Hovde concedes 12 days after Wisconsin Senate race call, blames Dem-recruited 3rd-party candidate

Republican businessman Eric Hovde finally conceded defeat on Monday in a razor-thin race for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, claiming that a Democrat-recruited third-party candidate siphoned off the votes that would have secured him the victory.

Hovde, a multimillionaire bank owner and real estate developer, posted his concession video on social media 12 days after the race was called in favor of Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin.

Hovde could have requested a recount, which he would have had to pay for himself, because his margin of defeat was less than 1 percentage point at about 29,000 votes, though he said he did not want to "add to political strife through a contentious recount."

The Republican candidate repeated claims in the video that he first made last week, saying there were "many troubling issues" related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee and when they were reported. Republicans, Democrats and nonpartisan election leaders all refuted the claims of impropriety Hovde made.

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"Without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose because you will just be recounting the same ballots regardless of their integrity," Hovde said in the video.

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Hovde also repeated his complaint about the candidacy of Thomas Leager, who ran as a member of the America First Party. 

Leager, a far-right candidate who was supported by Democratic donors as he ran as a conservative, finished a distant fourth, receiving about 400 fewer votes than the margin between Baldwin and Hovde. Hovde claimed that Democratic operatives were behind Leager's candidacy. 

Hovde, who poured millions of dollars of his own money into his losing race this year, has not ruled out another political campaign in the future. Some Republicans have floated him as a potential candidate for governor in 2026.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.