Republican Scott Walker won his third race in four years to be the governor of Wisconsin on Tuesday, defeating Democratic challenger Mary Burke in a race called by Fox News about a half-hour after polls closed.
It was a hard-fought race, with most polls leading up to the election showing Walker only narrowly ahead, often within the poll’s margin of error. Turnout was high at 2.5 million, a possible record for a November election.
Walker was boosted by strong sentiment against President Obama, with more than half of surveyed voters telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s exit polls that a majority had negative opinions of the administration.
In his victory speech, Walker sought to highlight the contrasts between his free-market conservative agenda and Obama’s administration: “We measure success by how many people are no longer dependent on the government… The real power comes from empowering people.”
The victory leaves Walker well-poised to be a serious GOP presidential contender. He’s proven an ability to win tough elections in a normally deep-blue state, after having been repeatedly targeted by liberal groups upset over his 2011 public sector union reforms.
“I congratulate Gov. Walker on a hard-fought victory,” Burke told supporters. She said that losing “feels like getting knocked down” but urged them not to give up on their ideals.
It was an especially stinging defeat for organized labor, which lost a second attempt to make an example out Walker.
“Scott Walker has sinisterly shown us the reality of how money pollutes politics. Everybody knows Scott Walker does not share Wisconsin’s values and cares more about his own political ambition,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
Walker became a national figure when he pushed reforms through the state legislature that for the first time allowed state and local government employees to opt out of joining unions, among other reforms. Protesters from the the Democratic Party and liberal movement flooded the state capital for weeks and succeeded in forcing the newly elected governor into a recall election the following year.
Walker nevertheless beat Democratic challenger Tom Barrett by a larger margin that in his first election, buoyed by donations from conservatives nationally.
“A few years ago, we took the power away from the Washington big-money special interests and gave it to the people. They didn’t much like that,” Walker told supporters.
His 2014 re-election was tougher, though. Walker was hit hard by Democrats over his 2010 promise to bring 250,000 jobs to the state. Instead, the state’s total employment rose by just 111,000 during his first term. The state’s unemployment rate is 5.5 percent, below the national rate of 5.9 and down from 7.7 percent when Walker took office.
Democrats charged that the state had lagged others and that Walker had cut too much from education.
Burke, a former executive with the Trek bicycle company, poured an estimated $5 million of her own money into the race and raised another $15 million. But Walker was able to top her by raising $25 million.
Her reputation as a businesswoman with a firm grasp of economics took a hit after it was revealed that her job growth plan had passages lifted verbatim from other Democratic campaigns.
Walker’s campaign suffered due to questions over an ongoing probe into his fundraising efforts during the 2012 election, which followed a similar earlier probe into actions by his office when he was Milwaukee County executive just prior to being governor. Walker was never charged in either probe, which his allies have said were politicized by the Democrat who ordered them, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.
