Walker and his foes see the gubernatorial race as evenly divided. Scott Walker limps toward 2016

MILWAUKEE — In the glow of his recall election victory two years ago, Scott Walker looked like a conservative superhero — a soft-faced Midwestern man who stripped public unions of their negotiating powers then crushed their campaign to oust him in a special election. To admirers, he was more than a governor; he was a gladiator.

These days, Walker looks more like any ordinary Midwestern man.


The politician who confidently lectured Mitt Romney in 2012 (“He has to say that I’m a reformer like Scott Walker,” Walker told The Weekly Standard) has tumbled into yet another fight for his political life. Far from a conservative Clark Kent, Walker is visibly straining in the closing days of his race against Mary Burke, a wealthy former Trek Bicycle executive and member of the Madison School Board.

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If Walker survives once more on Tuesday, it will represent another win for the divide-and-conquer strategy he has used since 2010 to become the dominant political figure in this traditionally Democratic state. It will also mark a downward revision of Walker’s own aspirations: Instead of realigning Wisconsin behind a new vision for conservative reform — and perhaps vaulting himself into the White House in the process — Walker is struggling to assemble a bare majority that will keep him in the job he has.

At campaign stops this week, the 46-year-old Walker shouted himself hoarse defending his record on job creation, an unexpectedly contentious point in his record. Coughing into his left hand while greeting voters with the right, Walker wore a bandage on one thumb — from a hunting accident, he said — and shocked his allies in Washington by complaining openly that the national GOP hasn’t done enough to help his campaign.

Walker still gets fired up reminding voters of his victory over the unions — “I took away their power,” he declared — but at each stop he also delivered the plea of the embattled incumbent: Things are on the right track, so just give me more time to get the economy turned around.

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“I set a big goal because I believe in the people of the state,” Walker told reporters in the small manufacturing town of Mayville on Monday. “We said, we’re gonna take this team to the Super Bowl. Here it is, four years later, and I’m asking for a contract renewal. We haven’t gotten to the Super Bowl, but we went from a team that was 0 and 16 to a team that’s winning again.”

Asked if he would set another ambitious employment target for a second term, Walker cited the same 250,000-job figure from his 2010 race: “For us, it’s to finish off that original goal.”

But Walker is no longer touting a dramatic success story that he could easily cut and paste into a presidential campaign. He and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, emphasize more bite-sized accomplishments, like sending a $322 rebate to Wisconsin taxpayers this year. Walker drew roars of approval from a crowd this week with his insistence that recipients of public assistance take “a simple drug test.”

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Heading into the final week, both Walker and his foes see the gubernatorial race as evenly divided. The governor said himself that both he and Burke appear to have support from about 47 percent of voters. The balance, Walker said, will come from “Obama-Walker voters”: Wisconsinites who may have voted against Walker’s recall in 2012 but for the president’s reelection the same year.

Not coincidentally, Obama campaigned for Burke in Milwaukee on Tuesday evening, hailing the low-key former state commerce secretary as a “practical person” who knows how to spur economic growth.

“You have a chance to choose a governor who doesn’t put political ideology first,” Obama told a crowd of several thousand. “She understands that ideas to create jobs — they shouldn’t be judged as to whether they’re Democrat or Republican, but whether or not they work.”

Republicans say the 55-year-old Burke, a first-time candidate who has put $5 million of her own money into the race, has tapped into middle-of-the-road voters’ discomfort with Walker in a way that his previous opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, was unable to do.

Where Walker is a confrontational, in-your-face campaigner, Burke presents herself as an non-ideological executive. In an interview Tuesday ahead of her rally with the president, Burke expressed reservations about the tactics used against Walker in the 2012 recall. (“It divided the state, that’s the problem,” she said, adding: “It’s good to have that option if people are that dissatisfied with an elected official.”) A day after revealing the scale of her self-funding in the race, Burke expressed disbelief that the well-financed Walker was “whining that he doesn’t have enough money.”

Should she become the next governor of Wisconsin, Burke said, she would see it as a goodbye-to-all-that rejection of Walker’s brash style rather than a mandate for aggressive Democratic policymaking.

“I don’t see any policy mandate,” said Burke, who described Walker as a singularly polarizing figure in recent Wisconsin history: “I wouldn’t have gotten into this race if I thought we were the divisive, highly partisan people that’s how it is right now. That’s a tone Walker has set.”

For all the pressure Walker faces to run up a presidential-level landslide (George W. Bush won his 1998 reelection by 37 points; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Walker’s potential 2016 rival, won a second term by 22 points last year) supporters argue the best-case scenario is now a narrow victory. Republican state Rep. Mark Born, who appeared with Walker Monday, said Walker’s impressive 7-point defeat of the recall effort came from voters’ suspicion that the special election “wasn’t the right way to go about things,” as much as a judgment on governing results.

Oshkosh manufacturing executive Bob Coglianese, who hosted Walker at the Blended Waxes factory this week, said that “unfortunately or fortunately, however you care to view it, our state’s split right down the middle.”

“Whoever wins this race by 2 or 3 points, it’s a de facto tsunami,” said Coglianese, a Walker supporter. “People who I’ve talked to who voted for him, in essence, during the recall, were just sick of the concept of the recall.”

In the event that Walker loses next week, leaders on both sides say, it’ll be because many voters are also just sick of Walker.

A recent Marquette Law School poll showed just how polarizing the governor remains: Half of voters approve of Walker’s job performance and have a favorable view of him personally, while 48 percent disapprove of his performance and hold an unfavorable view of him as a person. While two-thirds of voters describe Walker as someone who is “able to get things done,” 50 percent also say that Wisconsin is falling behind other states economically.

That’s a perception that plainly frustrates Walker, who laces into the state’s limp economic performance during Burke’s service in former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration. He calls his predecessors — Burke included — a “losing team.” Walker points out over and over that, as of last month, the state was fourth in the Midwest in job creation — no longer “dead last,” as Burke’s ads claim.

If “We’re No. 4!” is something less than an electrifying rationale for seeking national office, Walker continues to leave the door cracked to a 2016 presidential run. Pressed by reporters on his future intentions, Walker stuck to the I-have-no-current-plans formula of the coy presidential hopeful.

“My plan is to be governor for the next four years. The plan I’ve laid out, talked about publicly, is a four-year plan, it’s not a two-year plan or a year-and-a-half plan,” Walker said.

Asked if that means he’s ruling out a national campaign in 2016, Walker wouldn’t budge: “I’ve said, my plan’s simple. I’m planning to be here for the next four years.”