By Scott Conroy - June 26, 2014

MARINETTE, Wis. -- Mary Burke spends just about every waking hour these days focused on trying to become governor, but the Wisconsin Democrat admits to harboring a secondary goal as she campaigns around the state.

The former business executive and state commerce secretary is running neck-and-neck with Republican Gov. Scott Walker. And if she is able to beat him in November, Burke could end the ambitious first-term governor’s likely 2016 presidential campaign before it even begins.

“What we have seen here in the last 3½ years in Wisconsin under Scott Walker is the Tea Party agenda,” Burke told RealClearPolitics in an interview this week. “And I would be happy to save the rest of the country from what we have seen here.”

Though Walker currently polls nears the back of the likely GOP presidential pack, Republican strategists have long eyed him as a leading contender, believing that his staunchly conservative record and proven ability to win in a Democratic-leaning state would make him appealing to Tea Party and establishment Republicans alike.

Walker, however, has far more immediate concerns to occupy his attention, and the serious opposition Burke is putting up against him isn’t the only one.

Primarily, there is an ongoing campaign finance probe, in which local prosecutors have accused the governor of being at the center of a “criminal scheme” to coordinate fundraising efforts with outside groups during his 2010 and 2012 campaigns. The controversy picked up steam last week when court documents were unsealed.

No one has been charged in the investigation, which Walker has dismissed as a partisan witch hunt.

Burke at first responded mildly to the most recent developments, saying only that the prosecutor’s allegations were “disappointing.” But during an interview Monday in this northern Wisconsin city of 11,000, Burke went further, suggesting that the case could have a big impact on the race.

“I believe really strongly the investigation needs to play out, and Gov. Walker’s stance that somehow this is a done deal couldn’t be further from the truth,” she said. “They’re very serious criminal allegations.”

Surprisingly, the race has not yet developed the national scrutiny that other marquee midterm matchups -- such as the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky -- have generated.

But on the ground here, there is a deep understanding that the outcome of this campaign will carry major long-term consequences, not just for Wisconsin but perhaps the entire country.

And both sides are pulling out all the stops.

Burke’s interview with RCP originally was scheduled to take place at a coffee shop in downtown Marinette, but when word spread that a young tracker working for the state Republican Party had caught wind of the venue, the challenger’s campaign changed the location at the last minute to a supporter’s home.

There, perched on a couch inside an enclosed patio, Burke ticked off the core components of her jobs plan, using catch-all phrases like “clusters of opportunity” and “workforce development” that evoked her background as an executive at the Trek Bicycle Corp., which her father founded in 1976.

Asked to elucidate what she meant when she recently described herself as a “fiscal conservative” last month, Burke did not back off of that characterization, an atypical one for a Wisconsin Democrat.

“I don’t think we should spend a dollar, unless a dollar needs to be spent,” she said. “I think we should look at what that payoff is. We have to especially, as public officials, be accountable to the taxpayer. I don’t believe that throwing money at things solves issues.”

Burke’s reputation as a clearheaded businessperson is a central element of her appeal, and it was clear when spending the day with her that she is more comfortable engaging in quiet discourse than throwing rhetorical punches at her opponent.

And though unflinchingly amiable, she stays doggedly on message.

During a tour of a business incubator in Green Bay earlier on Monday, the 55-year old candidate twice mentioned that she started her own company when she was still in her 20s -- a resume bullet point that she recited a third time during the subsequent interview.

She did not, however, mention that the enterprise, an insider’s guide to New York called Manhattan Intelligence, eventually failed -- “a huge blow to my ego,” as she once recalled.

Despite her willingness to pour more salt into Walker’s wounds over the campaign finance probe than she initially was, Burke is campaigning under the assumption that the whiff of scandal is not her opponent’s biggest vulnerability.

Burke sees her path to victory as running through the living rooms of Wisconsin, not its courtrooms. And Wisconsin employment statistics provide much of the ammunition for her argument.

Walker has fallen far short of delivering on his ambitious 2010 campaign promise to bring 250,000 private-sector jobs to Wisconsin, and the state has lagged behind both the national average and its Midwestern neighbors in overall job growth.

“I’m running because I’m deeply concerned about the direction this state is headed,” Burke said.

Walker argues that it is better off now than when he took office, noting that the unemployment rate has dropped from 7.8 percent to 5.7 percent -- the lowest it’s been since 2008.

With his own favorability rating slightly underwater and Burke still largely undefined across the electorate, the incumbent is aiming to turn the race into a choice rather than a referendum on his performance.

"The only time in the last 25 years that Wisconsin's unemployment rate was higher than the national average was when Mary Burke was [Gov. Jim] Doyle's top jobs official, and Wisconsin ranked 42nd in the nation in job creation during Burke's time in the Doyle Administration,” Walker spokesperson Alleigh Marre said in a statement.

The governor’s allies have also sought to portray Burke as an out-of-touch plutocrat, who was a top official in a company that conducts most of its manufacturing in China.

An anti-Burke website operated by the Republican Party of Wisconsin sounds more like something out of the Occupy Wall Street movement: It pegs Burke as a “definitive one-percenter” who worked for McKinsey & Company—“a global consulting firm known for its outsourcing expertise.”

In this strange twist of political fate, Walker’s allies are seeking to replicate the strategic playbook that President Obama’s campaign ran against Mitt Romney in 2012.

But Burke may not be so easy to turn into caricature, even if her background is in many respects atypical.

A graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Business School, she never married and has no children.

“Like a lot of kids, I thought I’d grow up and be married,” she said in a March interview. “Life doesn’t always turn out like you expect it.”