Yet another Democratic gubernatorial candidate, South Dakota’s Susan Wismer, appears to have plagiarized policy prescriptions from fellow Democrats — among them, ironically, Mary Burke, Wisconsin’s Democratic candidate for governor, who lifted large chunks of her own campaign material from others.

According to BuzzFeed, Wismer took from Texas Democrat Wendy Davis and from Burke lines about education, economic investment, government transparency, and health-care policy. She even grabbed a biographical line from Burke:

Here’s Mary Burke on fiscal responsibility, citing her own biography: She knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. Scott Walker has taken a different approach. Despite making historic cuts to education, he’s turned a projected budget surplus into a deficit, and state spending has shot up by $4.6 billion. And here’s Wismer substituting her name for Burke’s: As an accountant, Susan knows how to make responsible decisions that keep a balance sheet in the black while creating jobs because she’s spent her career doing it. This governor has taken a different approach. After making historic cuts, he took a $127 million dollar budget surplus and padded his reserves rather than giving back what was cut to areas desperate for funding.


Asked about the incident this week, Wismer said: “This isn’t academia. This is politics. We all do what we can to save time.”