Bice: Tammy Baldwin said to 'stay home' in 2020. She'd just taken a personal trip with tax dollars

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2020, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin posted a Twitter video just before Thanksgiving encouraging people to do what they could to stop the spread of the virus.

"Don't host or go to gatherings with people outside your household," Baldwin said on Nov. 25, 2020. "And just stay home if you can."

Sage advice at the time. Gov. Tony Evers was also urging all state residents to "stay home."

But less than three weeks before posting the Twitter video, Baldwin was not just staying home.

Records show she billed taxpayers $630 to fly from Madison to New York City, where her partner lives, for an extended weekend from Nov. 5-9, 2020, before heading back to Washington, D.C.

Both Wisconsin and New York City were then experiencing a surge in COVID cases. Wisconsin was also on New York's travel restriction list at the time, too.

Just recently, Baldwin's office reimbursed the federal government for the cost of this trip after being asked about it by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Baldwin campaign staffers said the trip had been erroneously marked as official travel. Baldwin decided to reimburse the federal government, they said, "out of an abundance of caution" and without being asked.

"Tammy Baldwin goes above and beyond to ensure her office is in compliance with ethics policies, including as it relates to her travel," said Andrew Mamo, spokesman for Baldwin.

But Republicans were quick to accuse the second-term senator of being hypocritical with her travel.

"It takes a special kind of arrogance to tell Wisconsin taxpayers not to see their loved ones for the holidays while you bill them for a vacation to see your girlfriend," said Tate Mitchell, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Tammy Baldwin should change her campaign slogan to 'Do as I say, not as I do.'"

The Journal Sentinel looked into Baldwin's Senate travel to New York City since she began a relationship with Maria Brisbane, a private wealth adviser in New York. The paper had done a similar review of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's taxpayer-funded travel between Washington, D.C., and a family vacation home in Fort Myers, Florida.

Baldwin is up for re-election next year. A number of possible Republican candidates, including U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher and Tom Tiffany, have decided not to challenge the Democratic incumbent. Still considering a bid are banking mogul Eric Hovde, Franklin businessman Scott Mayer and ex-Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.

The travel records show Baldwin made no trips to New York City before 2018, the year Baldwin met Brisbane at a fundraiser for New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Baldwin and Brisbane together own a $1.3 million rooftop condo just steps from the U.S. Capitol.

Over the past five years, Senate records show Baldwin has made a total of nine officially related trips to New York City, either from Washington, D.C., or Wisconsin. The total cost of the flights was $3,631.34.

On eight of the nine trips, Baldwin billed the taxpayers when on official business in the Big Apple, or she used her own funds or frequent-flyer points to cover the cost of flights if the New York leg of the trip was primarily personal.

For instance, she said her Sept. 8-12, 2022, trip from Washington, D.C., to New York City at a cost of $445 was all business, meaning the Senate picked up the tab. There was no accompanying hotel stay.

While in New York, her campaign said the senator toured the International Mail Facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport. In 2019, Baldwin sponsored a bill to allow specially trained U.S. postal workers at an International Mail Facility to search mail from foreign countries if they believe they contain illegal drugs.

Why didn't Baldwin instead visit the International Mail Facility in Chicago, which is much closer to the state she represents? There are nine such facilities in the country.

Her campaign said the mail facility in New York City is the largest in the nation and that she was joined by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf on her tour. Baldwin was then chair of the Appropriations Committee's subcommittee with jurisdiction over the FDA.

Under Senate rules, senators can be reimbursed for trips to conduct official business or when returning to Washington, D.C., to resume official duties after a personal trip.

Sometimes, Baldwin mixed official and personal business.

For Easter break 2022, Baldwin flew to Madison on April 8. Over the next week, she made stops for events in Platteville, Fennimore, Darlington, Dodgeville, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Ashwaubenon and De Pere. On April 16, 2022, Baldwin used frequent flyer points, accumulated largely from Senate travel, to fly to Newark, New Jersey. She then stayed in New York City until April 24, when she returned to D.C.

Because she was resuming official duties, the Senate paid $321 for her train back to Washington. Senate rules say frequent flyer points accumulated during official business can be used by senators and staff on private travel.

She also mixed official business and personal excursions when she traveled during the pandemic in late 2020.

First, she flew into Madison on Oct. 27, 2020, and attended official and campaign-related events for the next week, including on Election Day on Nov. 3, 2020. Two days later, she flew to New York for a four-day personal visit before taking a train to Washington, D.C.

Baldwin campaign aides said last week that they recently realized a staffer had mislabeled the nature of the trip to New York City in 2020 as official rather than personal. Baldwin then refunded the $630 cost of that flight to the government.

Apart from that, it's not like the veteran politician didn't know back in November 2020 that the number of COVID infections were on the rise, even as she was traveling the county.

On Nov. 5, 2020, the day she left for New York City, Baldwin tweeted:

"Count this, @realDonaldTrump. Today, Wisconsin has 5,922 new #COVID19 infections, 223 more people have been hospitalized, and 38 people lost their lives because of your complete and total failure to provide leadership we can count on."

She tweeted this four days later, the same day she left New York City:

"We have a raging #COVID19 outbreak in Wisconsin and across the country. This pandemic is getting worse and we need to start working together to contain it so we can get our economy on the right track and move forward."

The next day, on Nov. 10, 2020, Baldwin attended a Capitol press conference in which she gave a dour assessment of the situation in Wisconsin. Just days earlier, Wisconsin reported more than 7,000 cases in a single day

“My home state has one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 infections in the country, and we are experiencing the worst phase of this pandemic since it began," she said. She added, “In my state, the pandemic is getting worse, not better."

Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bice: Baldwin pays back cost of personal trip during COVID surge