Wary of GOP complacency, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker braces for a possible 'blue wave'

BOSCOBEL - This is Scott Walker’s 15th campaign in 28 years, and he can see which way the wind is blowing.

“The wind’s not at our back. It’s not at our side. It is firmly in our face,” the governor said at a Lincoln Day Republican dinner last Saturday. “This election is going to be tougher than any one I have been involved with, including the recall.”

If a blue wave washes over Wisconsin this fall, Walker won’t be blindsided. More than six months out, he’s bracing for it. To watch him campaign right now is to see a lifelong politician trying to work through the problem that November poses for Republicans like him, with Donald Trump in the White House and Democratic voters inflamed.

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“My number-one concern for almost a year has been complacency, not just of (GOP) voters but even of activists,” Walker said in an interview during his stop at the Boscobel Bowl and Banquet. The governor cited a recent state poll by the Marquette Law School showing a 10-point “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters.

“People say to me all the time: … ‘You got this' … 'We’re fine, there’s nothing to get worked up about.’… We almost needed the jarring effect of a statewide election (loss). Because suddenly people go, ‘He’s not kidding!” said Walker, referring to the double-digit win April 3 by liberal candidate Rebecca Dallet in a highly politicized state Supreme Court race.

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It followed the loss of a GOP state Senate seat in a January special election.

Walker responded on Twitter to the first defeat by calling it a “wakeup call” and to the second by saying “we are at risk of #BlueWave in WI.”

His tone of alarm surprised some people, because Walker is widely viewed as the favorite in his re-election race. His campaign assets are formidable. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is 2.9 percent. Just over half the electorate (53%) thinks the state is going “in the right direction.” The governor is a hardened campaigner with three statewide victories since 2010. The Democratic field is full of unproven unknowns. He will have far more money and political experience than whoever his opponent turns out to be.

Walker’s job ratings have climbed back from the dive they took after his failed presidential bid. They are exactly where they were at this point four years ago — exquisitely divided. In Marquette’s last survey, 46.79 percent of registered voters approved of his performance and 46.78 percent disapproved, his positive and negative ratings separated by one-hundredth of point.

Along with his strengths, Walker also has serious challenges. In interviews, voters regularly complain about career politicians. Walker is asking them to vote for him for governor a fourth time — and before that he was a state representative and then Milwaukee's county executive. The Foxconn project in Racine County, promising thousands of jobs but requiring massive state subsidies, is a political wild card, especially in parts of Wisconsin far removed from those jobs. Those voters alarmed by the public costs include some conservatives who have backed Walker in the past.

This is the first time Walker has run for governor when his own party controls Washington, which can be a major disadvantage in mid-term elections.

Finally, there are the added complications of running as a Trump-era Republican.

“I think it’s even more complicated than people think,” Walker said in the interview. Democratic voters not only detest Trump, but the president’s nonstop media presence keeps them perpetually stirred up, he suggested.

“He’s in the press so often — every day, almost every minute he’s in there — so for someone who doesn’t like him, it’s like a constant reminder and motivator,” Walker said.

The left is “more motivated than any time I’ve seen in the last 25 years,” he told Republicans in Boscobel attending the Lincoln Day dinner for Grant and Crawford counties in swingy southwest Wisconsin.

On the right, meanwhile, some Trump voters are mad at Republicans in Washington for not getting enough done.

“That's to me another subtext,” said Walker. “Right now, I think they’re more upset with Republicans in Congress than they are with those (lawmakers) on the left, because they just assume the left is not going to be with (Trump).”

Trump’s approval is at 43% in Wisconsin, four points below Walker’s in Marquette’s last Wisconsin poll, making the president a potential drag on the governor here.

While there is huge overlap in their support, Trump is more popular than Walker with men and far more unpopular with women. About 15% of Trump supporters disapprove of Walker. On the flip side, 16% of anti-Trump voters are pro-Walker. Those numbers underscore the challenge of trying to turn out the Trump vote while also winning some swing voters unhappy with Trump.

How does Walker intend to navigate the tricky waters of the Trump mid-term?

He’s doubling-down on “retail” politics, he says, stepping up his own campaign schedule and his organization’s outreach to voters. Appearing before College Republicans in Madison, he implored them to organize their campuses, even if they’re politically outnumbered. He told Boscobel Republicans his party would have to be more organized than it has ever been and engage in a massive program of personal contact (neighbor to neighbor, co-worker to co-worker, church member to church member).

