The Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, a cheerful warrior for smaller government who has been accused of circumscribing the life prospects of thousands of his constituents, on Monday staged his first rally as an early leading presidential candidate, after an online announcement earlier in the day.
Promising to bring to the country the same blend of fiscal austerity and conservative social policies that have made him a deeply divisive figure in his home state, Walker said the US had fallen into a culture of dependency at home and cowed leadership abroad, but said: “The good news is that there is still time left to turn things around.”
“If our reforms can work in a blue state like Wisconsin, they can work anywhere in America,” Walker said.
Making a comparatively late entry to a field that already contains 14 other Republican candidates eager to cut taxes, stop voter fraud, liberalize gun laws and strengthen border security, Walker faces an early challenge to distinguish himself from the pack.
Polling in the early voting state of Iowa, however, suggests that some of the work of achieving a national profile has already been achieved, thanks to Walker’s winner-take-all fight with public-sector unions in Wisconsin in 2011, the year he assumed office. Survey averages have for months shown Walker in first place among Republicans in Iowa, and he currently polls at 19 points to 10 for runner-up Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor.
Walker won the fight, stripping unions’ collective bargaining rights and docking take-home pay in a budget-cutting spree estimated to have saved the state $3bn over three years.
“Since I’ve been governor, we took on the unions and won,” the candidate said on Monday, to cheers.
Supporters at the event said they had come to urge Walker to seek a larger stage for his achievements.
“I’ll be sad for Wisconsin if he does make it,” one supporter, Lisa Bishop, who attended the event with her husband Jeff, told the Guardian.
The event drew out-of-state supporters too. James Bragg, a Dallas native who spends summers in Wisconsin, was selling buttons that said “Walker for president”, “United we stand” and “Benghazi matters”.
Asked why he was mobilizing for Walker, Bragg said “there’s no work to do in Texas”, which has a Republican governor, a GOP-majority legislature and two current or former statewide officeholders running for president in 2016.
On the stage, Walker gave a national audience a taste of what to expect on the campaign trail. While he can seem methodical in his remarks, he showed flashes of the true-believer animation that has won him such broad support in the conservative establishment, from the grass roots to major donors like the Koch brothers.
“Since I’ve been governor, we passed lawsuit reform and regulatory reform,” Walker said. “We defunded Planned Parenthood and enacted pro-life legislation. We passed castle doctrine and concealed carry. And we now require a photo ID to vote in the state of Wisconsin.”
He also called for the repeal of Obamacare.
Studies have suggested that many Wisconsin residents have not fared well under Walker. In the three years after a climactic showdown at the state capitol drew tens of thousands of protesters and prompted Democratic legislators to flee the state in an effort to deny a quorum, public-sector employees such as nurses, teachers, snow-plow drivers and social workers saw their paychecks shrink an estimated 8%-10%, on median salaries of about $44,000.
Walker’s fight against public-sector unions has since expanded to the private sector, with a “right-to-work” law that banned workplace agreements requiring employees to pay compulsory union dues.
Walker’s belief that public employees had been overcompensated also grew to encompass an attack on a 100-year-old living wage law in Wisconsin; efforts to secure paid leave for employees; and efforts to raise the minimum wage from the federally mandated $7.25 per hour.
“We understand that true freedom and prosperity don’t come from the mighty hand of the government, they come from empowering people to live their own lives and control their own destinies through the dignity that comes from work,” Walker said at his rally.
The governor also touted laws requiring drug screenings for welfare recipients and other assertive social policies.
“In Wisconsin, we enacted a program that says that adults who are able to work must be enrolled in one of our job training programs before they can get a welfare check,” he said. “Now, as of the budget I just signed, we are also making sure they can take a drug test.
“When I proposed this, the status quo defenders cried that we were making it harder to get government assistance. My response? No, we’re making it easier to get a job.”
