This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

He is the Republican governor whose presidential aspirations have been punctured by a scandal that won’t go away. His response: fire his close aides, claim he knew nothing about improper behaviour and distance himself from an incriminating trove of emails.

The man in question is not New Jersey’s Chris Christie, but Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who many senior figures in the Republican party expect could replace Christie as their leading candidate for the White House in 2016.

However Walker’s prospects took a blow this week with the release of more than 27,000 emails held by his one-time deputy chief of staff, Kelly Rindfleisch.

Most embarrassingly for Walker, who faces in an uphill battle to attract minority voters in any presidential campaign, are a clutch of racist emails shared between his former aides.

One, forwarded from Walker’s ex-chief of staff, Thomas Nardelli to Rindfleisch – his deputy – is a joke about an African American “negro” who discovers he is a minority in other ways. “I can handle being a black, disabled, one armed, drug-addicted Jewish homosexual,” the email says, “but please, oh dear God, don’t make me a Democrat”.

Another, sent to Rindfleisch from someone outside Walker’s staff, joked that welfare recipients were “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys [sic] are”.

“That is hilarious,” Walker’s deputy chief of staff replied. “And so true!”

The emails were discovered by American Bridge 21st Century, one of the several Democratic and liberal groups sifting through the cache of emails since they were released on Wednesday.

The emails, which date back to 2010 when Walker was Milwaukee county executive, were part of huge tranche collated in an investigation into campaign financing which closed last year. Walker was not charged with any wrongdoing – indeed, investigators said he was never the target – but the inquiry did lead to convictions of six former aides, including Rindfleisch.

Democrats have seized on the documents, emphasising the comparisons with Christie, although Wisconsin-based analysts say they are not on the same level as the so-called “Bridgegate” scandal, in which aides to the New Jersey governor are suspected of closing lanes on a bridge to hurt a political adversary.

However this is not the first time accusations of racism have been levelled at officials working for Walker, a serious problem for any Republican with presidential aspirations, when candidates need to broaden their appeal to minority voters to win swing states.

In August, Walker quickly fired Steven Krieser, the third-ranking official in his Department of Transportation, after a racist Facebook rant in which he likened illegal immigrants to “Satan”.

And in December, Walker fired his campaign’s deputy finance director, Taylor Palmisano, over racist tweets, one of which said she wanted to “choke that illegal mex”, in reference to a cleaner making noise in the library she was sitting in.

Responding to the release of the emails on Wednesday, Walker said they contained nothing new, suggesting Democrats would exaggerate their significance in the run-up to his re-election later this year.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel has been unable to obtain a comment from Walker’s office about the newly-discovered racist emails, while the governor, who is currently in Washington, seems to be to be making light of the enormous email release.

However observers say the situation could get worse for Walker – with the potential for the kind of unending trickle of disclosures that have so damaged Christie.

An ongoing inquiry, conducted by state prosecutors, relates to the campaign he ran after a recall-election, instigated by Democrats and unionists after Walker’s attack on collective bargaining rights and public sector benefits.

Walker confidently won the 2012 election but attention has now turned to whether his campaign was illegally coordinating with independent conservative groups backing Walker – a potential breach of rules.

Both controversies have been simmering for months, but are quickly gaining renewed attention since the bridge scandal engulfed Christie, diminishing his prospects as a GOP candidate but, in turn, raising the chances of a successful bid from Walker or one of the other Republican hopefuls.

In the week after the bridge scandal, several Washington-based Republican were quick to point to Walker as the new GOP governor with White House potential.

The disclosures to emerge over the last 24 hours have not proved particularly explosive, although Democrats and transparency groups are still trawling through the correspondence in search of more dirt.

In one email, Nardelli asked Walker what to do about a doctor at the county’s Behavioral Health Division was had been found to have worked in a previous life as a model for thongs. Nardelli stressed the medical doctor was “competent”, but Walker’s response was unflinching: “Get rid of the MD asap”.

• The headline of this article was amended on 21 February to correct a statement that the emails were ‘leaked’. They were released as part of an investigation.