All you need to know about where the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel really stands on the candidates for Wisconsin governor was evident on the front page today. And it wasn't a proud moment for the Putlizer Prize-winning newspaper.
Giving up its traditional role as an overt, transparent shaper of public opinion, the Journal Sentinel editorial board -- which has endorsed Scott Walker for governor twice in previous elections -- months ago said it will no longer endorse candidates for public office. Unless, that is, the editorial board decides to make exceptions in particular races. Well, that's as clear as mud.
Once a leading liberal voice in Wisconsin and now increasingly conservative in its opinions, the newspaper has in its news choices arguably been making a subtle push on behalf of Walker. Today, that push was not so subtle. Subscribers to the printed edition and visitors to the Journal Sentinel web site found a prominent, top-most headline:"Ex-Trek execs with conservative ties say Mary Burke was forced out" (the printed headline was slightly re-arranged).
The Republican Party's fake Mary Burke web site put it more starkly: "Mary Burke was FIRED from her family company." And other conservative web sites jumped in, one of them saying the press failed to "vet" Burke, based on accusations from ... some of those same conservatives. Echoes. I hear echoes.
So was born in the mainstream media the latest Republican-concocted assault against Burke, the Democratic challenger running against incumbent Walker. Can a Walker TV ad taking advantage of all this heat and smoke be far behind? Based on Walker's recent ads attacking Burke for one or another alleged flaw, that ad probably already has been produced, in anticipation of this very news story. Score another point in the election polls for the conservative echo chamber, courtesy of the Journal Sentinel and any news operation that regurgitates this puke.
Now, I'm not saying the Journal Sentinel reporters who covered this accusation are guilty of anything other than simply doing their jobs, and conscientiously so. News organizations often need to consider how to deal with thin-sourced accusations such as these. But as flimsy and loaded as this accusation is, and especially so close to the election, why would Journal Sentinel editors decide the account should lead the news pages, instead of running deeper inside? They've just given their most prominent news space to a conservative accusation that is not independently provable. Arguably, they're being used. The only issue is whether they knowingly chose to let themselves be used.
Much more below the fold.
The Journal Sentinel news article covered the Burke-negative views of two former executives at Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycle Corporation, a Burke family business that's been both highly respected and successful.
In a smaller sub-headline the article informed readers (again, this is the web version of the headline) that "the Democratic gubernatorial candidate and company deny allegation." More than deny, actually: Burke and Trek called the accusation a smear.
And that smear was only the latest installment of a Walker campaign effort to build an image of Burke as some kind of incompetent menace, if not an out-and-out witch, when objective reality strongly suggests otherwise. Her public and private resume easily best what Walker ever achieved in his own almost entirely public-sector career before becoming governor, and that includes his controversial reign as Milwaukee County executive, which spawned felony charges and convictions against a small group of his key staffers.
Arguably, the Journal Sentinel story amounts to one of the more egregious nothing-burgers you're going to find in current American politics. It's pure "he said, she said."
For the key segment of Wisconsin's women voters, much of the on-going Walker assault against Burke may even appear misogynistic. And we shouldn't discount that possibility, since Walker's staff in their own guarded moments haven't had especially nice things to say about his lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch.
Meanwhile, Team Walker resurrected a lone email (oh, the irony of that!) from an apparently disgruntled former state commerce secretary who in one non-contextual passage privately called successor Burke a "disaster," a declaration the embarrassed former public official quickly walked back. Burke's objective performance aside, the word "disaster" promptly showed up as a headline in continuing Walker attack ads against her. Republicans are nothing but good at coordinating their messages -- especially dark, personal and non-issue messages.
In any event, one female politician's "disaster" may be another's "debacle." Yet Kleefisch remains on the ticket with Walker. People who live in glass governor's mansions shouldn't throw stones.
More and more, this kind of thinly sourced nonsense is what now passes for informing voters on the eve of the most crucial and tight Wisconsin state election in modern history. What are the candidates' views on policy and their respective accomplishments? That's all out there for the reading, in heavily digested form, but it's badly obscured by omnipresent 15- and 30-second Walker TV ads full of smoke and noise, the product of a Republican smear machine that has no equal on the Democratic side.
