This fall, millions of Wisconsinites will head to the polls, and each will help decide the future direction of our great state. In this election, Mary Burke will try to unseat our current governor, Scott Walker, in his third election for governor in five years. With each running on a completely different platform, there is no doubt that this election will be a crucial point in Wisconsin history, regardless of who comes out on top.

If Scott Walker remains as governor, we can imagine that the next few years will be similar to Walker’s first term. One could expect a further reduction in taxes and the unemployment rate, another tuition freeze and a balanced budget. While we seem to have a pretty good idea what would happen if Walker won the election, no one really knows what would happen if Mary Burke would be elected as governor. Even though we saw her debut into state politics as secretary of commerce under Gov. Jim Doyle, Burke continues to give voters ambiguous promises that often contradict with her actions, leaving many Wisconsin voters confused.

In the past couple years of Wisconsin politics, the buzzword has been “jobs,” and Mary Burke’s run for governor is no different. Despite putting this issue at the forefront of her campaign, she continues to give voters mixed signals. Even though she promises to bring more jobs to Wisconsin, her priorities seemed to be quite different earlier in her career. As an executive at Trek Bicycles, her career was characterized by sending jobs away from Wisconsin. Instead of keeping jobs here, Burke chose to outsource them to China, putting Wisconsinites out of work as a result. While some would think that her record on jobs must go up from there, this is not the case. During her time as Secretary of Commerce under Jim Doyle, the unemployment rate of Wisconsin was consistently above the national average. While it would be wrong to blame this completely on Burke, she definitely did not help fix the problem. In addition to this depressing statistic, it was recently discovered that Burke facilitated the award of a $12.3 million loan to Abbott Laboratories, an Illinois-based pharmaceutical company, to help convince them to expand into Wisconsin. While the award was well-intentioned, the jobs never materialized, and now the Wisconsin is forced to repay a loan which basically did nothing for the state. Looking at this evidence from her past, it would be illogical to think that she could improve Wisconsin’s job outlook.

Just as Burke has confused voters with her jobs record, she also confused them with the way that she plans on running her campaign. Even though Burke has come out fervently against out-of-state donations, her campaign seems to say otherwise. In fact, some sources state that up to 30 percent of her donations come from outside of the state. Even though this may not be one of the most important issues to Wisconsin voters, do we really want to set the precedent of electing someone who is not willing to follow up her words with actions? Even though it seems like elected politicians break promises daily, Mary Burke seems like she already has a head start in this respect.

Another Burke platform that confuses and concerns voters, especially students, was her stance on the tuition freeze. While students seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as a result of Walker’s tuition freeze, Burke’s stance on this topic might cause some of them to lose their breath once again. No, she did not say that she would strike down the tuition freeze, but instead she just seemed to dodge the question, leaving students with no idea about her true intentions. This silence on her part is almost more terrifying than if she would have come out opposing the idea from the start. If she would have taken this route, students would at least know what to expect, but instead she leaves them worrying about what the future might hold.

So, what would happen if Mary Burke was elected as governor? Well, the scary part is that no one really knows. As her campaign develops, she continues by contradicting herself, making promises with no hopes of backing them up and giving voters ambiguous answers to questions about her ideology. This fall, voters will have to choose between this ambiguity and clear success.  As for us, we will stick with the candidate who has brought clear, positive change to Wisconsin, Scott Walker.