Senate candidates trade attacks during debate at UW-Milwaukee

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) - Wisconsin’s Senate candidates took the stage to debate in Milwaukee Monday, with a month to go before Election Day.

Senator Tammy Baldwin and challenger Leah Vukmir debated at UW-Milwaukee.

Polls show this is not a close race right now.  The latest Marquette Law School poll shows Sen. Baldwin has an 11-point lead over Vukmir.

Topic after topic, Vukmir went on the attack against Sen. Baldwin.

It started with health care.

“I want people to understand here what happens under Senator Baldwin’s plan,” said Vukmir, “I’m going to call it Baldwincare, because under her plan the Affordable Care Act goes away, Medicare goes away.”

“Having just experienced last year, a vote in which an effort to gut health care went down by one vote, we have some urgent issues to deal with,” said Sen. Baldwin.

Sen. Baldwin was also forced to defend her handling of the opioid problem at the Tomah VA.

“This is not somebody who stands and is accountable to veterans, and if Sen. Baldwin cannot be accountable to our veterans then she will not be accountable to any single one of us,” said Vukmir.

“I think that Leah Vukmir should be ashamed of herself for using a marine veteran’s death for her own political gain,” said Sen. Baldwin.

When asked about the #MeToo movement, the candidates spared over the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearing.

“I personally found her to be credible and compelling, I believe her, but despite the outcome I don’t want that to silence a whole new generation who I know are scared right now,” said Sen. Baldwin.

“48 hours after President Trump announced that he was the pick you came out and said you weren’t going to vote for him, you didn’t even meet with him,” Vukmir said to Sen. Baldwin.

The two candidates will debate again this weekend when they square off on Saturday in Wausau.