Content-wise, many of the Walker attack ads can be reduced to lone scare words, like "Obamacare" or "outsourcing," but there's no real meat on those bones, and sometimes there are misstatements of fact, as when Walker claims, based on a willful misreading of a Congressional Budget Office document, that the Affordable Care Act, which Burke supports, will cost Wisconsin jobs. Uh, no.
The GOP's politics of personal destruction not only could be souring voters on Burke, they also could be turning off some voters who think everyone runs gutter-level campaigns. Lower turnout is widely seen as aiding Walker's re-election, which pretty evidently is why he and his Republican legislature also shortened early voting hours and tried to impose a stringent Voter ID requirement.
Now, it's possible the Journal Sentinel editors feel a need to "balance" the paper's coverage, given all the negative press they've been forced to apply to Walker, who's been hugely controversial and embroiled in two criminal investigations. But this latest smear is going too far and too late for any news organization's serious consideration.
You had to go all the way to the "jump" of the Journal Sentinel's printed story (that's the inside page where the story was continued from page one) and the 17th paragraph to find out this:
Though more sympathetic to Mary Burke, Albers' comments echoed those made Wednesday by former Trek human resources director Gary Ellerman to a conservative website, Wisconsin Reporter. Ellerman is the chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Party and ran as a sham Democratic candidate in the 2012 Senate recall primary to help the incumbent GOP senator in that race.
The Wisconsin Reporter is a conservative website that is funded by conservative foundations. In 2012, the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation donated $190,000 to help underwrite the website. The Bradley Foundation is headed by Michael Grebe, chairman of Walker's campaign committee.
Albers said he considered himself a conservative and had donated $50 to Burke's opponent, Gov. Scott Walker, and $1,100 to former GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Green. He said he wasn't active in Republican politics.
So two former Trek executives, conservatives politically, dump on liberal Burke. One of them says he "wasn't active" in GOP politics even though he donated to GOP candidates. The other was clearly active.
He ran as a political candidate. A candidate who was serving the interests of the Wisconsin Republican Party by pretending to be a Democrat and running in the Democratic primary, in an attempt to disrupt the election bid of the real Democrat. Totally believable guy, wouldn't you say?
And take note of this: Those two politically conservative, former Trek executives suddenly remembered -- with less than a week to go in the campaigns running up to Tuesday's election -- that, back in the 1990s, Mary Burke allegedly got sent packing by her own brother, Trek's president, because she couldn't handle her duties. And they felt a civic duty to share that with everyone.
Anyway, Team Walker has long since stitched together its own rag-doll version of Burke figuratively poking it with needles on TV and the Internet. Voodoo economics meets voodoo electioneering.
But while you might expect that kind of low-life campaigning from take-no-prisoner office-seekers like Walker these days, you shouldn't have to expect it from the news media.
Several decades ago when I was a reporter at the old Milwaukee Sentinel, which eventually merged with the old Journal to form the present newspaper, my editors always were extremely skeptical of eleventh-hour smears and accusations coming from partisan sources. They would bury any stories they decided to run on the inside pages, or not run them at all, lest the paper be used as a free advertising vehicle for one side or the other. It didn't even matter if the Sentinel was endorsing the candidate. That standard doesn't pertain any longer, obviously, at least not at Milwaukee's remaining daily.
In recent weeks, as the relatively unknown Burke closed the sizable gap in name recognition and polling, the Walker camp began to shift its messaging wholesale. No longer focused on how wonderful his policies have been for everyday Wisconsin residents (they haven't been, as even the Journal Sentinel figured out in earlier articles), Walker's ads lately have been almost entirely negative, attacking Burke for all manner of perceived, mostly over-hyped or even utterly imaginary flaws.
Especially telling is how Walker when campaigning never refers to Burke by name, but only as "my opponent," explaining that he is focused on telling his own story. And yet his campaign ads blare her name, and always in the worst possible light. Passive-aggressive doesn't look particularly good on this guy, or on any public officeholder of real integrity.
