Both papers endorsed Walker for governor in the 2010 campaign and the Journal Sentinel endorsed Walker again in the recall elections in 2012.
Noting that the emails, “tie Walker closer to the secret email system than ever before,” and show how Walker’s campaign and official staffers coordinated routinely on optimizing political response to things like the tragedy at O’Donnell Park that resulted in the death of a 15 year old boy and serious problems at the County’s Mental Health Complex, the Journal Sentinel editorialized that, “Gov. Scott Walker needs to talk. He should hold a news conference to explain how much he knew about a secret email system as Milwaukee County executive. And he needs to let reporters ask as many questions as they want.”
The Wisconsin State Journal pulled no punches either in asking the questions, “Did you know, Governor Walker, that your staff was breaking the law? How will your public and private staffs interact in the future? How will taxpayers know that their public employees won’t be misused as private campaign soldiers this fall?”
The State Journal also noted that Walker’s county staff, “exchanged thousands of emails during normal business hours with his top campaign people. And they did so over and over again using private — rather than county — email accounts. They even installed a secret Internet router and hid private laptops. So they knew what they were doing was wrong.”
Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial here.
Read the Wisconsin State Journal editorial here.
