Under fire, Walker aide Liz Mair resigns

An online communications strategist working for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) campaign-in-waiting resigned late Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, after controversy erupted over disparaging comments she had made about Iowa.

The news agency said that Liz Mair’s resignation — only a day after news broke that she had been hired — would be immediate, quoting a statement from her.

The statement said, “The tone of some of my tweets concerning Iowa was at odds with that which Gov. Walker has always encouraged in political discourse.”

{mosads}Mair was, for the moment, affiliated with Walker’s political action committee, but it was widely expected that she would play a role in his official campaign if he entered the 2016 race for the White House. 

She had worked for Walker previously, when he faced a recall election in 2012. In 2008, she worked as online communications director for the Republican National Committee.

The controversy that engulfed her was focused primarily upon tweets she sent during the Iowa Freedom Summit in January, an event where Walker was seen to have shone. 

At one point, she tweeted, “In other news, I see Iowa is once again embarrassing itself, and the GOP, this morning. Thanks, guys.”

Shortly afterward, she added, also on Twitter, “The sooner we remove Iowa’s frontrunning status, the better off American politics and policy will be.”

Mair’s views of Iowa appalled GOP activists in the state, which holds the first contest in the presidential nominating calendar.

A co-chairman of the state GOP, Cody Hoefert, told The New York Times that he found the remarks, which also included criticisms of ethanol subsidies beloved by Iowa farmers, “disgusting and repulsive.”

Opinions about Mair did not break along neat lines, even among conservatives, however. Erick Erickson, the activist and commentator behind RedState.com, wrote a defense of Mair earlier on Tuesday evening, before news of her resignation broke.

Erickson asserted that Mair was “very competent at her job” and suggested there was an orchestrated campaign to force her out.

“I think an early test for Scott Walker is going to be if he is willing to stand up to the sound and fury of people outraged by a staffer’s tweet in the way he stood up to union activists,” Erickson wrote.

He updated the post in light of the news of Mair’s resignation. “Team Walker has botched this,” he wrote, adding that it “plays into the ‘not ready for prime time’ theme already developing around Team Walker.”

The initial Associated Press report also quoted Rick Wiley, one of Walker’s closest aides, saying of Mair, “We accept those who have a variety of viewpoints on issue[s], but what we ultimately must have is absolute respect for people across the country.”