{"id":19692,"date":"2015-09-22T08:02:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T15:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/walker-exits-2016-race-with-harsh-words-for-trump\/"},"modified":"2015-09-22T08:02:43","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T15:02:43","slug":"walker-exits-2016-race-with-harsh-words-for-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/walker-exits-2016-race-with-harsh-words-for-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Walker exits 2016 race with harsh words for Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

MADISON, Wis. <\/strong>\u2014 Warning that the Republican presidential race has become too nasty, Scott Walker exited the 2016 campaign on Monday and urged others to quit, too, and \u201cclear the field\u201d so someone can emerge to take down front-runner Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

The announcement marked a dramatic fall for Walker, who was struggling to generate money and enthusiasm after surging into the race\u2019s top tier earlier in the year. He will return to his job as governor of Wisconsin, where his term runs through 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top,\u201d Walker said in a news conference. \u201cI encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker said that is \u201cfundamentally important to the future of the party and more importantly to the future of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the last Republicans to enter the race, Walker joined former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as one of the first to leave it. He found himself unable to adjust to Trump\u2019s popularity or break out in either of the first two GOP debates. Both candidates warned of the billionaire businessman\u2019s influence on the GOP as they stepped aside, although neither called him out by name.<\/p>\n

\u201cSadly, the debate taking place in the Republican party today is not focused on that optimistic view of America,\u201d Walker said. \u201cInstead, it has drifted into personal attacks.\u201d Walker\u2019s sons, Matt and Alex, attended his speech. They each had taken a semester off from college to campaign with him.<\/p>\n

Anthony Scaramucci, one of Walker\u2019s top fundraisers, expressed hope that other struggling candidates will heed Walker\u2019s call to distill the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what he did shows real leadership,\u201d Scaramucci said. \u201cHe\u2019s sending a signal to the low single-digiters \u2014 the new 1 percenters, if you will \u2014 that it\u2019s time to go, for the good of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s departure prompted a good riddance from Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, reflecting the hostility between the governor and organized labor.<\/p>\n

\u201cScott Walker is still a disgrace,\u201d Trumka said, \u201cjust no longer national.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s exit was in many ways more dramatic than Perry\u2019s.<\/p>\n

He was thought to be a leader in the big pack for much of the year and built a massive national organization, with paid staff spread across the country, that dwarfed many of his rivals in scale and scope.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he made any really big mistakes,\u201d said Iowa state Sen. Mark Costello, who endorsed Walker earlier this year. \u201cBut people lost enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker, 47, tried to appeal to religious conservatives, tea party conservatives and the more traditional GOP base. He cast himself as an unintimidated conservative fighter who had a record of victories in a state that hasn\u2019t voted Republican for president since 1984.<\/p>\n

Like Perry, however, Walker found little room for such a message in a race dominated by Trump.<\/p>\n

Trump tweeted in response to Walker\u2019s decision, \u201che\u2019s a very nice person and has a great future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker came to the race having won election in Wisconsin three times in four years, and having gained a national following among donors and conservatives by successfully pushing his state to strip union bargaining rights from its public workers.<\/p>\n

Walker pointed to those Wisconsin wins, in a state that twice voted for Barack Obama as president, as signs that he could advance a conservative agenda as the GOP\u2019s White House nominee.<\/p>\n

He called himself \u201caggressively normal\u201d and made a splash in January with a well-received speech before religious conservatives in Iowa.<\/p>\n

Groups backing Walker went on to raise $26 million, tapping wealthy donors whom Walker had cultivated in his years as governor and during his successful effort to win a recall election in 2012.<\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s primary super PAC, called Unintimidated, had just begun spending for a major push in Iowa \u2014 reflecting the governor\u2019s last-ditch strategy to place all of his chips on that first-to-vote state.<\/p>\n

The super PAC told federal regulators in a filing Friday that it had spent more than $1.6 million boosting Walker this year, most recently on a $50,000 mailing to Iowa voters. It will now return what it hasn\u2019t spent to its donors.<\/p>\n

Many of Walker\u2019s troubles were not of Trump\u2019s making.<\/p>\n

He took days to clarify whether he supported ending birthright citizenship. He initially showed interest in building a wall between the U.S. and Canada, only to laugh it off as ridiculous. He also declared he wasn\u2019t a career politician, despite having held public office for 22 straight years.<\/p>\n

After his fade in polls, Walker took a more aggressive approach, promising to \u201cwreak havoc\u201d on Washington. He vowed to take on unions as president, just as he did as governor, outlawing them for federal government workers.<\/p>\n

But the anti-union policy proposal fell flat; announced in the days before the second GOP debate, it wasn\u2019t mentioned at all \u2014 by Walker or anyone else \u2014 on stage.<\/p>\n

While only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had more super PAC money available to boost their chances in the original 17-person 2016 Republican field, Walker struggled to generate money for his official campaign.<\/p>\n

He has yet to report fundraising totals to federal regulators, but top fundraisers and donors have said his plummeting poll numbers left them struggling to generate cash.<\/p>\n

Walker called his senior staff to the governor\u2019s mansion in Madison on Monday to review recent polling, in which he was mired at the bottom, and his campaign\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed,\u201d said Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire media mogul from Minneapolis who had backed Walker\u2019s campaign. \u201cHe\u2019s a good man and would have been a good president.\u201d<\/p>\n

As word spread of his decision to exit the race, Republican operatives in Iowa working for other campaigns were already making plans to contact state lawmakers who had committed to support Walker.<\/p>\n

Walker had assembled a campaign organization in every one of Iowa\u2019s 99 counties and had a number of state lawmakers committed to him.<\/p>\n

Cliff Hurst, one of Walker\u2019s New Hampshire co-chairs, was already planning to shift to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

He said he knew about three days ago that \u201cit was over\u201d and had been discussing an endorsement of Rubio as of Monday morning, before Walker\u2019s announcement became official.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Bykowicz reported from Washington.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at: http:\/\/twitter.com\/sbauerAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MADISON, Wis. \u2014 Warning that the Republican presidential race has become too nasty, Scott Walker exited the 2016 campaign on Monday and urged others to quit, too, and \u201cclear the field\u201d so someone can emerge to take down front-runner Donald Trump. The announcement marked a dramatic fall for Walker, who was struggling to generate money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19692"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}