Wall Street Journal
By Reid Epstein
July 13, 2015
Scott
Walker formally announced his presidential bid Monday morning,
launching an effort built around his belief that the best way for
Republican candidates to win is
by better energizing their conservative base rather than by moving
toward the center.
The
Wisconsin governor’s announcement marked the entry of another big name
in an exceptionally crowded GOP field. Mr. Walker, who becomes the 15th
declared major candidate,
is widely considered to be in the top tier along with Sen. Marco Rubio
(R., Fla.) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“In
the Republican field, there are some who are good fighters. They
haven’t won those battles. There are others who have won election but
haven’t consistently taken on
the big fights,” Mr. Walker said in his announcement video. “I’ve done
both.”
The
capstone to Mr. Walker’s opening campaign swing is a three-day, 11-stop
tour of Iowa beginning Friday. As that suggests, Iowa, home of the
first presidential nominating
vote, is key to the Walker strategy.
The
47-year-old Mr. Walker has led every public poll of Iowa Republicans
since February and is banking on his Midwestern appeal to propel him
there. He speaks frequently
about spending seven years of his boyhood in tiny Plainfield, Iowa, and
argues that Republicans will win the White House by capturing states
across the upper Midwest—Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan—as well as
Pennsylvania, all of which have been carried by Democratic
presidential candidates for a generation.
As
a sign of his focus on Iowa, Mr. Walker’s advisers have said he plans
to appear in all 99 of the state’s counties before the February
caucuses.
People
familiar with Mr. Walker’s fundraising said his political committees
have raised $25 million to $30 million—less than a third of the haul for
Mr. Bush’s super PAC
and about $20 million less than that of Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). He
is about on par with Mr. Rubio. Mr. Walker’s political committees don’t
have to report their totals until later this month.
Though
a governor of a relatively small state, Mr. Walker developed a
substantial donor network during his battle with Wisconsin’s
public-employee unions. His 2012 effort
to turn back a recall attempt in the face of fierce union and
Democratic opposition—the first time a sitting American governor won a
recall election—introduced him to Republican donors nationwide. Todd
Ricketts, whose family founded Ameritrade and owns the
Chicago Cubs, is a co-chairman of Mr. Walker’s fundraising effort.
Mr.
Walker’s campaign is based on a premise that the most important thing
for a Republican presidential contender is to secure an overpowering
mandate from traditional
GOP voters.
“It
is a myth that winning the center requires moving to the center,” he
wrote in his 2013 book, a theme he has repeated on the campaign trail.
“The path to a conservative
comeback lies not in abandoning our principles but in championing bold,
conservative reforms.” Mr. Cruz is making a similar argument.
No
place in Wisconsin better represents the Republican electorate Mr.
Walker is targeting than Waukesha County, just west of Milwaukee, where
he will make his announcement.
The suburban county of 395,000 people is overwhelmingly Republican, 94%
white and solidly conservative. The last Democratic presidential
candidate to take even 40% of the county’s vote was Lyndon Johnson in
1964.
“We’re
very principled Republicans,” said John Macy, the county’s GOP
chairman. “I think if he’s trying to appeal to all Republicans, then
that’s a great place because
we represent all Republicans.”
Mr.
Walker said during a radio interview Friday that he chose to start his
campaign at the Waukesha County Expo Center because it was the place
where he celebrated his
victory over the attempt to recall him in 2012. “We wanted to go back
to the place where we celebrated the historic recall victory,” Mr.
Walker said on Milwaukee’s WTMJ radio.
It
is a starkly different campaign-kickoff setting than the ones chosen by
Messrs. Bush and Rubio, Mr. Walker’s chief rivals for the 2016
Republican presidential nomination.
They used their formal launches to showcase the diversity of their
political support. Mr. Bush began his campaign at a Miami community
college that is one of the most ethnically diverse in the country. Mr.
Rubio made his announcement at a former processing
center for Cuban immigrants.
Since
he joined the presidential campaign scene in January, Mr. Walker has
taken steps to appeal to the GOP primary electorate—particularly
Iowa’s—at the risk of alienating
general-election voters. He abandoned his long-standing support for a
path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, adopted a more-strident
tone against abortion and gay marriage, and abandoned opposition to
federal ethanol subsidies popular with Iowa corn
growers.
“My
view has changed,” he said about immigration during a March interview
on Fox News. “I’m flat out saying it.” A Walker spokeswoman added, “The
people of Wisconsin know
what he stands for and have repeatedly supported his agenda.”
Mr.
Walker had home-state options that could have signaled his appeal to a
broader electorate. His nearby hometown of Wauwatosa split its votes
evenly between President
Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012. He was county
executive for eight years in Milwaukee County, with a diverse population
of nearly one million. His campaign is based in Madison, the state
capital, which is home to his greatest policy and political
triumphs, including stripping public-sector unions of
collective-bargaining rights.
Despite
never living there, Mr. Walker instead chose Waukesha to represent the
path he sees to the White House. “All the Republicans and all the money
are in Waukesha
County,” said Ted Kanavas, a former state senator from Waukesha County
who was a state co-chairman of Mr. Romney’s 2012 campaign.
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