Democrat Mary Burke released a brutal new attack ad targeting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker on Wednesday, hammering him for failing to deliver on his promises to create jobs.
The 30-second spot, titled “Absolutely,” quotes Walker’s campaign pledge to create 250,000 new jobs during his first term in office, and his insistence that he wanted to be held to it as a campaign promise.
It hasn’t worked out. Wisconsin lags behind the rest of the nation in job creation, and as of late June, Walker had only hit about 40 percent of his goal.
“Broken promises, dead last in jobs…Scott Walker’s not working for you,” the ad concludes.
The ad suggests that Burke’s case against Walker will focus on his underwhelming economic record, not his anti-labor actions or alleged campaign finance violations.
Ironically, the race between Burke and Walker has begun to resemble an inverse of the 2012 presidential campaign. Burke, a wealthy businesswoman, is attacking the incumbent for failing to create jobs (and her ad’s closing salvo — “Walker’s not working for you” — calls Mitt Romney’s “Obama isn’t working” slogan immediately to mind). Meanwhile, Republicans have been taking a populist tone to criticize Burke as an out-of-touch millionaire whose company outsourced jobs (although Walker himself has begun to back away from the charges).
In 2012, President Obama used the recovering economy to blunt the effectiveness of Romney’s attacks. Walker may need a similar economic boost to hold off Burke; he leads by just over 2 percent in The Huffington Post’spoll average.
Screenshot: Mary Burke for Wisconsin/YouTube
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