The gubernatorial election is four weeks from yesterday.

It’s obvious what voters are voting for if they vote for Scott Walker. It’s also obvious what voters are voting for if they vote for Mary Burke — the not-Scott Walker.

And that’s about all you can say about Burke, the Club for Growth claims:

Among the more effective weapons available to any shifty office-seeker is the widespread perception that the political arts are steeped in arcane knowledge incomprehensible to voters.  Conversely, a shifty office-seeker’s nightmare is widespread realization that he (or she) is really playing a fairly simple game. We resist believing the latter: If we’re going to be fleeced, we naturally hope it will be by someone who knows more than we do.
But sometimes the only choice is to face facts and admit the office-seeker is plying a dreary and pedestrian trade, and perhaps not even proficiently. There’s no other explanation for the incredible lifespan—now nearing three weeks—of the Mary Burke plagiarism scandal.

We like our initial interpretation better all the time. The serial plagiarism is revealing far beyond Burke’s willingness to lift economic development ideas; it suggests we are at risk of being governed by a nonentity.

Appearing Sunday on Madison television, she struggled to identify a single component of her jobs plan that was a certifiable Burke original, then picked one that promptly tuned out to have been plagiarized.

And recall, she immediately fired the consultant responsible for the plan when the plagiarism story broke, but retains the plan and produced a defiant television ad saying so. If she received a contribution from someone who later turned out to be a bank robber, would she keep the money?

We argued a week ago that Burke seems strangely indifferent to the realities of her campaign, begging the question whether she’s really interested in governing. Come the debates, someone should ask whether she actually wants to be governor.

It would be interesting to hear if they ever reach the follow-up question: “Why?”

“Why” is obvious — she’s not Scott Walker.

But what would happen in Wisconsin if Burke were elected?

There is no way Republicans will not retain the state Assembly after the Nov. 4 election. It looks decreasingly likely that Democrats will even be able to take the state Senate, in which Republicans have a 17-15 majority, with one vacancy.

The word that comes to mind, of course, is “gridlock.” Mike Nichols examines the potential Gov. Burke:

The elephant in the room is the elephants in the room — the big room with the white columns, stuffed eagle and oak desks that is known as the Assembly Chamber.

There are 60 Republicans in the Assembly and only 39 Democrats. Robin Vos, the Republican Assembly speaker, thinks Republicans, if anything, might actually pick up a few seats this November. And even if they don’t, they will retain an enormous majority.

The GOP also currently controls the Senate, though by a much slimmer 17-15 margin with one vacancy — the southeastern Wisconsin seat Neal Kedzie resigned in June to take over the Motor Carrier’s Association. Democrats will not pick up Kedzie’s solidly Republican seat, and they on are track to lose the redistricted seat currently held by Democratic State Sen. John Lehman, the one-time Racine teacher who could end up as Burke’s lieutenant governor. That means Democrats will need to pick up a total of three other seats to take over the 33-seat chamber.

It’s not altogether impossible. Democrats hope to capture seats held by outgoing Sens. Mike Ellis, Dale Schultz and Joe Leibham. But it’s extremely unlikely, and even if Burke does win and Democrats prevail in the senate, the fact is she will still have to deal with a very conservative Assembly.Mary Burke’s hopes won’t rest with allies in the Legislature. They will, at least initially, rest with her veto pen. …

“I think we are unique in the scope of the governor’s authority,” says Fred Wade, a Madison attorney who has long criticized the way Wisconsin governors can use the partial-veto to “create legislation that the Legislature did not approve.”

Like other governors, Wisconsin’s chief executive has the ability to veto legislation in toto. But he — or she — also has the ability to partially veto appropriations.

Governors dating to Pat Lucey in the 1970s have used and abused this so-called “partial veto.” Jim Doyle, for instance, transferred more than $400 million from the transportation fund to schools by almost comically crossing out words and stitching together parts of different sentences.

That’s no longer possible. Voters altered the state constitution and eliminated the so-called “Vanna White” and “Frankenstein” vetoes that once allowed governors to delete letters in words or crudely stitch together parts of different sentences. But, Wade says, governors can still cross words, digits, whole sentences and commas out of appropriations bills in ways that can entirely defy legislators’ intent.

“For Mary Burke the temptation will be to do what Jim Doyle did,” says Wade. “Because he was stymied in the legislature, he used the power extensively to write legislation the Legislature did not approve but that reflected his priorities.”

Republican legislators could limit Burke’s ability to do the same by excluding purely policy matters from the budget bill. And, Vos points out, governors are not able to “veto an appropriation higher.” But, he concedes, Burke, if so inclined, would be able to stop Republicans “from cutting taxes or cutting waste.”

In the end, it would be virtually impossible to fireproof the budget bill to prevent the new governor from creatively tweaking it to suit her agenda. But chances are that any conflicts with Republicans in the budget would be over the power of the purse. …

Burke has made it clear that she would try to repeal provisions of Act 10 that “crippled the political power of public-sector unions.” She has called Act 10’s implementation of annual union elections and ban on automatic dues collections “nothing more than heavy-handed attempts to punish labor unions” and has said she would work to repeal those provisions.

Vos says he can’t see how she would accomplish that without control of the Legislature.
“I believe that she does not have the ability to do very much on Act 10,” he says.

Retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Cullen essentially agrees, telling Wisconsin Interest it is “highly unlikely” she could roll back Act 10.

Joe Zepecki, communications director for the Burke campaign, says, “There is no silver-bullet strategy” on the issue.

“It’s bringing people together and getting that done.” She would, he says, “turn down the volume a little in terms of the political back-and-forth.”

Overall, Cullen thinks Burke would “govern somewhere near the middle.” Vos, for his part, says that if she wins, “she gets to reshape state government in a way that is much more liberal.” …

What’s clear is that while Burke would have virtually no ability to push major policy initiatives without the acquiescence of Republican legislators, she could also stand in the way of Vos and fellow Republicans pursuing their own conservative agenda.

Zepecki says Burke has no doubt that she can work with people like Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald. Should she win, there will certainly be much talk of bipartisanship.

In the end, though, there wouldn’t just be a struggle for power between two political parties. There would be a broader struggle between branches of government. There are conservatives who feel too much power has already migrated from the legislative to the executive branch — and there will be an attempt to reclaim some ground.
“We will end up having a Republican legislature that will pass all kinds of bills that Mary Burke will veto,” predicts Vos. He suggests it will become much harder to reform entitlements, for instance, or keep a lid on taxes and spending and regulation.

Cullen lacks credibility on being “somewhere near the middle” given his role in the Fleeing Fourteen. Nothing Zepecki says should be believed, period.

Gridlock is the most optimistic view of Burke as governor. At no point has Burke ever during this campaign uttered one word about her own party’s faults — that they totally screwed up state finances in the late 2000s, for instance. Burke has demonstrated zero ability to translate her supposed business experience to legislation and policy. When you advocate the loss of 120,000 jobs, your credibility on the economy will rightly be in question.

You can certainly kiss tax cuts goodbye. Burke is apparently claiming that the Walker tax cuts were only $11 per month. How arrogant to claim that state government can spend your $132 better than you can, or, for a family of four, your $528. But hey, when you take two years off work and your daddy gets you a job in the family business, maybe money’s not a big deal for you.