Mitch Perry
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, once considered among the front-runners for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, will announce he’s quitting the race at 6 p.m. Eastern time, according to an initial report from The New York Times confirmed by the other sources.
“The short answer is money,” an anonymous supporter of Walker tells the Times. “He’s made a decision not to limp into Iowa.”
The writing on the wall for Walker came on Sunday, when a CNN/ORC poll had him at below one-half of 1 percent in the polls.
As the governor of nearby Wisconsin, Walker had been pinning much of his hope on winning in Iowa, where the caucuses start the voting season next February. And for several months, Walker led polling in the Hawkeye State.
But the ascendance this summer of Donald Trump seriously hurt Walker, and his poll numbers started dipping in Iowa during the past month. A Quinnipiac poll released last week in Iowa had Walker at just 3 percent, a 15 percent drop in the polls since early July. That put him in eighth place there.
Walker became a contender for the nomination after he won re-election as governor last year. It was his third victory in what he called a blue state in four years. A year after being elected for his first term in 2010, he made severe changes to public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin, known as Act 10. The uproar over those moves led to a recall election later in 2011. He won that recall election, a feat never before achieved by a sitting U.S. governor. The law virtually eliminated collective bargaining by public workers.
Walker thought that success would translate on the national level, but it didn’t move the needle for him. Last week he called for the end of public sector labor unions, abolishing the federal labor relations board and enacting national right-to-work law as part of his plan to take his Wisconsin battle with labor unions to the White House.
That won’t be happening now. However, he does return back to Wisconsin to serve out the remaining three years of his term. At 47, he could still have a future in national politics.