“In this world filled with Facebook and Twitter ... people don’t know what’s real, they don’t know what they can believe,” Walker said in the interview. “Last election we did just over two million door-to-door contacts. I think we’re going to have to do more. ... We’ll do ads, we'll do all that stuff, but I just think in the end, the most effective way to get to, particularly, persuadable voters is through a personal contact.”

Worried about Democratic turnout, the governor is trying to light a fire under voters in his own party. One way is by painting a scary picture of the opposition.

“The left is angry and their rhetoric is filled with hatred and they are motivated,” he told supporters in Boscobel. “They’re angry at me, they’re angry at the president, they’re angry at all of you, they’re angry at anybody who even thinks about voting Republican.”

Melanie Conklin, a spokesperson for the state Democratic Party, said "the past year in particular has shown the Republican Party to be the party of hate, anger and division" and said Walker was "desperately attempting to salvage a toxic Republican brand."

Another way the governor is seeking to pump up his base is by reminding Republicans he could lose. That message is a hard sell for some GOP voters who see the economy growing, are used to their party winning and have little respect for the Democratic field.

“Walker used this term a week or two ago, this ‘blue wave?’ I just don’t see that,” said Brian Nelson, who owns a sawmill in Prairie du Chien and was in the GOP crowd in Boscobel.

It is also a message that sends mixed signals about Walker’s own campaign, which like all campaigns is trying to project strength and confidence about its prospects at the same time Walker is talking about how tough it’s going to be. The governor said his comments about his party’s recent defeats in Wisconsin are being misconstrued.

“This is wake-up call, not a panic call. There is a difference,” Walker said at the Lincoln Day dinner. “The wakeup call was what we saw in the Supreme Court election — that we just can’t assume that our friends and our neighbors know about the positive things we’ve done and the plans we have to move the state forward. We've got to tell them. But a panic call would be if you had no record. Or you had no plans, you had no strategy, you had no idea and you’re just panicking. That’s not what Republicans are doing in this state.”

While he tries to fire up the party faithful, Walker is also trying to placate restive Trump voters, saying their frustrations with Republicans in Congress over issues like Obamacare should not be aimed at Republican governors like him.

“I shake my head sometimes. People say, ‘Oh, I’m upset with Republicans in Washington.’ I say, ‘Yeah, but look at us!' ” he said at the Lincoln Day dinner in Boscobel. “I am frustrated with Washington! But whatever frustration you have with Washington or anybody else … don’t take it out on Wisconsin Republicans, because in Wisconsin we are the cure to the problems of Washington.”

And while he tries to appeal to frustrated Trump voters, Walker is also making a play for more moderate voters. He and his strategists have touted the “Walker-Baldwin” voter, based on notion that some small but meaningful segment of swing voters will cast ballots this fall for both Walker and U.S. Senate Democrat Tammy Baldwin. On the policy front, Walker is talking up new state spending on education and health care.

“He’s being responsive to what the public wants,” Walker strategist Keith Gilkes said at a recent Wispolitics.com forum. “We are compassionate conservatives.”

At same event, Democratic strategist Tanya Bjork said Walker was trying to reinvent himself this year on two issues — education and health care — on which he and his party are vulnerable.

“If you are going to survive a wave, you have to be well on top of it. And … the poll numbers show he isn’t,” Bjork said of Walker.

Walker’s path to re-election will be immensely easier this fall if his Democratic opponent is underfunded and ineffective, which could certainly happen. (The Democratic primary is in August).

In interviews, many Democratic voters are underwhelmed by the field or confess to knowing few of the candidates.

“There is I think your biggest problem — I don’t know who the Democratic candidates are and I’m a pretty liberal guy,” said one of those voters, Shan Abbasi of Whitefish Bay, in a recent interview. “It doesn’t matter how much people like or dislike (Walker) if the opposition isn’t strong enough.”

Some Wisconsin Democrats can’t quite imagine beating Walker after falling short in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

But if Democrats do muster an effective challenge, you need only listen to experienced politicians in the governor’s own party to appreciate the risks this year poses to him. One of those politicians is longtime GOP Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner.

“Try as you might to localize an election, when the president’s approval ratings are not so hot — and Trump’s are not so hot as Obama’s were not so hot in 2010 — it ends up becoming a nationalized election,” said Sensenbrenner. “Walker is going to be in for a tough re-election. There is no question about that.”

Another one of those politicians is Walker himself, who told College Republicans the other day, “This is going to be an incredibly difficult election.”