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Emails show that Gov. Scott Walker's campaign manager ghost-wrote an editorial column submitted to the Journal Sentinel in August 2010 under the name of Geri Lyday, the woman picked to take over the Mental Health Complex after the director had been demoted.

Keith Gilkes, the campaign manager, wrote Walker's staff with a copy of the column, noting, "We switched the order up a bit and warmed up the opening. It is more compassionate in the front end — we left out the $$$ on this version."

Walker was Milwaukee County executive at the time.

The column promised reforms in response to a series of sexual assaults — including of one woman who became pregnant while she was a patient at the facility. The column appeared in the newspaper on Aug. 28, 2010, under Lyday's name.

Lyday, who was also administrator of the Division of Disabilities Services, had to be talked into taking on the extra responsibilities, the emails show.

Joan Hansen, who worked as an administrator for the county's health and human services, wrote Kelly Rindfleish, Walker's deputy chief of staff, urging her or Walker to call Lyday to assure her that she would not have to really do the work because that would be done by Jim Kubicek, then deputy director of behavioral health.

"I absolutely assured her that Kubicek would really be doing the work and that Scott didn't want Jim to have to be dragged through the mud in the press, etc. etc.," Hansen wrote. "She got all that, but I can tell she's hesitant in terms of even more work. I told her I'd do whatever was needed (obviously). So maybe a reassurance that she's not really doing it would be good."