TOUGH IN WISCONSIN – AT 7:46 A.M. ET:  Governor Scott Walker is running for re-election.  One of the nation's most successful governors, he is often mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate for 2016. 

Democrats hate him, in part because he took on the public-service unions and won.  Scott Walker saved Wisconsin from economic decline.   The haters tried to recall him, and he became the first governor in American history to win a recall election.  In fact, he did better than when first elected.

But the big guns are trained on him.  And remember that Wisconsin has a large, powerful "progressive" voter pool.  One of its U.S. senators, Tammy Baldwin, is probably the most left-leaning member of the Senate. 

We expected that, because of Walker's record, he would easily win re-election.  But the polls are tight, and worry is starting to set in.  From the Washington Post: 

“On just about every measure that matters, Wisconsin is much better off than we were four years ago,” Walker says. “So in any other state, or at any other time in this state’s history, a record like that should warrant reelection, right?”

But Wisconsin is not any other state. It is one of the most closely divided purple states in the country. The most recent Marquette Law School poll showed that “the Wisconsin governor’s race has tightened to a dead heat” with Walker tied with former Doyle commerce secretary Mary Burke, 46-46 among registered voters. (He holds a 3-point lead among likely voters.) And while Walker has outraised his opponent, he knows he is still public enemy No. 1 to the union bosses and points out that the AFL-CIO recently announced that it is planning to spend at least $300 million this year to unseat GOP governors in five states — Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and here in Wisconsin.

“My real opponent is complacency,” Walker says, “people being lulled into thinking, just because I won before that somehow that means we are just going to walk into reelection. The left has not forgotten. The haters out there — the unions and others — certainly aren’t spending their money elsewhere. They are going after me and a handful of governors, because they know that’s where the action is, not in the House, not in the Senate.”

COMMENT:  Losing Walker would be a disaster.  He is the best of the best.  But this will not be an easy race.  Indeed, if you look around the country, Republicans are not doing as well as we had a right to expect.  Obama may be intensely unpopular, but that unpopularity may not affect some races at the state level, where local concerns and images count the most.

The November election is three and a half months away.  Nothing is in the bag.

July 15, 2014