Posted on 03/29/2015 10:14:38 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
A Scott Walker presidential campaign may end up being one of the easier things Tonette Walker has had to endure.
The Wisconsin first lady has experienced poverty, becoming a young widow and losing other close family members, the lonely period of cynicism and despair that followed, a whirlwind romance to the much younger future governor, and death threats from a nasty labor fight.
Those that know the Walker family describe Tonette as “tournament-tested” and “unflappable,” and say the political and personal travails she has faced will leave her well-equipped to deal with the rigors of national campaign and the next-level close-up she’ll get.
“She’s been through a lot,” said Wisconsin GOP lobbyist Brandon Scholz. “His campaigns have never been easy, and they’ve been through campaign after campaign after campaign. She’s ready.”
Walker allies say Tonette is more than just a figurehead — she’s a member of her husband’s inner political circle and will likely play a prominent role in a likely Walker’s presidential campaign.
Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, notes that Walker has already begun “weaving her into his biography on the campaign trail.”
At the Iowa Faith and Freedom Summit speech that catapulted Walker into the upper echelons of the GOP presidential race in January, he recounted personal threats his family endured after protests erupted over his move to strip public sector unions of their bargaining rights in 2011.
“Most of those death threats were directed at me, but some of the worst were directed at my family,” Walker said. “I remember one of the ones that bothered me the most was someone literally sent me a threat that said they were going to gut my wife like a deer.”
The crowd sat aghast in horrified silence.
The 2012 recall election attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters and a national media attention. The frenzy left Scott and Tonette fearing for the safety of their family.
Their two college-aged sons were harassed in public and online. Protesters staked out the family’s home, where Scott’s parents also live, forcing Tonette and her sons to at one point take overnight refuge in a local mall.
“I suspect first families across the country get their share of hate mail and threats, but not many have seen it with the intensity that Tonette has,” said Jim Villa, Walker’s chief of staff from when he was Milwaukee County Executive in the early 1990s.
“It’s prepared her for the onslaught of negative personal attacks and political threats that come with the tension of a national campaign.”
But Tonette has her own potent, emotional story that adds a personal dimension to her husband, a would-be-president.
The couple’s first chapter began with a meet-cute on karaoke night at a barbecue joint in Wauwatosa. They frequently recount how Scott passed Tonette a napkin with a handwritten note and his phone number on it, and the persistence he displayed in courting her through a whirlwind romance that led to their marriage in 1993. Two sons followed shortly after.
For Tonette, the events were more than just a chance romantic encounter – she credits Scott with pulling her out of the existential hole she’d fallen into after the death of her first husband.
Tonette is 11 years older than Scott — about the same age difference that separates his grandparents. They married when he was 26 and she was 37.
She had been married before, at the age of 23, but lost her husband of seven years to kidney disease.
“As I got along the next few years, I dismissed the thought of getting married again,” Tonette recalled during a September 2014 speech in Madison, where she was accepting an award from a women’s organization. “I wanted children, but my cynicism left me questioning whether or not any good guys were left. Had I already had my chance? I had to wonder if I’d be alone for the rest of my life, but God had a plan for me.”
Tonette says she grew up poor – her mother was married at 16 and had two children by the time she was 19. The same year Tonette lost her husband, she also lost her grandmother, who she says helped raise her, and her only sibling, brother Nick Tarantino.
“These experiences were heartbreaking and exhausting and the repeated fractures in my world made me very cynical,” Tonette said in November speech. “But in a way, losing my brother and my husband prepared me for political life.”
Those who know the couple say Tonette could be gearing up to play two critical roles in Walker’s campaign: both as a supportive wife that could soften his image in what will be a grueling primary battle,and as an independent surrogate invested and well-versed in Scott’s policy positions that could help him cement his image as a conservative reformer.
Tonette has played increasingly visible roles in Scott’s three successful gubernatorial elections in four years.
She frequently introduces her husband at campaign rallies ahead of major announcements, many times flanked by her sons, who plan to temporarily leave school to support their father’s potential presidential campaign.
Tonette has also traveled the state with women’s groups to support her husband’s races. She’s already dabbled in presidential politics, introducing Ann Romney at events in Wisconsin when 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney briefly flirted with playing in the state.
But Tonette has also proven she can be more than just a warm-up act.
“She was a prominent part of the recall election and all the elections, even giving speeches on her own, and being very vocal for her husband, particularly at a time when it would have been easier for her to be a shrinking violet,” one close adviser said.
The effort to recall Walker began in late 2011. In January 2012, amid protests and a national media frenzy, Tonette gave a full-throated campaign-style speech to a group of supporters on a frozen day in Wauwatosa while Scott was elsewhere.
“The reforms are working,” Tonette declared, provoking chants of ‘yes they are!’ from the crowd.
“We need you to be our choir,” she continued. “We need you to go out into the community and we need you to sing. We need you to talk to people, to your neighbors, the people in your community, the people at your jobs, and we need you to tell them that it’s working…it’s now time for us to speak up, it’s now time to move Wisconsin forward.”
It was evidence that Scott trusts her as an independent surrogate on the stump, a role she could potentially fill in a presidential campaign.
“You’re going to hear the exact same thing coming from both of them,” said one former campaign aide.
Those that know the couple say Tonette is briefed on Scott’s political plans, knowledgeable on the issues, committed to his vision and is quickly coming into her own as a public figure.
“They view themselves as a team,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) “She's one of two on the team.”
Tonette? Is that her real name? I think I would change it.
Mrs. Tarantino?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAti8qIGRIg
All I know is that Scott Walker married a good woman who was older than the is.
June 9, 2012: "On the night of his greatest political triumph, as he bounded up to the podium at the Waukesha County Exposition Center, Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of all the noise from thousands of his supporters, and all the lights of television crews drawn to a riveting political story.
Later, a friend asked Walker what he thought of it all, and the governor said, "It's funny, it's not what you think."
"I just honed in on the three of them," Walker said of his wife, Tonette, and sons Matt and Alex. "And I thought, 'Thank God, thank God, it's over for them.' The three of them had just gone through so much and they didn't ask for it. They didn't ask for the job. I did."
One chapter in the life of an American politician ended Tuesday night when Walker became the first governor in American history to survive a recall election.
And another chapter had begun.
Walker has emerged from the most contentious period of modern Wisconsin politics and become a hero in the national Republican Party.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was the first person who called Walker after the first television network declared the governor had defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.
In the hours and days after the election, other calls followed from the likes of Republican governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia, as well as other governors, Walker said. And there were texts and notes from longtime friends.
"So many people sent me text with Scripture in it," he said. "So many people sent me congratulation notes with their devotional for the day. It wasn't just a, 'hey, high-five, you've done it,' it was, 'this really moved me, this touched me.' "
On Friday morning at the governor's office in Milwaukee, Walker and his wife discussed the emotions of the past 17 months - and Tuesday night's triumph - during an interview with the Journal Sentinel."......
More in in Post #6.
It is a somewhat odd name, i thought it might be southern, but it’s part of who she is today. Tonette will remind people that sometimes we get a second chance in life to find love and to create a family or a successful business.
I think his parents are still alive. We will soon learn more about them too. A few weeks ago, Wisconsin democrats were yelling and protesting the Governor’s union policies outside his parents front window.
Newbie...have some manners here.....are you a TROLL?
Tonette’s awesome and will make a great First Lady.
Great comments, both. ZagFan is right. Liberals will hone onto her name and mock it. They’ve done that in Wisconsin already. Libs are disgusting in their disregard for people and their pettiness.
Tonette’s name is just fine.
: )
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