Liberals and labor unions were virtually stunned by the prospect of removing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker from office in 2012. They failed to do so. And their attempt to send him home early backfired. Now, of course, as he prepares for re-election in 2014, the Badger State’s governor is well-positioned to secure another four-year term. But Wisconsin Republicans shouldn’t rest on their laurels just yet; National Democrats are deeply committed to forming a winning coalition.
Enter Mary Burke. After several prominent Democrats he politely refused to face Walker in 2016, the baton apparently passed into the hands of the former Secretary of State for Commerce and self-proclaimed job creator. She is the first Democrat to formally announce her party’s nomination so far:
Mary Burke comes in as the underdog probable Republican presidential candidate in 2016who won last year’s recall race by a larger margin than in the original election.
Burke’s father founded Trek Bicycle, and she worked there for nine years before becoming the previous governor’s secretary of commerce.
With bicycles in the background, Burke presents himself as a job creator on the shiny 3-minute network video.
“Helping to grow my family business into a global company has been an important part of my life,” she said. “Now I want to help make our great state of Wisconsin even better.”
Meanwhile, Democrats believe Walker is vulnerable and that his job performance is, well, not very impressive:
Democrats believe Walker’s Achilles heel is jobs. When he ran in 2010, he promised to create 250,000 private sector jobs by the end of his first term. It’s still less than halfway there and won’t ultimately reach its goal, but its acceptance rate is around 50 percent.
Burke notes in his video that, according to Moody’s, Wisconsin ranks 45th out of 50 states in projected job growth, ahead of Midwestern neighbors such as Minnesota and Ohio.
“I’m running for governor because we can do better, much better,” she said, without mentioning Walker by name. “Like Washington, D.C., our state capital has become so focused on politics and winning the next political fight that it is breaking our state and crashing our economy.”
Walker’s campaign responded to her video by praising the governor’s success in other respects.
“Under Governor Walker’s leadership, Wisconsin offset a $3.6 billion deficit, reduced income taxes, and saw the best two-year job growth in a decade under any governor,” spokesman Jonathan Wetzel said in an email.
Walker’s (expected) breaking of his job promise may be a failure, but not a deal breaker; after all, his reforms have been largely successful, and there is no doubt that he is pushing Wisconsin in the right direction. But as his own team admits, Wisconsin is a purple state that the president won by seven percentage points in 2012. Remember, Scott Walker is conservative run for re-election – although a quite popular. So winning a second term isn’t necessarily written in stone, no matter who (and how relatively unknown) his opponent is. Republicans should be wise and remember this.
