Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke released a television spot on Friday that blasted Gov. Scott Walker and his allies for using "sleaze politics."
The spot includes an image of swastika that the spot says was posted to the Facebook page of Gary Ellerman, a Walker supporter and chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Party,
the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.
Responding to Ellerman's claim this week that Burke was fired from her family business, Trek Bicycle Corp., in 1993, the ad pictures Walker and Ellerman together.
It then cuts to images from Ellerman's Facebook page linking President Barack Obama's "hope and change" 2008 campaign slogan to a swastika.
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"That's what you'd expect from a politician under investigation for illegal campaign activities," a narrator says, charging that Ellerman's claims about Burke are false.
They were featured in a spot sponsored by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's largest lobbying group, the Journal-Sentinel reports.
A Walker spokeswoman slammed the Burke ad.
"This is a pathetic attack at the end of Mary Burke's flailing campaign," Walker spokeswoman Alleigh Marre told the Journal-Sentinel. "As Burke stoops to a new low with her vile attacks, Governor Walker is traveling the state sharing his positive vision for a second term."
Ellerman was fired from his job as Trek's human resources director in 2004, company spokeswoman Marina Marich
told the newspaper.
He was fired for poor performance, Marich said, and characterized his attacks on Burke as a "last-minute attempt to disparage Mary's contributions" to the company.
"Mr. Ellerman was fired from Trek in 2004," Marich said. "His politically motivated characterizations of Mary and her tenure at Trek are inaccurate."
The dust-up comes as a Marquette University Law School
poll showed Walker seven points ahead of Burke and as
Republicans pump millions into the governor's campaign in an 11th-hour effort to keep him in the Statehouse.
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