Mary Burke is pitching herself as a non-ideological antidote to Walker. The woman who could beat Walker

Part of an occasional series on the hottest races of the 2014 midterm election.

VIROQUA, Wis. — Mary Burke might be the last candidate you’d expect to potentially topple one of the Republican Party’s leading governors and upend the 2016 presidential field. The only elected office she’s ever held is a school board seat. She didn’t even become a Democrat until her 40s. And in heavily working class Wisconsin, it was only two years ago that the scion to the Trek Bicycle fortune was being dismissed by her own party as a “1 percenter.”


Yet here she is, tied with Walker in the polls, finally getting some overdue attention from the national press — and within striking distance of delivering the biggest shock of Election 2014. And on Tuesday night, she cruised to victory in her primary for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Wisconsin.

In a reflection of how competitive this race has become, sources told POLITICO that the Republican Governors Association has reserved $2.3 million this fall in Wisconsin — making the contest one of the party’s top gubernatorial priorities.

( Also on POLITICO: What Boehner's not saying on the road)

The 55-year-old Burke could hardly be more different than Walker. She’s a Harvard-educated multimillionaire who rarely goes to church; he’s a middle-class son of a preacher who is just now trying to complete his college degree. She’s spent her career in the family business and philanthropy; he’s been in government for two decades. She’s spent much of her campaign trying to win over progressives wary of her background in finance; he became a conservative icon after beating back the unions in an epic clash two years ago.

“I knew I probably didn’t fit the typical mold,” Burke said during an interview, as her campaign bus rolled from a hops farm in Mazomanie to a brewery in Potosi. “While I have the business background, I really — how should I say this? — I prefer the work in the public sector.”

Burke is pitching herself as a nonideological antidote to the rancor and polarization of the Walker years. She introduces herself as “a fiscal conservative” and promises to work with the Republican-controlled Legislature. Though she talks around it on the trail, she would not, for instance, work to fully repeal the union-weakening law that has defined Walker’s tenure.

Burke’s bet is twofold: First, that liberals despise Walker enough to mobilize for her in spite of her pro-business profile. Second, that her corporate bona fides will attract a critical mass of moderates worried about Wisconsin’s lagging economy.

( Also on POLITICO: The most popular guy in Washington)

Walker is the first to acknowledge that his third statewide campaign in four years is no cakewalk.

“The reality is we’re much better off, we’re heading down the right path and people are feeling good about where we’re headed,” he said in an interview. But “this is historically a very, very, very politically tight state. It’s still going to be one heck of a close election.”

Welcome to the big leagues

Taking on Walker would be a daunting challenge for the most seasoned pol, let alone a candidate making the rough equivalent of a major league debut in the playoffs.

Burke has improved on the stump since she jumped into the race last year, even Walker’s team acknowledges. She hired an A-list of former Barack Obama advisers, including respected adman Jim Margolis. But while she’s become more at ease, at times her inexperience shows.

( Also on POLITICO: FLOTUS: Women 'smarter' than men)

Burke was caught off guard, for example, by a straightforward question about what she thinks of the president’s performance.

“He got us out of the deepest recession that the country has seen,” she said during an interview, “and uh, are there things I agree with him on? Absolutely. Are there things I disagree with him on? Absolutely.”

Like what?

Burke paused for 12 seconds.

“Let’s see,” she said. “You know, probably things in the foreign policy area that are … ”

She paused again. Her communications director threw her a lifeline: trade. “That’s a good one … thanks,” she said.

The Democrats’ theory of the case

“There are a million people who voted in Nov. 2012 who didn’t vote in 2010,” said Mike Tate, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “If we get 80- or 100,000 of them out, Mary Burke is going to win.”

Burke’s main task is turning out Wisconsin’s progressive coalition: union members, minorities, young people and women. So she talks a lot about her opposition to the state Constitution’s ban on gay marriage, a voter ID law she says was designed to keep black voters from the polls and a series of new restrictions on abortions.

Burke is not, however, a natural champion of the left. Before she jumped into the race, she took heat from liberal activists and bloggers over Trek’s overseas manufacturing — a line of attack Walker now uses in his ads. Her past support for charter schools made unions dubious of Burke’s 2012 bid for school board, but she’s since been a reliable vote on their issues.

“I assessed her as a 1-percenter at the time, but she’s a 1-percenter with one great conscience,” said John Matthews, who heads the Madison teachers union.

