Republican Govs Assn’s answer to WI Joe Doe probe document dump: ‘Squirrel!’

Looks like someone’s nervous.

Associated Press: The Republican Governors Association plans to launch a six-figure ad buy next week attacking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke on the same day that thousands of emails from a felon who worked for Gov. Scott Walker are released.

The ad is the first television salvo in the re-election race for Walker, a national conservative star who is eyeing a 2016 presidential run. The RGA was a strong backer of Walker both in the 2010 campaign and his 2012 recall, spending a combined $14.4 million in those races, based on estimates by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

The new ad, to air statewide on cable and broadcast networks starting Wednesday, will “remind and inform voters that Mary Burke was a senior official in the failed Jim Doyle administration,” RGA spokesman Jon Thompson said Thursday.

What’s important to remember here is that no one actually knows what’s in these emails. So the fact that Republicans are so eager to change the subject immediately is a pretty danged good indication that they know Walker has something to hide — and to worry about.

Walker is a vulnerable governor. Although the latest polling out of Marquette University showed Walker in the lead 47%-41%, the fact that the incumbent could only garner a plurality and not a majority means that Team Walker most likely did not receive the numbers as good news.

Throwing an insane amount of money at an ad buy to change the subject from something so far unknown to MARY BURKE IS AWFUL!! shows just how fragile Republicans believe Walker’s already slim lead to be. They’re almost as afraid of Burke as they are of Walker’s simmering scandal.

[photo via WePartyPatriots.com]

Poll: Walker tied with relatively unknown challenger Burke in Wisconsin Gov. race

Wisconsin Public Radio: A new Marquette University Law School poll shows Gov. Scott Walker would narrowly defeat Democrat Mary Burke in next year’s gubernatorial election.

The poll of 800 registered voters last week shows Walker at 47 percent, and Burke, the former state commerce secretary, at 45 percent, with a 3.5 percent margin of error.

The poll is far from a prediction of what will actually happen in the election. Marquette pollster Charles Franklin says the survey also found that 70 percent of respondents don’t know enough about Burke to like or dislike her. Franklin says that ultimately the results show a sizable number of people know what they have in Walker.

Given the margin of error, this is a statistical dead heat and there will be no celebrating in the governor’s office over it. The campaign hasn’t started, ads haven’t run (at least, none that I’ve heard), most positions haven’t been staked out. Given a choice between Scott Walker and the mystery box, half of Wisconsinites choose the mystery box. Since she’s unknown, that half isn’t so much pro-Burke as anti-Walker.  Some of those going with Walker right now have to be persuadable — it’s just playing the odds — and Walker can’t manage the majority it would take to win a two-person race.

None of which is to say that Walker is headed toward a certain loss, but he should have all the advantages and the polling shows he has none — or if he does, that they’re statistically insignificant. If this latest John Doe probe starts to rock the governor’s boat, he could find himself swamped.

[photo via Burke for Wisconsin]