The Republican primary in Wisconsin on April 3 has come to include a fun question: Which candidates likes Gov. Scott Walker more than the other, as he heads to a recall election?
Wisconsin is at this point a very polarized state, with roughly half of the voters despising Walker — a large enough share, certainly, to start the recall that will be held later this spring — but on the other hand, the other half of the state is thoroughly supporting him. His approval and disapproval ratings are consistently close in polling, and he has narrow leads over his potential Democratic opponents.
For his part, Walker has said he will stay neutral in the presidential primary, telling the Washington Examiner: “I’m not focused on anything other than the recall, just because that alone keeps me pretty occupied.”
But that isn’t stopping the candidates themselves from coming out full-throated for him — and seeking to tap into his base of support.
“Governor Walker is, in my opinion, an excellent governor,” Mitt Romney said at during a voters’ tele-town hall on Wednesday, ABC News reports, “and I believe that he is right to stand up for the citizens of Wisconsin, and to insist that those people who are working in the public sector unions have rights to affect their wages, but that these benefits and retiree benefits have fallen out of line with the capacity of the state to pay them. And so I support the governor in his effort to rein in the excesses that have permeated the public sector union and government negotiations over the years.”
Rick Santorum is also chiming in with support for Walker, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
“We want to give every bit of support we can to someone who wants to confront the tough issues,” Santorum told an audience this past weekend, at an Americans for Prosperity event in the state. He also added: “He had the courage to go out and make the case to the people of Wisconsin and the Legislature, and I support him for doing that.”
And in an interview Tuesday with the Journal Sentinel, Santorum said: “The people that Gov. Walker was going up against — when you’re going up against public employee unions, there is no compromise in these folks; the governor did what he had to do. No matter what he was going to do, as you’ve seen in Ohio, as you’ve seen in other states, the other side goes nuclear. I think the governor said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ I don’t disagree with that strategy whatsoever.”
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is trying to use the Walker recall as a wedge against Santorum, the Associated Press reports, with a recent robocall in which the voice on the call says: “As you know the fight against big labor led by Gov. Walker isn’t over, here in Wisconsin. I was shocked to find out that Rick Santorum repeatedly supported big labor and joined with liberal Democrats in voting against right-to-work legislation during his time in Washington.”
Santorum has in turn defended himself, along with some speaking in the third person in order to make his point: “Calling Rick Santorum a friend of labor is like calling Mitt Romney a conservative. Neither are true.”
And Santorum has also burnished his credentials as a conservative who could get elected in labor-heavy areas. “Gov. Walker … is leading. He is leading this country with his courage, his ability,” he said in Bellevue, Wis. “He is willing to stand up and fight the bullies. I come from southwest Pennsylvania. I represented the old steel valley of Pittsburgh. I know what it’s like.”
