Following the lead of Wisconsin’s two largest newspapers, the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and the Beloit Daily Herald take Scott Walker to task on the revelations from 27,000 pages of emails related to the first criminal investigation into Walker’s campaigns and administrations.
The Beloit Daily News, the paper that endorsed Scott Walker in 2010 and 2012, joined a growing chorus calling for Scott Walker to come clean about his role in the criminal investigation and answer questions about his violation of the public trust.
The editorial board writes “Two and two is still four. It’s doubtful many people can stretch their imaginations far enough to believe Walker was unaware of a shadow political operation going on in his county executive office, on a secret system designed to evade the law, run by his own taxpayer-paid employees.” And concludes with “Scott Walker owes explanations to the people of Wisconsin. He should make himself available to answer questions — as many as there are for as long as it takes — as soon as possible.”
The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram editorial board ripped into Walker’s closest and most trusted aides for the “lapse of judgment or just plain stupidity” shown in the now infamous racist, homophobic, sexist, and anti-Semitic emails Walker’s staff sent one another. The board writes “now revelations that some of [Walker’s] inner circle are racists are laid bare.”
The Leader-Telegram refers to instances where Rindfliesch responds “That is hilarious. And so true!” to an email where the sender comments their dogs qualify for welfare because they are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddys are.” And when Walker’s chief of staff, Tom Nardelli, forwarded an email of what Nardelli called a “nightmare” of turning into a black, Jewish, disabled gay man.
Read the Beloit Daily News editorial here.
Read the Leader-Telegram editorial here.
