Mary Burke introduces President Barack Obama at a campaign event in Milwaukee Tuesday. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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Two former high-level executives of Trek Bicycle claim that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke was forced out as head of European operations for her family's business 21 years ago — an allegation that Burke and the company denied, labeling it a last-minute smear campaign.

"I'm not saying she was incompetent," said Tom Albers, former Trek chief operating officer who left the company in 1997. "Maybe this job was too big for her."

Update | Daniel Bice: Democrats pounce on Burke critic's extreme Facebook posts

Burke and Trek Bicycle called the claims outrageous, pointing out that the statements are being made by former Trek employees who had to leave the company, are both conservative and are airing them just six days out from Tuesday's tight election.

Burke said it was "the kind of smear that has gone on since the start of this campaign."

Steve Lindenau, who was managing director of Trek's German office during Burke's tenure in Europe, said he did not think Burke was fired.

"I think given her work intensity, she would put in super long hours," said Lindenau, who is now chief executive of Easy Motion Electric Bikes-BH Bicycles. "She was on a very aggressive growth pattern for Europe. It's a family-run business. Maybe she just got burned out and needed a break."

Lindenau has contribued about $40 to Burke.

The Democrat has staked her candidacy in the race against GOP Gov. Scott Walker on her experience as a former Trek executive who helped the company expand its European sales and become a global powerhouse.

"Mary is a good person. Mary spent 55 years building up her reputation," said John Burke, brother of the candidate and CEO of Trek. "All the sudden you get this character assassination."

Albers said in an interview Wednesday that he was sent to Europe by Richard Burke, the company founder and Mary Burke's father, to look into problems with the European sales expansion that Mary Burke had been entrusted to head up in the early 1990s.

Albers said John Burke had concerns that his sister was not working out as the point person on the difficult job of switching from outside distributors of Trek bikes in Europe to a company sales force that spanned different countries, cultures and languages.

"I came back and pretty much reinforced what John Burke had told (Richard Burke) that this wasn't working, and a change had to be made and a change was made," Albers said. "I felt she was under water and it was going to be very difficult to turn it around."

John Burke disputed the point, saying he never expressed concerns about his sister's work at Trek. "Mary did an awesome job in Europe," he said of her stint there from 1990-'93.

Mary Burke said she was not forced out of Trek.

"The truth is that after getting five additional offices up and running and managing seven operations, we decided to restructure and there was no need for my position and two of the people reporting to me could directly report to people in the United States," she said. "I was part of that decision to restructure and did that and then decided to leave."

She left the company in June 1993, taking a two-year break to snowboard, travel and work for a bicycle trade group. John Burke said he asked his sister to return to Trek in 1995.

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.

Albers left Trek in 1997 to make room for John Burke to take his place, which he described as a "mutual decision" with Richard Burke. He ended up becoming the top executive at a competitor, Specialized Bicycles, which Albers said led to friction with the Burke family.

In a statement, Trek spokeswoman Marina Marich said that Ellerman was fired from Trek for poor performance and characterized his criticism as a "last-minute attempt to disparage Mary's contributions" to the company.

"Mr. Ellerman was fired from Trek in 2004. His politically motivated characterizations of Mary and her tenure at Trek are inaccurate," Marich said.

Ellerman has not responded to phone calls and emails from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel requesting that he tell his story. In a radio interview Wednesday with conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna, Ellerman said that Burke did a poor job in Europe in the early 1990s — a contrast to how Burke and Trek have presented that period.

"(Burke) is and this is an opinion, OK, she's not as smart as her paper would say. She didn't understand how the bike business — and how bikes are sold, particularly in foreign countries. So to be in charge of that process is a recipe for disaster, and that's exactly what happened," Ellerman said.

John Burke had distinctly different assessments of the two former Trek executives.

Ellerman, he said, was incompetent, so the company fired him in 2004. He said Ellerman's version of events in the Wisconsin Reporter story is loaded with fiction.

By contrast, Albers contributed much to the company, John Burke said. He said it would not be fair to say Albers was fired. Instead, Albers' exit was the result of a decision that "my father and he worked out."

John Burke included praise of his sister in his 2012 book about his father and the company.

"Mary worked tirelessly and made an amazing difference in Global Forecasting," John Burke said Wednesday, referring to his sister's later job in strategic planning. "We had some difficult years in the late '90s, and the changes that Mary implemented are one of the key reasons Trek is the successful company it is today."

Mary Burke also served as commerce secretary under Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle from 2005 to 2007. Her predecessor in that role, Cory Nettles, has said that Burke's no-nonsense style upset some in the business community.

"She was very, very tough," Nettles said recently. "People take umbrage at that."

In a September 2006 email that first surfaced two weeks ago, Nettles expressed a far harsher opinion of Burke.

"She's a disaster," Nettles wrote at the time to another political appointee who was still working under Burke at the state Department of Commerce.

Nettles recently said the note does not represent his current view of Burke's two-plus years running the commerce agency.

John Burke said that his sister has a very direct management style.

"I would agree with blunt and to the point," he said of her. "I would add in there that Mary gets stuff done."

Mary Burke has previously said that she left the company in 1993 on her own accord because of burnout and that she returned in 1995 to take the strategic planning and forecasting job.

Albers said that he spoke with Mary Burke when he visited Europe and could see why the challenges of the job might have left her frustrated or burned out.

"From my standpoint, there was some truth to that," he said, citing the difficulties. "But I think there was more to it."

Trek's European operations were losing money, and there were many people problems there because of Burke's "my way or the highway" approach to managing personnel, Albers said. At the same time, Albers repeatedly emphasized that Burke faced an unusually difficult job in having subordinates in different countries with different backgrounds from her own.

Albers said that in his understanding Burke "was fired," but noted he did not know how the decision was discussed within the Burke family.

Albers said he had resolved to answer questions if asked about Mary Burke but not to volunteer them himself. He said he was concerned that he would face criticism and attempts to discredit him and repeatedly said that he respected Trek as a company and was concerned about appearing to detract from it.

Mary Burke has faced difficulties in her campaign, including criticism over her jobs plan containing passages that had been lifted nearly verbatim from earlier proposals published by three Democratic candidates who ran for governor elsewhere. Following that flap, Burke severed ties with a consultant to her campaign who worked on her jobs plan and those for the other candidates.