Wisconsin Gazette endorses Mary Burke while savaging Gov. Walker

This is an excellent endorsement of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke.

Walker is a great example of what happens when someone with no real-world management or business experience is placed in a position of overseeing a multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy. For decades, Republicans themselves have argued that career politicians are unqualified to serve in such positions.

As a paper committed to progress and reform, we agree whole-heartedly with Republicans on this issue. That’s one of the many reasons we endorse Democrat Mary Burke with great confidence and enthusiasm.

A vote for Burke is far more than a vote against Walker. She is one of the strongest, most promising candidates running anywhere in the nation this year. Even Walker apologists have acknowledged how unique and qualified Burke is to lead the state.

In addition to holding a Harvard MBA, she’s a successful businesswoman with deep international experience. She established — from the ground up — European operations for Trek Bicycle Corp. Those operations have grown from $3 million to $50 million in revenue.

Burke understands how business operates. She knows how to balance a real-world budget and she understands the challenges facing the entrepreneurs and start-up companies that are the only hope for Wisconsin’s future.

While college-dropout Walker has repeatedly sold out the interests of Wisconsinites to cultivate politically useful relationships with uber wealthy donors, Burke is financially independent. While he has higher political aspirations, Burke simply wants to be governor because she believes — correctly, in our opinion — that she has the skills and commitment to turn the state’s lagging economy around while restoring its progressive tradition of governing in a way that serves everyone, not just the rich and politically connected.

Burke’s stance on social issues such as women’s reproductive freedom, marriage equality, pay equity and voting rights are in line with those of the forward-thinking people Wisconsin needs to retain and attract to halt the state’s brain drain.

While Walker has acknowledged in public that his political game is based on a strategy of divide and conquer, Burke is eager to bring people together to solve the complex problems that involve us all, to find common ground and build consensus. That’s how private sector executives solve problems, and that’s how Burke has solved problems all her life, whether in the corporate boardroom or in her many leadership roles on boards of nonprofits. In a state that under Walker has become perhaps the most divided in the nation, Burke offers the sort of unifying leadership we need.

Burke’s economic knowledge is reflected in her job-growth strategy of identifying business and educational clusters and utilizing their strengths and resources to create new areas of industry, such as fresh-water and clean energy technology or biomedical and digital products and services. Her plans, culled from the most inventive and promising business development strategies being utilized today, not only look great on paper but also have actually worked incredibly well in places such as California’s Silicon Valley.

Burke has shown as much tireless commitment to her community as Walker has to his political career. She serves on the Madison School Board and has been instrumental in turning the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County into a model for lifting up troubled youth. She co-founded a program that mentors underprivileged kids at risk of becoming drop-outs and helps them develop the life skills to get into college. The program has a 90-percent success rate.

A third-generation Wisconsinite who could live in a mansion but chooses instead to live in a modest home where her grandfather once delivered mail, Burke’s personal narrative is rooted in true American values, especially the value of hard work. She’s smart, humble and eager to help others. She wants the actual job of governor, not just the title. 

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29 thoughts on “Wisconsin Gazette endorses Mary Burke while savaging Gov. Walker

  1. “Her (jobs) plans, culled from the most inventive and promising business development strategies being utilized today…”

    He he he. Is that what they call it now. But professor, I carefully culled this research paper, or, judge, I culled the purse from the ladies shoulder.

    1. Denis, we’ve already established there was no plagiarism, so let it go already.

      It’s impossible to plagiarize from one’s own works, as the consultant who put the jobs plan together did.

      Repeating a lie over and over again does not make it more true.

        1. Look, if you believe Scott Walker wrote every word on his website and in his press releases, then you’re incredibly naive.

          We all know how politics works, and elected officials and candidates at that level don’t do all their own writing.

            1. Oh no, there are better arguments. Huge resume gaps, recent revelations about her dismissal from the family company etc… paint a picture of a woman not exactly committed to the truth. But at least she is not Scott Walker.

              1. Who says Mary Burke was “dismissed” from Trek? Two individuals with axes to grind who are confirmed Republicans?

                C’mon Denis, if these men were proven Democrats and they made a damaging revelation about Walker 6 days from an election, you’d be screaming bloody murder. Interesting that when person being attacked is a Democrat, you’re hunky-dory.

                1. Six days is ample time for Mary Burke to rebut the claims with verifiable specifics. Surely there is a consultant available to cull together a plausible enough story about her tenure at Trek, because the current glossy narrative isn’t holding up to well. Of course this late story is political, certainly brought forward by someone who wants her to lose. Still, it does highlight that her campaign thus far has been pretty much a unverified hagiography held together by an incurious media. It is about time it gets challenged.

                  1. Double darn and damn, if you would have just used that five syllable word before I voted, you’d have had me convinced. Too freaking late now.

                  2. Here is her response back. Seems like she got back in a timely matter to me.

                    Honestly, this is the equivalent of the people saying that Walker had baby outside of marriage and told that woman to get an abortion in the Recall Elections. Aka, it’s just a hit and run piece from the looks of it from some obviously questionable people.

