Since being elected governor of Wisconsin in 2011, Scott Walker has been on the Executive Committee of the Republicans Governors Association (RGA), including serving as its chair up until November of last year.

During Walker’s time as chair, the group broke fundraising records and infamously created the “news” site called The Free Telegraph, which the AP described as “an online publication that looks like a media outlet and is branded as such on social media,” while “bearing no acknowledgement that it was a product of an official party committee whose sole purpose is to get more Republicans elected.”

Fake news! (Literally.)

From this same high-minded group is coming unrelenting attacks on Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. The group has produced ads focused not on her political positions, but showcasing “a history of alluding to her personal debt of some $225,000 on credit cards and for student loans and deferred federal taxes that she is paying off on an installment plan.

As Michelle Bachmann would say, that takes a lot of chootz-pa.

The RGA has run five different ads focused on this “serious issue,” including one that attacks Abrams for loaning her campaign $50,000, and making hay out of Abrams making a million dollars over a five year period but not paying off her debts, especially the tax burden.

No one is going to argue that owing back taxes isn’t a political vulnerability, but it’s hard to take coming from the same party led by a guy who has declared bankruptcy six times, and once said paying zero taxes for many years “makes me smart.” As Michelle Bachmann would say, that takes a lot of chootz-pa.

Apparently negotiating a tax payment plan with the IRS in order to manage “family needs,” as she explains it, makes her “fiscally irresponsible” and is an example of her “poor judgement” and “blind ambition,” according to the RGA.

Conservative columnist Emily Jashinsky’s selective outrage goes further: she states, “it’s one thing to go $227,000 into debt . . . it’s another thing to then ask the public to entrust you with important financial decisions for a state.”

While we’re not exactly sure of Trump’s personal finances—because, unlike Abrams, he refuses to release his tax returns, we do know a great deal about RGA’s own Scott Walker.

With a fat book deal, getting free room and board in the governor’s mansion, and an annual six figure salary, Walker arguably shouldn’t have “alarming issues” involving personal finances either, but his wallet has been a dumpster fire for years.

According to the last financial disclosure reviewed by The Progressive, for seven consecutive years Walker has been juggling high-interest credit card debt (between $5,000 and $50,000), student loan debt over $50,000, and personal loans with Securant and Think Bank in the range of $5,000 to $50,000.

In other words, about the same income level and personal finance problems as Stacey Abrams.

At least Abrams has the reasonable explanation of covering her father’s cancer treatments and caring for her orphaned niece. The only explanation Walker has ever offered involved spending a bit more on Christmas gifts.

And this brings up an important footnote: Unlike Abrams, Walker has made his management of personal finances the foundation of every single campaign he’s ever run. Walker has bragged about his frugality while driving around in a high-mileage Saturn, and eating brown bag lunches while reciting his principle, “don't spend more than you have.”

Walker arguably shouldn’t have “alarming issues” involving personal finances either, but his wallet has been a dumpster fire for years.

The hypocrisy gets deeper. It’s true that Abrams has more debt than most candidates, but she’s never been accused of being a deadbeat. Her opponent Brian Kemp, on the other hand, is literally in court right now, dragged there by a (former) friend who lent him $500,000 and then grew weary of Kemp blowing through extension after extension. When Kemp stopped making payments on even the interest, the ex-friend initiated court proceedings last spring.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution also reports that Kemp has promised to cover about $10 million in loans for an agricultural business in which he’s invested—meaning that “if the company defaults, he could be forced to make good on debts that far exceed his net worth of $5.2 million.”

The kicker to that story is that in 2014, Kemp’s company got a $475,000 check from the taxpayers to open up a canola oil processing plant in Kentucky, but because they failed to pay farmers $2.5 million for the canola crop they bought in 2016, their license to buy canola was rescinded and the plant has sat idle since 2017.

Believe it or not, this same guy has called Abrams’s decision to loan her campaign money while she still owed taxes “criminal,” has not paid back the state of Kentucky or the farmers.

Now that, is indeed an alarming issue involving personal finances.