:

Y’all, check out this weird glitch on Eric Hovde’s website. It’s an interesting one.

It’s like the blocks are bumping into each other, and one being flipped is preventing another from flipping.#wisconsinpolitics pic.twitter.com/jW34crxfYE

— Josh Klemons (@jlemonsk) February 21, 2024

Along with all of the above, he went viral nationally for a comment he made about child trafficking in Central America.

Announcing his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, Republican Eric Hovde says he understands the tragedy of children being trafficked through Central America because he owns three homes there. pic.twitter.com/LsQhPWvpAc

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) February 20, 2024

Now in fairness to him, when he said he had 3 homes in Central America, he meant “Hovde Homes,” which are shelters to combat the horrors we was talking about. But I’m calling this a gaffe for a very simple reason — if you watch the video, he straight up calls them his homes. He’s assuming his audience knows anything about him (how can they when his website was down and full of lorum impsum?!). It’s on him to clarify something so important and easily misunderstood.

He took a strength (his charitable work!) and accidentally turned it into a further example of his primary weakness as a candidate (that he’s an out-of-touch rich guy with houses all over the world).

This gaffe — fair or not — will hurt him moving forward.

So I’m keeping this in the column of bad rollout moments.

What About His Emails

I signed up for his mailing list right after he launched. I didn’t get an immediate email welcoming me to the team. Which isn’t ideal for a statewide candidate. But it happens.

BUT it’s now been several days and I still haven’t received a single email from him and his campaign. And that’s just bad digital!

He’s currently running against Tammy Baldwin. You can learn more about her and her campaign through her (working!) website here.

While I have you, I’d be remiss not to share one more thing.

I reworked Hovde’s logo for him. And people on Twitter seemed to like it.

Here it is:

Fixed that logo for him.#wisconsinpolitics pic.twitter.com/pzga3iiVZn

— Josh Klemons (@jlemonsk) February 20, 2024

What do you think? 😏

Want to avoid such a horrendous rollout for your campaign (statewide, downballot or anything else!). Let’s chat.