          1. So a consultant culls his own work, nearly word for word, and Mary Burke cluelessly claims it as her own. That’s just politics you say. But the endorsement touts her economic knowledge blah blah blah. Given your admission, I think it is fair to question said knowledge. That’s all.

            1. So you’re one of those who think CEOs write their company’s annual reports cuz they sign the shareholder letter, right? And said annual reports are brand-spanking new YOY with no lifting of passages from the prior year? BWAHAAHAAAAHAHAAAA. Seriously, though, are any of you able to look around with the slightest comprehension of the world?

              1. I think the difference is that CEOs are legally responsible for the accuracy of their reports while Mary Burke is avoiding responsibility at all costs. Might also explain her failure in all her nepotistic business ventures.

                1. Er, the issue was authorship and the copying and pasting throughout doc’s. I guess you answered my question about comprehension, though.

                  1. I don’t think there is a requirement that CEO’s write the business reports, rather, they must verify their accuracy and be responsible for the contents therein. Mary Burke is not required to write “her” jobs plan, nor understand “her” carefully culled plan. And she seems to have met and surpassed her non responsibilities. Not exactly CEO material, or governor for that matter.

                    So I guess its her jobs plan in the same way that it is my book, when I buy one from Barnes and Noble. Of course, I wouldn’t pretend to have written the book. I am seeing a pattern of dishonesty from Mary Burke.

                    1. We understood that you frequently see things that aren’t there, just as you sure miss the obvious patterns when it comes to SKWalker.

                      “I want my Cabinet secretaries to have branded across their heads, ‘250,000 jobs,'” Walker said at a December 2010 meeting of the Dairy Business Association. “I want them to know their job is on the line because my job is on the line to create 250,000 jobs in the private sector.”

                      Which of those Cabinet secretaries have been fired or even had their crony salaries cut back to the 2010 levels of the public servants (trained professionals) that SKWalker’s appointees replaced?

                      Subtract from SKWalker’s job totals the 25% of the jobs he takes credit for which are actually government jobs, and his private sector record of job creation will really make you hallucinate, as you claim.

                    2. What makes you think she doesn’t understand her own jobs plan? Evidence? Sources? So once again we’re back to you having nothing but sycophantic outrage.

  2. Well-written endorsement. Wisconsin desperately needs a strong manager-type leader who is not beholden to uber-rich sociopaths. Hopefully Democratic voters turn out and the independents and traditional Republicans find the courage to throw Walker out.

  3. The real problem is that even the crack reporters at the Wisconsin Gazette never tried to vet the Mary Burke tale of fiction. So in the last days, you can disparage those rascally republican retirees who are besmirching the crafted story behind Mary, but had you done your job, everyone would have excavated the truth by now exposing any ‘axes to grind’. But you do not really care about any truth or falseness behind Mary. You only care that she is a dem and NOT Scott Walker. It does not matter to you or your ilk that she could screw up WI as badly as Obama screwed up the country. Walker proved his capability repairing the county of Milw. You can disagree with his policy, but his financial plan for WI worked eliminating the Doyle/Burke deficit, slightly improving the employment and tax picture and stemming the exodus of companies from WI. Act 10 eliminated a long term practice of teacher unions forcing districts to purchase health policies from the WEAC unions at inflated prices greater than 500% of fair market value. This was out and out theft of the taxpayer by the unions and none of it was “for the children’. Moreover, none of this theft was ever outed by you or your organization.

    1. What’s Burke’s tale of fiction? Do you have legitimate sources to back up your assertion?

        1. What about her campaign? And what’s good about Walker’s? Let’s hear it. Why should anyone vote for Walker?

  4. EmmaR, re your 11:38 questions, help me understand. If I purchase a jobs plan from someone, read it and understand it, tout it as my own etc… why fire the guy who culled it?

    1. Because any decent free-lancer (which is what a consultant is of course) knows that whether you’re writing for Apple or Tim Cook you cast the words in the voice of the brand or the person. He didn’t do that, ergo, he’s toast. (BTW, I thought you Republicans know how business works yet funny how I continually school you.)

      1. Had she read “her” jobs plan, she would have know the words were not cast in the voice of Mary Burke and she would have fired him well before she toured the state bragging about “her” jobs plan. School me some more.

        1. Oh, that’s easy. It’s such a common practice that you don’t even think twice and keep moving through your day. I worked with a writer this week who did it – my words lifted this time. Nobody gets fired until there’s a microscope. Here endeth the lesson. Now tell us why Walker makes a good candidate. Still waiting on that from you.

    2. Isn’t there some other third world country that you could be exploiting for making a living off of child slave labor? Oh that’s right, the USA isn’t quite there yet. To quote Chris Christie, ” Sit down and STFU.”

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZqJSyGb99E

      We know your jobs plan and do understand why you are obsessed with attacking Mary Burke. So you and Rojo and SKW started by marrying the women with the financial resources and the family connections?

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