Donors to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential campaign got little return on their investment, but his family and top aides benefited handsomely.
Walker raised nearly $7.4 million dollars during the third quarter, which is more than many other GOP candidates including Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and several others. Despite the impressive fundraising haul, the governor dropped out of the race in fewer than three months on the trail, but not before paying his top aides at an alarming rate and setting aside money for his sons.
Walker billed himself as a fiscal conservative who knew how to win elections, but he showered several top staffers with exorbitant salaries and quit the race more than 12 months out from the 2016 presidential election.
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Walker’s team paid campaign manager Rick Wiley nearly $52,000 during the short-term campaign, while Walker’s communications director Kirsten Kukowski raked in more than $58,000 — meaning she would have brought in more than $200,000 if the campaign had lasted a full twelve months.
According to an analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Walker campaign paid 15 staffers at a rate exceeding a $100,000 annual salary, and it paid another 15 staffers at a rate equivalent to $50,000-$90,000 per year.
Among the Walker staffers not included among those top 30 paid positions are the governor’s sons, Matthew and Alexander Walker.
When the governor began his presidential campaign in July, he valued the price tag of his children’s student loans at $100,000-$250,000, according to his Personal Financial Disclosure filed with the FEC. Perhaps to offset some of that financial burden, the presidential campaign paid Walker’s two sons more than $1,540 per month on average, according to the October quarterly report filed by the Walker campaign with the FEC. The two often traveled with their father, including on the “Walker Winnebago” throughout Iowa and actively pushed campaign material out on social media.
Matthew and Alexander Walker, who are political science students at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, hauled in more than $9,652.14 total during the short-lived campaign. The tens of thousands of dollars they could have received as the campaign wore on would have gone a long way toward covering their tuition.
The governor’s office and former campaign spokesman Tom Evenson did not answer the Washington Examiner‘s questions about Walker’s October quarterly report, and Matthew Walker did not respond to requests for comment.
