Golden Boy

Opening say at State Fair was more than cheese curds and cream puffs for Congressman Mark Green. It may turn out to be the day he locked up the Republican nomination for governor.

On that August morning, newspapers across the state reported the $5,000 fine levied by the State Elections Board against Green’s opponent, Scott Walker, for failing to disclose his use of campaign funds to lobby for a crucial -county budget vote.

It was yet another PR disaster in the summer from hell for Walker, punctuating what Democrats and Republicans have been saying privately – that Green stands the better chance of beating Gov. Jim Doyle next fall.

“I don’t have time to worry about Scott Walker,” said the glad-handing, curd-chewing Green. “My philosophy is, keep your head down, get all around the state.”

But he must have been grinning like a Cheshire cat on the inside.

Walker’s campaign got off to a miserable start. In May, at the state Republican convention, he delivered a lackluster speech and lost to Green soundly in a straw poll. In June, financial scandals at the Milwaukee Public Museum and Mitchell Park Domes called his leadership into question. In July, federal charges of influence peddling were filed in Chicago against Walker pal Nick Hurtgen, who sought a bond contract from the county around the same time he was raising $25,000 for Walker’s 2003 re-election campaign. Walker caught more heat in July for giving away 1,200 free tickets – mostly to members of the media – while touring the state at taxpayers’ expense. Finally, the Elections Board piled on with the $5,000 fine.

While poor Walker kept getting bruised, Green seemed untouchable.

Married, with three children, Green, 45, looks downright international compared to Scott Walker, a Marquette University dropout and politician since he was 25. Green’s father, a physician, was raised in South Africa; his mother, a nurse, in London. The two met in England and moved to Boston, where Green was born. As his father pursued work, the family jumped from Jersey City to Cincinnati, England, South Africa and Australia. Finally, Green’s father was hired to help open a clinic in Wisconsin, and the Greens stayed, making Green Bay their home and raising three sons.

Green got a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then taught school in Kenya for a year before lawyering at Godfrey & Kahn in Green Bay. Elected to the state Assembly in 1992, he was quickly tabbed as a rising star by fellow legislators.

Doyle backers knock Green for never facing a tough political opponent. But they would do well to remember Green’s first run for the 8th Congressional District in 1998, when he beat Jay Johnson and became the only Republican in the nation that year to defeat an incumbent House Democrat. Since then, he’s been re-elected three times, grabbing 70 percent of the vote each time.

History is against both Green and Walker. The last sitting congressman to win the governor’s seat was the forgettable Cadwallader C. Washburn in 1871, and the last Milwaukeean to become governor was Julius Heil in 1938.

Yet Walker faces the bigger hurdle. Out-state voters tend to see Milwaukee as the corrupt Big City that gets too many tax dollars, so he must downplay his roots while selling himself as a tax reformer.

Green, likewise, must tout his Washington accomplishments while underplaying his role as a D.C. insider. But he could be helped by a recent national trend: members of Congress winning gubernatorial seats. In the past three years, former congressmen Robert Ehrlich of Maryland, Bob Riley of Alabama and Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky all were elected governor. Along with Green, at least three more are mounting 2006 gubernatorial campaigns.

Money begets money, and Green has a huge lead in campaign funds, a mid-year balance of $1.7 million to -Walker’s $502,000. Green’s staff is top-notch; his campaign director, Mark Graul, is considered one of the best in the state. Graul headed President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in Wisconsin, losing to John Kerry by one percentage point, 11,384 votes.

But can Green beat Doyle?

Green is a fresh-faced, scandal-free candidate with ties around the state, despite his seven years in Washington. This summer, he barnstormed all of Wisconsin’s 72 counties in 100 days, dutifully putting in time at Port Washington’s Fish Day, West Allis Western Days and Oshkosh Sawdust Days. He knows the armed forces, having traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan, and helped to bring a new veterans’ center to Green Bay. He absolutely owns Brown County, with the third-largest number of registered Republicans and the state’s second-largest media market. Yet in Walker’s home base of Milwaukee, he’s still relatively unknown.

Doyle’s squishy approval ratings and lack of charisma make him vulnerable, say Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, loudly tout a tough and very well-financed incumbent governor – and the only candidate in the race to wage a statewide campaign.

But privately, Democrats will confess, they’re more than a little worried about Golden Boy Green.