Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has launched a lawsuit against several Wisconsin television stations and a Democratic Party aligned PAC for running ads that he claims defamed him.
The ad states that Hovde, the CEO and chairman of the board for Sunwest Bank, and his family “rigged the system to rake in $30 million in government subsidies and loans, and now he’s sheltering his wealth in shady tax havens around the world.” It also claims at one point that Hovde is a “California banker.”
The ad was cut by WinSenate PAC. The outfit is one of the defendants named in the suit, along with Gray Media Group, Nexstar Media, Inc., The Evening Telegram Company, Sinclair Communications, LLC, Fox Television Stations, LLC, ION Media Networks, Inc. and Scripps Media, Inc., according to an Aug. 9 filing.
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Attorneys for Hovde sent letters to the defendants on June 14, to “immediately remove this false advertisement from your network in accordance with your obligations and duties as an FCC licensee,” according to one letter obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio.
“The advertisement opens with the false claim that Mr. Hovde is a ‘California banker.’ This is not true,” the letter went on. Hovde’s Sunwest Bank is a subsidiary of the Irvine, California-based H Bancorp, although he resides in Madison, Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal.
Attorneys for Hovde also took issue with the claim that Hovde “now is sheltering his wealth in shady tax havens around the world,” writing in the letter that the claim “is both false and defamatory in that it accuses Mr. Hovde of tax evasion with no evidence to support the allegations made.”
“We request that you comply with the requirements imposed on your station under the law and decline to further air the ‘WinSenate’ advertisement on the grounds that it contains false and misleading claims. Any future airings would be done so with reckless disregard of the advertisement’s falsity,” the letter concludes.
Attorneys representing WinSenate sent a follow-up letter on June 17 stating, “there is absolutely nothing false about the claims in this advertisement. The Campaign has no right to silence WinSenate. Your decision to accept the advertisement should remain undisturbed.”
Senior Director for Campaign Finance at the Campaign Legal Center Erin Chlopak told WPR that Hovde’s suit had few legs to stand on “as a general matter, false statements in campaign ads are protected,” due to Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus 2014.
Representatives for the Hovde campaign and WinSenate did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment at the time of publishing.
