On Sunday morning, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took a moment to describe the résumé of his ideal 2016 Republican presidential candidate.
Coincidentally, that résumé sounded a lot like his own.
“I think both the presidential and the vice presidential nominee should either be a former or current governor, people who have done successful things in their states, who have taken on big reforms, who are ready to move America forward,” he said on ABC’s This Week.
Asked if he was ruling out 2016 potential candidates Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, he admitted he was.
“It’s got to be somebody who’s viewed as being exceptionally removed from Washington,” he said.
Walker just so happens to be a current governor known for instituting at least one “big reform” in his state: He became a national figure and one of America’s most high-profile governors in 2011, when he successfully passed a law eliminating the collective bargaining rights of Wisconsin public sector employees.
The law faced fierce resistance from the state’s historically strong unions, but Walker nonetheless prevailed, and even weathered a subsequent recall election. The anti-collective bargaining law is now being debated before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
While Walker’s policies did not win him many fans among Democrats and union members, they did earn him the loyalty of the national Republican donor base. The governor raised over $30 million during the 2012 recall election, and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity super PAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on pro-Walker advertising.
Walker is up for reelection in 2014, and a recent poll by Marquette Law School finds him narrowly beating Democratic challenger Mary Burke by 2%. The same poll finds that Walker is the top choice in the 2016 GOP presidential primary among Wisconsin Republicans, beating out fellow Wisconsinite Rep. Paul Ryan.
Walker praised Ryan, although he hinted that the former vice presidential candidate would not be his ideal 2016 nominee.
“Paul Ryan, if he had a fan club, I’d be the president of that,” he said.
Ned Resnikoff is an urban policy analyst, researcher, writer, and editor. His byline has appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Dissent, and The Nation. He writes the newsletter Public Comment, which can be found at publiccomment.blog.