Talking business

Ultimately, the front where the race is most likely to be won or lost isn’t abortion or voting rights, or even the anti-collective bargaining law that sparked a recall attempt against Walker. It’s the economy. And Walker is vulnerable. In 2010, he promised 250,000 jobs during his first term; a little over 100,000 have been created.

Burke, leaning on her experience at Trek and a three-year stint as state commerce secretary, is telling voters she can do better.

“We’re dead last in the Midwest in job creation,” Burke says at every stop and in her most recent ad.

Burke needs to trounce Walker in urban Milwaukee and then shave a few points off the governor’s previous margin of victory in the right-leaning Green Bay, La Crosse and Wausau media markets. Fortunately for her, this is where the economic argument resonates most.

Republicans are trying to turn her main selling point into a liability, just as Obama did with Mitt Romney in 2012. The Walker campaign has unleashed a stream of ads to question economic development deals she hatched in state government and to attack Trek for making almost all of its bikes in China. Walker himself notes that Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, 7.8 percent when he took office, is now 5.7 percent.

On a recent campaign swing through the southwestern part of the state, Burke, who studied finance at Georgetown and earned an MBA from Harvard, was most animated talking shop with fellow business types. Here in Viroqua, a town of 5,000, she visited a plant that technology giant NCR shuttered five years ago which locals are trying to redevelop.

Burke chatted with a woman making organic soap and guys brewing no-preservatives soda, telling them about the time in her 20s when she launched a startup called “Manhattan Intelligence.” It was a pre-Internet Yelp, where subscribers could call an operator with a question about where to find something in New York.

“We ran out of capital before we could make a go of it,” said Burke, who also worked briefly for the consultancy McKinsey.

With the startup fizzling, Burke’s late father, Trek co-founder Richard Burke, sent her in 1990 to build out the bike giant’s European operations. In 1993, she went on a yearlong sabbatical — reportedly to snowboard in Argentina and Colorado — before returning to Trek for another decade. In 2004, she left the company again, retiring at age 45 to focus on philanthropy. As chair of the Boys & Girls Club of Dane County, she raised millions for new facilities.

Burke, who is single and lives with her two beloved yellow labs, said she “grew up like most women, who thought I’d get married and have kids. Sometimes life just doesn’t turn out the way you think it’s going to turn out.”

Based on tax records, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel calculated that Burke’s adjusted gross income was at least $6.8 million from 2008 to 2012.

Burke on the stump

For all intents and purposes, this is Burke’s first real campaign. Her win in the 2012 Madison School Board race was largely a product of money — she spent $128,631, an unheard-of sum for a school board election — but no one’s under any illusion she can spend her way to the governor’s office.

Burke seeded her campaign $430,000 after she got into this race last October. She has contributed no more since then, but raised about $6 million in her own right. She is committed to doing more but won’t say how much. “What I put in will be a fraction of what’s necessary, and I can’t self-fund,” she said.

Campaign finance reports filed this week show Walker has $7.1 million cash on hand to Burke’s $1.7 million.

Walker’s future

The 46-year-old governor and his team exude confidence that they will ultimately prevail, if only narrowly. Knowing they’d face another tough fight, the party maintained a robust field organization after the recall attempt.

Walker is likely to start running for president almost the minute he were to win reelection, and he’s seen as one of the few 2016 GOP hopefuls who could win over the tea party and donor class. He will not pledge to serve out a second term, a potential liability in the election that Burke has not, at least so far, made an issue of.

“If people look at this objectively, the reason you all talk about it in the media isn’t because I’ve given some great speech or some YouTube video or anything else like that,” he said. “It’s because of what we accomplished in Wisconsin.”

In the interview, Walker jabbed his opponent as “Madison School Board member Mary Burke” and tried to tie her to his still-unpopular predecessor, ex-Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle.

Walker said he wants voters to ask themselves the “time-honored question” in deciding whether to reelect someone: “Are you better better off today than you were four years ago? Overwhelmingly, across the state, the answer is yes.”

CORRECTION: An earlier graphic attached to this story incorrectly stated where Mary Burke had previously worked. The graphic has been corrected.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Dianna Heitz @ 08/13/2014 10:12 AM CORRECTION: An earlier graphic attached to this story incorrectly stated where Mary Burke had previously worked. The graphic has been corrected.