Is "Millionaire Mary" — for Mary Burke — a political nickname equivalent to — for Scott Walker — "Scooter" and "Koch-Head"?

Over at The Daily Beast, Eleanor Clift — Eleanor Clift is still around? — pushes Mary Burke, Scott Walker's likely opponent in the fall. Clift begins:

Republicans call her “Millionaire Mary,” but Mary Burke has plenty of assets aside from her wealth to make her a strong contender to derail the reelection of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, along with his dreams of the presidency. 

I am here in Wisconsin minutely following politics day by day — every single day — and I have never noticed the moniker "Millionaire Mary." I asked Meade if he'd ever heard that, and he said no. So Clift can't get 5 words into her column without hitting a blatantly false note. Scrolling down, I see the term comes from Burke herself, whom Clift interviewed:

Burke... was recruited to run for the Madison school board, a race that she won in 2012 with the help of $128,000 of her own money. “Millionaire Mary, they’re just using that,” she says of Republican efforts to denigrate her wealth. “I have been very clear that what I can put in is a fraction of what’s needed,” she says.

Republicans denigrate wealth?

Googling, I see the descriptor "millionaire" used occasionally in GOP headlines with her full name, e.g. "Millionaire Mary Burke Says More Money for Taxpayer Is 'Irresponsible,'" but that's quite different from having a standard nickname using just her first name, "Millionaire Mary," like "Typhoid Mary" (or the more political — and, incidentally, more phallocratic — "Tricky Dick" and "Slick Willy").

But here's an article from PolitiFact, last November, specifically about the use of political nicknames in the Wisconsin governor's race:

Nicknames are much more personal than formal names, so "inventing a negative nickname in a political race is intended to insult as it would on the school yard," [said Robert Hickey, author of "Honor & Respect: the Official Guide to Names, Titles, and Forms of Address"].

Much of the game plays out now on Twitter, a petri dish for hashtag mashups. But in other formats such as news releases, blog posts and email blasts, partisans also are test-driving electronic epithets and caricatures, and not just in the governor’s race.

"Governor Ultrasound." "Millionaire Mary." "‘Struggling’ Sean Duffy."

Those are apparently examples of efforts at coming up with a nickname that will stick, not ones that passed into common usage like "Scooter" for Governor Walker, which PolitiFact discusses next. ("[C]ritics have dismissed him as 'Scooter,' suggesting he’s fighting way above his weight.")

This makes me want to do a sidetrack about the Milwaukee Brewer Scooter Gennett and how he got his name. Oh, hell. I will do a sidetrack! I love this story:

Gennett said he adopted the name as a 5-year-old fan of the Muppets character Scooter...



... and used it as a permanent alias after his mother, Tina, tried to impart a lesson about buckling his seat belt with a trip to a police station for a lecture.

"I thought I was going to be arrested,” he said. “So, I told the policeman my name was Scooter. After we left there, I didn’t answer to Ryan because I thought if I answered to my real name I’d get arrested.”

He has been Scooter ever since.

The Brewers are doing great, including Scooter, so efforts to denigrate Scott Walker with the old "Scooter" nickname may be less effective this year than usual, but let's be clear: Name-calling Walker is a much bigger phenomenon than name-calling Mary Burke. The PoliFact piece also notes the Walker nickname "Koch-head." That's what I've seen around here.