Walker vows to compete in Florida GOP primary
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday vowed to compete in the Florida Republican presidential primary a week after indicating it might be wise for him to allocate his resources elsewhere.
Speaking to reporters after a speech at a cattle call of GOP presidential hopefuls in Orlando, Fla., Walker sought to walk back his previous comments.
“If I didn’t think I could compete, I wouldn’t be here today,” Walker said, according to CNN. “I wouldn’t have made four trips to Florida [this year] and many trips in the past.”
{mosads}”If I were to run, we could compete anywhere in the country and we’d compete to try and win anywhere in the country,” he added.
Last week on the Laura Ingraham radio show, Walker said it would be difficult to compete in Florida when two other top-tier GOP contenders call the state home.
“If we chose to get in, I don’t think there’s a state out there we wouldn’t play in, other than maybe Florida, where [former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush and [Sen.] Marco Rubio, in some of the polls, are essentially tied,” Walker said.
He said Bush would “eat up a good amount of that financial advantage” he has on the field by spending money campaigning in the state’s expensive media markets, noting that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), who hosted Tuesday’s economic summit, had to spend $100 million on his successful reelection bid last year.
In the Ingraham interview, Walker suggested he would instead focus his resources on the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He’s currently leading the GOP field in Hawkeye State.
Walker hasn’t officially entered the GOP presidential field yet, but he’s been moving towards a White House bid for months. He says he’ll announce his final decision once the Wisconsin legislature completes the budgeting process, potentially later this month.
On Tuesday, Walker joined a handful of other Republican presidential hopefuls at Scott’s economic summit, where he boasted about the fiscal reforms he’s enacted that he said have turned Wisconsin into an economic powerhouse.
He said under his watch, the unemployment rate in the Badger State had fallen from 8.2 percent to 4.4 percent, that the labor force participation rate had skyrocketed, and that he turned a $3.6 billion budget deficit into a surplus, fully funded the state’s pension fund and balanced the budget four years running.
“I tell you that if a state that hasn’t gone for a Republican since 1984 can not only see those reforms enacted, but elect me not once, not twice, but three times and actually gained majorities in both houses of the legislature … there’s no doubt that with the right approach we can do the same in Washington,” Walker said.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed..
