Scott Walker campaign fires aide for racist tweets

UPDATED: Voces de la Frontera responds to firing of Walker campaign aide

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign has fired a campaign aide for making racist comments about Hispanics on her Twitter account.

Walker, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, dismissed Taylor Palmisano as his campaign’s deputy finance director  on Dec. 3.

The campaign fired Palmisano after the Journal Sentinel contacted the office about her Twitter posts. The Milwaukee paper broke the story.

In a March 2011 tweet, Palmisano said she wanted to choke a noisy library custodian. She tweeted from @itstaytime: “I will choke that illegal mex cleaning in the library. Stop banging … chairs around and turn off your Walkman,” according to the Journal Sentinel.

In another tweet, she complained about passengers on a bus: “This bus is my worst … nightmare Nobody speaks English & these ppl dont know how 2 control their kids #only3morehours #illegalaliens.”

Palmisano, 23, in a statement, apologized and said she regrets making the “offensive and irresponsible remarks.”

Jonathan Wetzel in a statement for the campaign, said “Both the governor, and the campaign, condemn these insulting remarks which do not reflect our views in any way.”

Responding on Dec. 4, Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera, the state’s leading immigrant rights group, said, “While it is commendable that the Walker administration did the right thing by not allowing their representatives to get away with publicly disparaging and racist comments, those remarks pale in comparison to the devastating anti-immigrant agenda Scott Walker has assumed since taking office.”

Voces said Walker’s 2011-12 budget stripped Wisconsin immigrant students of the right to tuition equality at our state’s public universities. The governor also has run on a record of promising to veto access to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants and those who are in the process of adjusting their status.

And, according to Voces de la Frontera, Walker fought to disenfranchise undocumented pregnant women by denying them critical pre-natal medical care and codified new forms of legal discrimination by eliminating Food Share benefits for lawful permanent resident immigrants.

“If Gov. Walker wants to win back the trust of Latino voters, he can start by reversing his dismal record and working to make Wisconsin an immigrant-friendly state that values all families, and recognizes the important economic contributions that all immigrants make to our state,” Neumann-Ortiz’ statement said.

Walker is running for re-election in 2014. He’s also making a number of appearances around the country that have led some to suspect he’ll run for president in 2016.

Palmisano’s Twitter account is no longer active.

Her profile on LinkedIn.com says she went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has worked at JPMorgan Chase, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and Friends of Scott Walker.