A couple of months ago I got an e-mail from an acquaintance who had studied at Marquette University at the same time as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. He and Walker ran in different circles -- plus Walker eventually dropped out without completing a degree -- but he knew who Walker was at the time. In fact, Walker was hard to miss in 1988, running (and losing) a mud-slinging campaign for student-body president his sophomore year.
The story my acquaintance told was almost hard to believe: that Walker's campaign was an ugly, personal-attack-laden affair. For student-body president, imagine! He said that when Walker didn't get the endorsement he wanted from the student newspaper, Walker sent his henchmen running around to gather and dispose of copies of the paper so it wouldn't be read.
I didn't feel comfortable writing at the time, with no corroboration or press reports. After all, how could all this have gone unrevealed during Walker's gubernatorial campaign?
Well, the story has finally been picked up by Sam Stein at HuffPo:
Scott Walker Pitted Himself Against Protesters In 1988 Marquette Student Body Election.
And there's the corroboration, in the piece that the Marquette Tribune ran after the paper-theft event, angrily un-endorsing Walker: Editorial: Revision -- Walker Unfit
Some snippets:
In our opinion, no-one who responds to opposition by distorting (if not assassinating) the character of his opponent and making pouty accusations deserves to be president of the student body....
We are also disappointed by reports of Walker's campaign personnel picking up armfuls of Tuesday's Tribune and throwing them away.
And from the HuffPo piece:
Walker never attained a degree from Marquette, but his presidential campaign left an imprint. On the eve of the election, he and his allies distributed copies of a brochure that contrasted Scott’s style of leadership with the rabble-rousing, protest-leading, vague idealism of his opponent.
“Scott knows that student protests and sit-ins are poor substitutes for effective leadership and reasoned argument,” the brochure reads. “In contrast, his opponent has publicly encouraged much demonstration and has tried to lead several ineffective protests of his own.”
The comparison between Walker’s run for student body president and his showdown with labor leaders as governor is, of course, imperfect. But there certainly appears to be a defining trait that threads the two together. Rallies and protests often draw political figures, who recognize the importance of movement association. For Walker, the inclination has been to demonize the crowds.
My acquaintance said that all this, and Walker's embarrassing defeat in the election (something on the order of 20% to 80%), made him a laughingstock on campus. They chuckled at him over drinks at the bar, referring to him as "Niedermeyer" after the hypermilitary dude in the movie Animal House. I won't even say what my source reports they called Walker's little band of followers, lest I fall afoul of Godwin's Law.
It was surely hilarious at the time.
At this point? "Hilarious" is hardly the word.