Pat Walker helps son, Scott, in re-election bid
‘Rock star’ mom enters campaign fray with ad
Over the years, Pat Walker has assumed roles as a pastor’s wife, doting mother and grandmother, family chronicler and baker of chocolate chip cookies.
Her cookies have been gobbled up at schools, the Milwaukee County executive’s office and Republican Party offices across the state. She even manages to send an annual batch to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, and formerly the Milwaukee archbishop, just before Lent.
What she always left to others was politics.
But this year is different. Her son, Gov. Scott Walker, is in the fight of his political life against Democrat Tony Evers.
So, she entered the fray. A little more than two weeks after the death of her husband, Llewellyn, she appeared in a political commercial alongside her son.
She said she was “really proud of the way Scott helps people around the state like me who have suffered from cancer.”
Democrats have criticized Walker for being against the Affordable Care Act, and for backing a suit that if successful would end guarantees for covering preexisting conditions. Walker has promised to provide such guarantees, though they wouldn’t go as far as the ones provided under the Affordable Care Act.
Asked if she has gotten reaction about the ad, she smiled.
“Two people have called me a rock star,” she said.
Quite a compliment for a 79-year-old. Through much of the governor’s career, the family member who was never shy about talking politics was his father, an ordained American Baptist pastor.
It was Llew Walker who helped fire his son’s interest in current events and politics. Pat Walker readily admits that she used to reach for the sports pages of her local paper.
They met as teenagers in Illinois. She grew up a farmer’s daughter in Belvidere; he grew up in Rockford.
In her early 20s, she got a job as a secretary at Llew’s home church in Rockford. Their first date was a Johnny Cash concert. They dated for two years and were married for 52.
He was pastor at churches in Colorado Springs, Plainfield, Iowa, and Delavan.
It was a good life, she said. He was the kind of husband who would drive her to see a good sunset or volunteer to go out at 5 in the morning to get her brown sugar for her baking.
“He could talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere,” she said.
“People met him and they did not forget him.”
After a series of illnesses, he died Oct. 7, surrounded by family. “I believe he was ready to go and we know he is with the Lord,” she said.
She holds on to his memory. But she is also looking ahead. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a lumpectomy. She told doctors, nurses and her family that she had a goal.
“I’m planning on living to be 100,” she said.