Kris Barrett, the wife of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett, stopped by the Dane County Farmers Market on Saturday to do some last-minute campaigning for her husband, shaking vendors’ and shoppers’ hands and encouraging them to vote Nov. 2.
Barrett said her husband’s stances on issues such as education, stem cell research and helping working families make him the right man for the job.
“Tom Barrett is the one who’s promoting working families in Wisconsin, not just the top 1 percent of wage earners,” she said. “And to do that he has a very specific plan to bring jobs to Wisconsin, get families back on their feet.”
Barrett said her family’s experience supporting her husband’s political career in the past has prepared her and their four children for life in the governor’s mansion.
Years of supporting her husband during his time in the state Legislature, the U.S. Congress and as mayor of Milwaukee have prepared her family for the challenges of governorship, she said.
“Everybody has to chip in a little bit more but I think mostly we’re really, really excited,” she said. “I think it’s a wonderful prospect for us and we are ready for the job and the task at hand.”
She joked that because of her and her husband’s campaigning, her children were going to have to start doing more laundry.
The experience of campaigning for her husband has further solidified her support for him as governor, Barrett said, but she also criticized her husband’s opponent Scott Walker for being hypocritical in terms of government intervention.
Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, said Tom Barrett’s personal life may have been impacted by his political life more than other politicians, citing the 2009 attack on Tom Barrett that occurred in front of his family at the Wisconsin State Fair when he intervened in a domestic dispute.
Kris Barrett’s trip to Madison to stump for her husband may represent an increasingly common political trend, said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin.
Family involvement in a campaign can have a positive impact on many candidates’ public images.
“Usually families are a great asset to candidates because they provide that human dimension that sometimes seems to be missing,” Heck said.
Barrett’s stop could also be an attempt to increase positive awareness of her husband’s image in the campaign, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director Mike McCabe.
“Candidates always want to be seen as being devoted husbands or wives; they want to have their kids around them,” McCabe said. “They want to convey the impression that they’re just like everybody else and they put family first.”
However, McCabe is skeptical as to whether the campaigning of candidates’ family members actually has any affect on the election and said the impact is often negligible.
A stop by a spouse such as Barrett’s at the farmer’s market in most cases is not a deciding factor one way or the other, McCabe said.
