Scott Walker’s wife, toughened by life, adds steel to candidate’s spine

[a kennedy]

Tonette Tarantino’s year of sorrow came when she was only 30. First she lost the grandmother who helped raise her, like a second mother. Weeks later her brother, her only sibling, died of bone cancer. Then her husband died of kidney failure.

Now, as Tonette Walker, the wife of Wisconsin governor and GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker, looks back, she says those brutal 12 months in the mid-1980s prepared her for her life ahead — and most especially for the rough ride of politics.

“My mom was tough. She didn’t give you a break,” Tonette Walker said in an interview at the Camp Bar, a neighborhood hangout here. “Days after my first husband died, my mom said, ‘Get up, get moving, you are not going to wallow in this. You’re going to be great, you are going to be fine. Life is going to go on.’ ”

Tonette, who at 59 is a dozen years older than her husband and comes from a pro-union Democratic family, is part of a 2016 class of political spouses who are more visible and unusual than ever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/scott-walkers-wife-toughened-by-life-adds-steel-to-the-gop-candidates-spine/2015/07/05/61337f5d-2513-4698-8f27-647e28b3c8cc_story.html?tid=hpModule_ba0d4c2a-86a2-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394

[Orrex]

1. Maybe she should run, instead of the asshole she married.

“Days after my first husband died, my mom said, ‘Get up, get moving, you are not going to wallow in this. You’re going to be great, you are going to be fine. Life is going to go on.’ ”

That's a monstrous thing for a mother to tell her daughter, by the way, especially given the shit she'd already been dealing with.

[treestar]

2. +1

Just days after? Holy cow.

[Siwsan]

3. Having gone through such tragedy, I'd think she'd be prone to be empathetic

So it's hard to understand how she ended up with an ignorant misanthrope like Walker.

[3catwoman3]

9. Indeed.

Although it doesn't sound as if she got many empathy lesson from her mother.

And "ignorant misanthrope" describes her husband perfectly.

[AngryAmish]

4. She is evil and must he destroyed.

Hatred incarnate.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Little overboard on the melodrama there.

It's an election, not an "Omen" movie.

[City Lights]

6. He has a spine?

He is a Koch puppet, and puppets don't have spines.

[marble falls]

7. What the heck happened to the first two replies????????

Obviously Scott Walker has a better half. And Tonette Scott has an uncompromising canker off Satan's butt.

[B Calm]

8. Why in heavens name would she marry her opposite?

[Romulox]

10. I thought she was his *mother*! nt