Tony Evers has been elected to statewide office in Wisconsin several times and has a long relationship with Wisconsin voters that could blunt the effect of Scott Walker’s attack. | Scott Bauer/AP photo elections Scott Walker accuses opponent of plagiarism

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker accused Democratic challenger Tony Evers on Friday of plagiarizing parts of an education budget plan that Evers submitted as state schools chief, just hours before Walker and Evers clash in their first debate in the hotly contested race.

Four passages in the budget document released last month by Evers — and shared with POLITICO by the Walker campaign — were taken from other sources without any attribution, the Department of Public Instruction acknowledged in a statement. Evers told POLITICO that the lack of citations for the material shouldn’t distract from his “proactive, positive vision” for Wisconsin students, and agency procedures will be changed to prevent a recurrence.


A spokesman for Evers’ agency, Thomas McCarthy, said the lack of attribution was the result of “an oversight by staff when drafting the paper.”

The four pieces of text lifted from other sources cover summer learning loss, workforce experiences for youth, early childhood education and after-school programs. They are not specific to Wisconsin and don’t involve budget numbers or projections.

Walker’s campaign argued that Evers’ primary job as the state’s top elected schools official is preparing an education budget and the final product contains “stolen ideas.” The Republican governor is vying for a third term and some recent polls have shown him trailing Evers less than three weeks out from Election Day.

The accusation is an echo of Walker’s 2014 reelection battle, when his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, also faced a plagiarism scandal, that one over her jobs plan. But while Burke was a first-time candidate, Evers has been elected to statewide office several times and has a longer relationship with Wisconsin voters that could blunt the effect of Walker’s attack.

“The plagiarism charge will disrupt the Evers campaign but it is not likely to have much impact on how voters view the candidates,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“Four years ago there was a similar charge about Walker's opponent plagiarizing part of an economic plan,” he said. “It was a modest distraction that took Burke off her message for a day or two” as she struggled to establish her identity and credibility with voters, he said.

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As head of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, Evers, first elected in 2009, is charged with drafting a budget proposal that is folded into the governor’s overall state budget plan. Evers released his most recent budget on Sept. 16.

The largest example of text taken from another source without attribution examines summer learning loss. Fifteen paragraphs of Evers’ document is nearly identical to a 2016 blog post written by an intern for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative education think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Fordham Institute President Michael Petrilli said he wasn’t aware that the blog post had been used by the Wisconsin education agency. While it’s “sloppy” work on the part of the state agency, “we always want our material to be useful to policymakers!” Petrilli quipped.

“The document should have used proper citations,” Evers said in a statement. “That should not distract from the proactive, positive vision we put forth that invests $1.4 billion more in Wisconsin kids. I have high expectations for my team and have directed them to revise our citation protocol to prevent this from happening going forward.”

Scott Walker's campaign found the allegedly plagiarized paragraphs while scrubbing the Evers campaign with plagiarism detection software. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Walker’s campaign found the examples while scrubbing the Evers campaign with plagiarism detection software.

“Tony Evers has staked his entire campaign on ‘what's best for our kids’ but when it comes to the most important action he takes in his current job — preparing an education budget — he's not only peddling empty promises but also stolen ideas,” spokesman Brian Reisinger said in a statement.

“An educator would know the consequences of plagiarism, and this is damning proof that he's a Madison bureaucrat who will always take the easy way out instead of providing the kind of leadership needed to stand up for hard-working families,” he said.

The second-largest passage of text in Evers’ budget used without attribution is on workforce opportunities for youth, originally in a 2011 brief published by the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth. The organization receives federal funding from the U.S. Department of Labor to provide assistance to states. It is managed by the Institute for Educational Leadership, a think tank.

IEL President Johan Uvin said he would’ve preferred some attribution “in an ideal world,” but he’s pleased that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction took advantage of his group’s resources.

Two other briefer passages in Evers’ budget mirror a short Wikipedia paragraph on early childhood education and a description of a study on after-school programs published in a 2008 brief by the nonprofit Afterschool Alliance.

The accusations of plagiarism by Walker’s campaign erupting the same day as the first debate drew derision from Dan Kanninen, a Democratic strategist who served as Wisconsin state director for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Kanninen argued that the scope of the charge and timing showed “how squeaky clean Evers really is and what an anti-politician that he is. That’s the best they can dig up?”

Kanninen said the accusation demonstrates the “desperation of the Walker campaign. They can’t run on the record or on the issues. They can’t motivate their base. They’re not clearly resonating with swing voters who are leaving them right now and they’re left with what is a pretty blatant attempt to pick up some kind of buzz when there’s really nothing there.”

When Walker ran for reelection in 2014 his political prospects were buoyed after news came out that part of Burke’s jobs plan seemed to have been plagiarized from three Democratic candidates for governor around the country. Burke eventually fired a campaign consultant in response to the report. She lost by about 6 percentage points.

Walker himself has warned that Wisconsin is susceptible to a Democratic wave this cycle that could sweep him and other Republicans across the state out of office. Republican veteran strategists in the state said that in the best case scenario, Walker is unlikely to win by a landslide.

“Scott Walker is never going to win by 5. It’s not going to happen. But I think Scott is going to win,” Republican consultant Josh Robinson, who has consulted on multiple races in the state, said.

“I think Scott is a known commodity. I think the undecideds are only a few percentage points. And it’s going to go back and forth like it always does. But I think people in Wisconsin know the jobs are better, incomes are better, and Scott has done a decent job as a governor and has got Wisconsin back on the right path and I think they’re going to vote for him but it’s tough. But I don’t think Evers has made the case that he could do a good job at all.”

The debate, sponsored by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association, is set for 9 p.m. ET.