Kleefisch got her start as a local TV news anchor and later became a conservative radio contributor, and she sought office for the first time in 2010. In Wisconsin candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run in separate primaries before campaigning as a ticket in the general election, and she earned her spot as Scott Walker’s running mate by decisively beating four opponents.
That was unwelcome news for Walker’s team, though. Years later, an investigation into Walker would publicize messages that included his top aide calling Kleefisch ”radioactive and not worth the time,” while other members of his inner circle also mocked his running mate. Kleefisch herself ended up apologizing during that campaign for saying of same-sex domestic partnerships, “This is a slippery slope in addition to that—at what point are we going to OK marrying inanimate objects? Can I marry this table, or this, you know, clock? Can we marry dogs?” All of that didn’t matter much in that wave year, though, and the Walker-Kleefisch ticket swept to victory in the fall.
Each member of the duo was targeted in 2012 recall campaigns, which required them to run in separate races: Kleefisch won 53-47, which was similar to the governor’s performance. The two Republicans, who reportedly became close despite the initial aggression from Walker’s camp, then went on to win as a ticket again during the 2014 GOP wave. Kleefisch soon played a role in Walker’s drive to bring the electronics manufacturing giant Foxconn to Wisconsin in 2017, a project that attracted massive skepticism from the very start and never came close to generating the jobs and revenue the Walker administration touted.
Kleefisch was once again Walker’s running mate in 2018 as they sought a third term, but this time, they faced a hostile political climate. Kleefisch herself again earned herself negative attention when she falsely claimed that Democratic foe Mandela Barnes, who would be Wisconsin’s first Black lieutenant governor, had knelt during the national anthem. “I was looking at the flag and not my opponent,” Kleefisch later said, adding, “And I was told later that he kneeled briefly and I repeated what someone else told me. And he has said that he didn’t do it and I have to believe him and I have to apologize for repeating something I was told.” Barnes responded, “It’s not necessarily apologizing to me—it’s apologizing because you got caught.”
The Evers-Barnes ticket ousted Walker and Kleefisch 50-48, and chatter quickly began that the now-former lieutenant governor would run in her own right four years later. Walker himself encouraged the speculation, saying in 2019 that, while he wouldn’t run again, Kleefisch “would be a hell of a great governor if she was elected.”
Kleefisch herself used her Thursday announcement to link herself closer to Donald Trump than to her old boss. “There are people who said it could not be done, but instead Donald Trump became one of the most successful policy presidents of our time, presiding over the best economy in American history,” said Kleefisch, who also went after Evers’ public health measurers and accused the governor of “siding with rioters.”