One of the earliest smears in the anti-Burke campaign came when Walker attacked her indirectly, taking on Trek Bicycle Corp. for its alleged outsourcing of jobs to China and other growing overseas markets, even though Wisconsin-based Trek is a growing employer in the state and the nation's largest domestic producer of bicycles. This alleged outsourcing charge was smarmy, given that Walker himself as governor had led a trade mission to China and has proffered policies that have promoted outsourcing. Indeed, this wasn't the first time Walker's attack looked very much like Karl Rove-style, protective camouflage: Try to project your own greatest vulnerabilities onto your opponent.
Another attack has focused on Burke's 2005-'07 service as Wisconsin commerce secretary for Walker's predecessor, Democrat Jim Doyle. In terms of job growth the agency under Burke's watch acquitted itself reasonably well -- indeed, according to published reports, by an order of magnitude greater than Walker's own, privatized economic development agency has managed in twice the time. But after Burke departed her state post, the Great Recession hit, robbing Wisconsin like all other states of economic vigor and more than 100,000 jobs. Walker and his backers trumpet loudly the "failure" of "Burke" by blithely assigning to her responsibility for all those job losses.
Blogger Jud Lounsbury at UppityWisconsin.org has pointed out the irony of how, years ago, Walker credited President George W. Bush for Wisconsin's strong jobs growth during the Doyle years up to the Great Recession. Short version: Wisconsin Democrats are to blame for everything that ever goes wrong in the state, even when they're not around, while Republicans are always responsible for everything that goes right in the state, even when they're not around.
A month ago over at AfternoonJournal.com, a blogger nailed it on this strongly accusative aspect of the Walker campaign strategy, reacting to the earlier smear that Burke was a "plagiarist" because a paid Burke campaign consultant lifted from his own work for others a few paragraphs for a Burke economic development policy paper. It's all a witch hunt, the blog post said. The most insightful lines:
Being a feminist or, if you prefer, a gentleman, I get the feeling that Burke’s political opponents are trying to tar her as an untrustworthy oddball– an unmarried, snowboarding witch who is using her dark arts to come out of nowhere to threaten the political reign of the wholesome preacher’s son, Scott Walker.
Somehow, the implication is, Burke must be cheating, for how else to explain her magical rise to political credibility?
There's no doubt that Walker himself has cast a dark spell over Wisconsin. Even if you agree with his controversial policies, you can't fail to see that he's divided the state cleanly down the middle. And, as a famous and goodly Republican once said, a divided house cannot stand. Burke is the champion hoping to break that spell and usher in a new era of cooperation and progressive public policy. If she fails, it's only a matter of time before Walker is cast out. If she's a witch, he's the warlock.
Fri Oct 31, 2014 at 6:28 AM PT: The second-day Journal Sentinel coverage of this accusation includes a front-page rebuttal by Burke and her campaign, and an editorial pooh-poohing the claim. But -- how's this for lack of parity? -- readers of the print edition have to go all the way to page 6 to find out that Burke's accuser -- that ex-Trek executive who himself was fired -- has posted numerous, racist anti-Obama photos and comments on his Facebook page. The guy took the page private shortly after the Journal Sentinel learned of its content from Burke's campaign.
Fri Oct 31, 2014 at 6:37 AM PT: In his own reaction to the accusation, Walker had two quite revealing comments. First, he said he didn't recall ever meeting Burke's accuser, although he said he may have shook the guy's hand, yet there's a photo of the accuser posing next to Walker. More important, Walker said Burke was the least "vetted" candidate for governor in state history, which is the exact line being spread around by some conservative web sites. No campaign coordination there! And it's an odd thing that Walker would use the line, given that he's pretending to be above it all. Fail!
Fri Oct 31, 2014 at 11:45 AM PT: The Burke campaign has a new TV ad responding to the smear, and Team Walker walked right into what they're getting, here. See:
https://www.youtube.com/...