Here & Now

"Four More Years:" Walker Announces Run For A Third Term

Frederica Freyberg:

After winning two general elections and one recall election for governor, surrounded by family and long-time supporters, Governor Scott Walker announced Sunday that he is officially in the race for re-election in 2018. His campaign kickoff was in Waukesha.

Scott Walker:

I'm pleased, I’m thrilled on behalf of our outstanding lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch and I, to announce today that Rebecca and I are asking for four more years to serve as your governor and lieutenant governor to move Wisconsin forward!

[cheers and applause]

Crowd:

Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

Scott Walker:

That's right. Four more years. Four more years to keep moving this state forward, looking ahead. We want a state where everyone shares. Everyone shares in our economic prosperity, whether you live in a big city or a small town, from one end of the state to the other. We want everyone to share in the Wisconsin comeback so that everyone can find not just a job, but a career to support themselves and their families going forward.

[cheers and applause]

Looking ahead, we want a state where every child, every child can have access to a great education. Whether it’s like Matt and Alex did at a traditional public school, a charter school, a choice school, a private school, a homeschool, a virtual school environment, wherever it might be. We trust parents to make the right decision for their sons and their daughters, not just for student success, because we want to energize the next generation of the 21st century workforce here in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

As you just heard, Governor Walker’s re-election announcement touted education and the workforce, among other accomplishments like tax cuts. But he didn’t mention the state’s newly-minted $3 billion deal with Foxconn. We’ll have more on the week’s Foxconn developments later in the program, but we wondered why the governor left Wisconsin’s deal with the electronics giant out of his campaign remarks. Here’s what UW-Milwaukee political scientist Mordecai Lee says about that.

Mordecai Lee:

With Scott Walker, he’s such a good politician that there’s always a reason. It could be they’ve done some internal polling and they’ve found Republicans are mixed about it. In other words, some of them think this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But it could be there are some libertarian Republicans who think, “I'm not sure this is a very good idea. This is corporate welfare. Or this is putting all your money on one instead of spreading your money around.” So it’s possible that he’s not sure that it’s a winner in terms of mobilizing his base. We know already that there are Democrats who are against it, but that might be more reflexive than anything else. And when it comes to this situation, he can boast about the potential of the contract, but by next November, nobody’s going to know if the potential worked or not. There can be beginning construction. They’re going to have a minimal crew. They’re going to have minimal employment. So it could be that if he wants to run on what he’s accomplished, past tense, that this contract is not the thing that fits into that box.