Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate for Wisconsin governor, tours the Merrill farm of Hans Breitenmoser Jr. and his wife, Katie, on Aug. 14. Credit: Michael Sears
 | Daniel Bice |
| No Quarter |
Sept. 08, 2014
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Sept. 08, 2014
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke's work history appears pretty straightforward.
Georgetown University. Harvard University.Trek Bicycle. State Department of Commerce. Madison School Board.
But her résumé includes an odd and little-explained two-year gap between management positions at Trek, her family-owned business, in the mid-1990s.
The hiatus was marked by what has been dubbed a "snowboarding sabbatical."
Nobody can agree on the particulars. Some news stories and blogs say the sabbatical lasted three months, others six or nine months or perhaps even a year. The excursion has been described as taking place in Argentina. Or Colorado. Or both. With one friend or several, in 1993 or maybe 1994.
There is a reason for all this confusion.
The details still do not come easily, even for Burke herself.
"The deeper you dig into Mary Burke's background, the more questions you uncover," said Joe Fadness, executive director of the state Republican Party, who often serves as a proxy for Burke's opponent, Gov. Scott Walker.
In a recent interview, Burke chalked up the differences to the fact that she has never really needed to drill down to get all of the specifics on this period from some 20 years ago. It's also possible, she suggested, that some news accounts got a few details wrong.
To answer questions, Burke — a widely known pack rat — said she dug up old passports and reviewed credit card receipts from decades ago. The state Democratic Party even polled state residents about this subject before she announced her statewide bid.
"I do want to fill in the blanks or resolve any inconsistencies," Burke said. "There are different things out there, and I want people to know the truth."
Extended work break
This appears to be the simple explanation: Burke took an on-again, off-again vacation from July 1993 to September 1995 to decide what to do with her life. During that span, she went with friends on a two-month snowboarding expedition in Argentina and then taught snowboarding in Colorado for another two months.
One extended work break, including two lengthy snowboarding ventures.
It was, in short, a very long trek.
In the interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Burke — running for state office for the first time — explained that she decided to take time off in 1993 after spending several years setting up five Trek offices in Europe and overseeing two others. She lived in Germany, Holland and Spain during this span.
She has said Trek's European sales jumped from $3 million a year to $50 million annually, numbers that have not been independently verified. She has previously said it rose from $2 million to $60 million under her leadership, but she has since modified the numbers.
Once all of the Trek offices were up and running, Burke said her job as director of European operations became unnecessary. She was also burned out from the work.
So it was then time to take a couple of years off to find herself.
In her off hours in Europe, the Trek exec learned how to snowboard, and in mid-1993, she headed off to San Martin de los Andes, a popular mountain resort in Argentina. She was 34.
"This had been a very demanding job and as a result, I decided I needed some time off," Burke wrote in a note to a Doyle administration official in 2005 when she was being vetted for the commerce secretary's post. "I joined some Spanish friends of mine and moved to Argentina to snowboard for three months."
According to her old passports, Burke said she actually spent only two months — July and August 1993 — in Argentina. She was quoted in a Wisconsin State Journal story in 2005 saying she went on the trip because she was "going out with this guy."
Now Burke said she wasn't traveling with a boyfriend but was simply accompanied by friends.
Bicycle organization
At the end of the venture, Burke headed to Colorado, where she lived for the next two years. For several months, she said, she was traveling and relaxing.
Early in 1994, she began working full time with Ray Keener — a longtime family friend and former Trek dealer — on setting up the Bicycle Industry Organization, a nonprofit trade organization. Burke's father had a hand in setting up the group.
The candidate provided few specific dates for her work with the nonprofit.
Sometime in 1994, she scaled back to part time after Keener hired an executive director. She eventually left the nonprofit, which failed after putting on two Las Vegas trade shows, and spent February and March 1995 teaching snowboarding part time at the Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado.
For the next five months, she considered what to do next. For a while, she thought about enrolling in a PhD program in business at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
But she eventually settled on getting back on the management track by returning to Trek as a special projects manager in September 1995. She reached the decision shortly after the Waterloo-based bicycle company held its annual sales conference at Breckenridge.
Snowboarding sabbatical
So how long exactly was Burke's snowboarding sabbatical, a term she despises?
"Two months," she said.
Technically, that is correct. She took off two months in Argentina in 1993, and she was a snowboard instructor in Colorado for another two months in 1995.
But her downtime lasted the better part of two years.
Burke said she does not regret taking the extended breather. She said she had worked hard since her days in college and took little time off while sometimes working a couple of jobs at once. She set aside the money for just such a break.
"I was in a position where I could do that," Burke said. "I have no apologies for doing that."
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.
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