Walker will set his hair on fire to get a TV camera

Walker: Running for gov, or running a lemonade stand?

Scott Walker, Milwaukee County exec and gov wannabe, is in danger of marginalizing himself in his quest to get his face in front of TV cameras.

His latest stunt was to stand outside the governor's residence when Gov. Jim Doyle was signing the state budget bill on Monday. Walker said he was there to protest Doyle's failure to sign a property tax freeze, although Doyle had just signed one into law.

What Walker was really doing there was trying to get his mug on TV in Madison.

As county exec, he has no trouble getting covered in Milwaukee, the state's biggest market. But he's not well-known in the other markets, and most TV stations are not too interested in covering the governor's race more than a year before the election.

So, Walker was off to Maple Bluff to take up a position outside of the budget signing. I wasn't there, but I would guess it probably worked. He will probably show up in a sound bite here and there.

Of course, if Walker had something to say about the budget, he could have said it in Wauwatosa, where Doyle came Monday afternoon for another budget-related event. But that, of course, would not have gotten Walker on TV in Madison, where he needs the exposure. That's the same reason he rode a motorcycle around the state to talk up Milwaukee (and his campaign), visiting every media market.

Two years ago, when Doyle signed the budget, a group of unhappy Hmong protesters stood outside the residence to support State Sen. Gary George and protest Doyle's veto of a middle-of-the-night George amendment to build a Hmong cultural center, in exchange for George's vote for the budget.

This year, Scott Walker stood out there.

It doesn't seem much like a gubernatorial strategy. Frankly, it seems a little pathetic.