No Republican running for president may have suffered more from the rise of the “outsider” candidates than Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Once considered among the party’s top tier and its front-runner in Iowa, his poll numbers have begun to collapse. Walker, who holds the No. 6 spot in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings, has a record as a conservative governor of a blue state appealed to dueling factions of the GOP: conservatives and the moderate-minded establishment. But the rise of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina has neatly coincided with the governor’s slide in the polls.
Walker’s campaign placed a big bet on Iowa, and his downward spiral in the state could spell disaster for his campaign. Walker fell to tenth place in a Qunnipiac University survey of Iowan voters released on Friday. He led the field in Quinnipiac’s July poll, but has since dropped 15 percentage points while Donald Trump and Ben Carson have skyrocketed into the first two slots.
During his first visit to the Hawkeye State as a presidential candidate, the Washington Examiner witnessed the governor greeting supporters with the message that he planned to spend more time in Iowa than Wisconsin, his home and neighboring state. Elsewhere, the governor had reportedly “told supporters that he needs to win the Iowa caucuses to prove he is formidable and to gain slingshot momentum to compete in states like New Hampshire and Nevada.”
A Walker aide who spoke with the Examiner about the governor’s performance in Iowa said people have overlooked some findings from the Quinnipiac poll, including his high favorability rating (net 47 percentage points) and that 22 percent of Iowan voters have not heard enough about him and want to know more. The Walker aide said the campaign was not concerned with the results of “snap polls” at this stage of the race, and added that voters’ minds will change as people begin to focus more on policies than attitudes.
“We’re just keeping our head down and going to keep campaigning,” the aide said. “It’s Big Ten football: blocking, tackling, all at the same time.”
Some analysts think the Walker campaign has found itself behind on the scoreboard because of how other candidates have dominated the airwaves.
“I think the Republican race is being dominated by candidates who are getting the most media attention, and Scott Walker isn’t one of those candidates,” said Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan political analyst at the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report. “I think Walker has the opportunity to come back as his campaign starts spending money and airing ads in key states. … Walker should have enough money and campaign infrastructure to stay in the race, even after a [hypothetical] loss in Iowa.
During his 2007 presidential campaign, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani failed to recover from his decision to bypass the early states in favor of a longer-term strategy. Ford O’Connell, a veteran of Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said Walker’s decline in the polls has begun to resemble Giuliani’s precipitous drop eight years ago.
“What he’s got going for him [that Giuliani did not] is he’s a governor,” O’Connell said, suggesting voters’ may value Walker’s record of accomplishment. “I have no idea [if he can comeback]. He’s going to have to find a way to get into Trump’s orbit.”
The governor’s campaign has begun a reset of sorts to build momentum before Wednesday’s debate and reverse the downward trend. It has announced its intention to unveil a new “Day One promise” each week going forward about something the governor would do immediately upon entering the White House.
On Monday in Las Vegas, the governor will reveal a new promise about how he will thwart “big government union bosses” upon taking office in January 2017. An aide told the Examiner the plan will involve prohibiting the government from withholding the portion of union dues from workers’ paychecks that would be used for political activity.
But some Republican strategists said they doubt Walker’s campaign can make a comeback.
“Is it fixable? I don’t think so,” said one GOP political strategist not affiliated with any campaign who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “The rest of the field would have to collapse a la 2008 for him to be able to come back, in my opinion.”
“It’s just one screw up after another for him and that team. Walker’s strength was that he could win in a purple/blue state, could stand up to the Left and win, and he put the state in pretty good shape after the recession with conservative policies. He hasn’t really told that story at all. Instead he lurches around on issues he’s completely unprepared to deal with.”
Another Republican strategist, also unaffiliated with any campaign, said they found the governor’s strategy perplexing.
“Walker is the most obvious example of someone who became panicked by summer poll numbers and tried to shift his tone and message to reflect what he thought voters were responding to. It was a huge mistake,” said the strategist who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “His early message of a blue-collar fighter with a record of success was perfect. The idea that Walker is a culture warrior who condemns people for not being conservative enough is just not credible. I’m not sure why the hell they went down that road. Walker needs to get back to the guy he was before the first debate.”
Walker has not been shy about explaining his campaign’s strategy. In a recent interview, he said he thinks only twelve states will pick the next president of the United States. And much of the governor’s plan has focused on the midwestern states, with Iowa at the top of his list. In a radio interview with Sean Hannity on Thursday, Walker acknowledged that he was “too careful” in the first debate.
When Walker took the primetime debate stage in Cleveland, Ohio, last month, he trailed only Trump and Jeb Bush in national polls of GOP voters. As he heads into Wednesday’s debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California he sits in seventh place nationally, according to RealClearPolitics’ average of polls.
The governor’s allies hope he does not wait until the next debate to emerge as the fighter they remember having taken Wisconsin by storm. Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who has advised multiple Republicans running for president in 2016, departed Walker’s team in March following comments she made questioning “Iowa’s front-running status.”
Mair said Walker might need to reintegrate the consultants who helped him first win the governorship in Wisconsin five years ago if he wants his presidential campaign to succeed.
“[I]t’s been a pretty steep and painful drop for Walker from where he was early this year to where he is now, and one not just attributable to caucus-goers focusing on the latest shiny object, but also to some serious missteps,” Mair said in an email. “To a lot of voters, with his flip-flopping, lurches to the right and perceived pandering, he looks a bit 2008-Romneyesque, which is not very broadly appealing. Walker needs to ignore what his coterie of new consultants are telling him, ignore polling that at surface depth suggests everyone benefits from copycatting Donald Trump, and he needs to get back to being himself and make the case for the real Scott Walker as opposed to the odd construct he seems to have become in recent months.”
“Voters like the real Scott Walker; that was the guy who sparked interest in Iowa last winter; he needs to make a reappearance.”
