Busy day in the campaign for governor of Wisconsin
MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- It was a busy day in the campaign for governor with several story lines colliding in Milwaukee -- along with the candidates.
Gov. Scott Walker spoke with reporters just as news was breaking out of Federal Appeals Court -- that an injunction halting the John Doe case has been lifted. But Walker cautioned that little had changed -- because the John Doe investigation is still stopped on a state level.
"The bottom line is they should know. Late last year, a well-respected court of appeals judge, someone who has no political connections to me or anyone that I'm aware of or to my party, made it clear that he didn't think it was a sufficient case to go forward. And that's where it sits," said Gov. Walker
The news from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals comes less than six weeks until the election -- and on a day when both Gov. Walker and his Democratic challenger Mary Burke campaign about a mile apart in Milwaukee.
Gov. Walker talks about his record of helping military veterans -- while Burke detailed her jobs plan to a group of women in business.
Much of the recent fighting has been over that jobs plan -- and revelations that Burke plagiarized sections word-for-word from other documents.
"I've put hundreds of hours into this plan, so it's definitely my plan, but it certainly draws on good ideas from across the country," said Burke.
"If you spent hundreds of hours on it, then you should probably have an idea of where it came from," said Gov. Walker.
The jobs plan is about jobs creation -- and Burke is making the case that job creation lagged during Walker's tenure at the Capitol.
"We're dead last in the Midwest in terms of job growth under Gov. Walker and the latest jobs report shows we lost 4,300 jobs in August. We need more good ideas," said Burke.
"Unemployment is 5.6 percent. It's the lowest it's been in nearly six years," said Walker.
Knowing that the economy is the issue voters care about most, Burke asserted that Wisconsin is under-performing.
"If our state economy in Wisconsin had grown at just the national average over the last three years while Gov. Walker is in office, our state's economy would be $4 billion a year bigger. 4 billion," said Burke.
"And if the state's economy had grown under the rate that Mary Burke saw it grow when she was Secretary of Commerce, we'd have about half as many jobs as we do today. So the bottom line is, you've got someone talking potshots, kind of like throwing a rock at a glass house," said Walker.
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