The leading Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, Eric Hovde, is being targeted in a new ad by Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s (D-WI) campaign for comments he made during a previous Senate run. 

The ad highlights some of Hovde’s comments he made during his 2012 Senate run in which he implied and later stated overweight people should pay more for healthcare. Hovde is the leading Republican in the race to unseat Baldwin, who is running for her third term in the Senate.

“How much I weigh is nobody’s business, but Eric Hovde wants to make it his,” two women said in the ad by Ad Impact Politics on behalf of Baldwin’s campaign.

“Look, we have an explosion of Type II diabetes right now. Explosion. Obesity is off the charts,” Hovde said in 2012 in an interview with WisconsinEye.

“You know, we’re removing people from being responsible for their own health. If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their healthcare by consuming, you know, by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or- or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns. Maybe they would stop smoking,” he said.

After some back and forth with the host, Hovde said “It’s a personal choice, but there should be consequences to those personal choices. Fine, you want to do that; you become obese; your healthcare is going to cost more.”

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Hovde also said the Affordable Care Act needs to be “completely repealed.” Hovde’s campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment regarding the ACA or his previous comments about overweight people. 

“Every time he opens his mouth, California bank owner Eric Hovde shows how out of touch he is with working Wisconsinites,” Wisconsin Democrats rapid response director Arik Wolk told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “It’s insulting and wrong that Hovde would force one in three Wisconsinites to pay more for health care just because they struggle with their weight.”