Eric Hovde, Madison East HS yearbook photo, 1982
A few weeks ago Wisconsin Senate Candidate Eric Hovde shot off his mouth about how the press should stop covering the poor and pay more attention to the deficit. Real class this guy is. Of course, what do you expect from a guy who is being mentored by Ron "
Businesses should be able to deny health insurance to cancer patients" Johnson?
Little known fact, I attended the same High School as Mr. Hovde. I was a freshman when he was a senior. Madison East High School serves mainly blue collar lower middle-class students with a couple of neighborhoods that are flat out dirt poor. East also serves the Village of Maple Bluff. Maple Bluff is where the rich folks in Madison live.
Now, I did not know Mr. Hovde during my time at East and I am fairly certain he did not know me. Upon perusing the 1982 year book I noticed that Mr. Hovde has zero activities listed next to his photo. I have Hall Monitor and Air Band listed next to my name in the 1985 yearbook (Somehow football got left off of mine), not great things but at least I did something. Mr. Hovde ... well, evidently high school was a big bore to him.
He made little impression there. His senior yearbook photo has no list of activities next to it.
"I look back and say, 'Geez, I wish I'd gotten more involved,'" Hovde said. "The truth is, I found high school boring beyond boring."
We had the same teachers and I do not know how he could find Mr. Belisle's firsthand accounts of landing on Omaha beach boring. How he could not have been awed by our principal
Milt McPike I do not understand. How he found time in Mr. Kane's metal shop boring is beyond me, especially with Mr. Kane's booming voice driving you to excellence with encouraging words about the simplest tasks. How he was not impressed with with the exuberance of Mr. Duvair and his professionalism is nearly impossible to understand. How he could find Mr. Ross' stern teaching methods (honed during his years as a Marine officer) as being unimpressive is baffling at best. How he could find Mrs. Bayer standing on her desk and teaching from their for a full hour boring ... is beyond incomprehensible. I could go on with a list of teachers that made an impression on me and my classmates; however, I think you get the picture. East had and still has some outstanding teachers.
Then:
After working just one year in bank mergers and acquisitions for a financial firm, Hovde, with a $4,000 loan from his father, started his own company to advise community banks. "In hindsight, I look back and say, 'Who would hire me as a 24-year-old kid?' But I had chutzpah."
The majority of kids who went to East did not receive a $4,000 loan from our parents. My story is similar to a lot of kids I went to school with—either go into the military or work for Oscar Mayer's on the line, or get a job with the Kipp and work in a foundry. That is what we east side kids did. Of course the reason Mr. Hovde was hired at the age of 24 is not because he had
chutzpah, it is because his dad loaned him the money to start a business.
Hovde estimates he's given nearly $3 million to MS research. Such donations were the impetus for the Hovde Foundation, which he and his brother Steve started in 1998 in Washington, D.C. The foundation also funds homeless shelters overseas and domestic anti-poverty programs.
While I do have to give him some credit for his charitable donations it does not let him off the hook for statements
like:
"I see a reporter here. I just pray that you start writing about these issues. I just pray. Stop always writing about, 'Oh, the person couldn't get, you know, their food stamps or this or that.' You know, I saw something the other day—it's like, another sob story
Between that statement and purchasing a $1.75 million home in Shorewood Hills (another rich enclave in the City of Madison), his donations to charity ring somewhat hollow to me.
Hovde claims that he would be a citizen legislator:
I don't believe in career politicians. We are meant to be governed by citizen legislators."
Hovde, who has a net worth of between $58 million and $240 million, has no clue what needs his fellow citizens have. He has lived a life of comfort and has always been free from want. When he was diagnosed with MS he did not have to worry about how he would pay for treatment. He does not have to worry today about how to pay for his ongoing treatment. He has never lived paycheck to paycheck. He did not pay attention to the plight of his fellow high school students. He did not learn from the example of our principal. He claims that he would be a citizen legislator. How can he be? He has absolutely zero understanding of what it is like to live as an average citizen.