Walker signals he won’t invest in Florida primary

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told donors at a private gathering in Missouri that he doesn’t plan to invest a lot of time or money into winning the Florida primary, according to a report in RealClearPolitics.

One donor at the gathering said Walker told the group it “doesn’t make a ton of sense for him to pour cash into Florida” because former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) are expected to have significant advantages in the Sunshine State, according to the RCP report.

{mosads}Walker’s team pushed back against the report.

“The Governor is going to play everywhere as evidenced by his travel to 11 states since becoming a candidate,” spokeswoman AshLee Strong told The Hill. “We have long said Governor Walker has appeal with voters of all kinds across all states but we have also acknowledged the obvious that there are two Floridians in the race.”

According to a Mason-Dixon poll released last week, Bush has a big lead over the GOP field in Florida, taking 28 percent support. Rubio is in second place with 16 percent, followed by Walker at 13 percent.

Florida’s March 15 primary will be among the first winner-take-all primaries in the country. It will also likely be among the most expensive primary contests.

This is the second time Walker has had to push back against reports that he doesn’t plan to compete in the Florida primary.

In May, before he was an official presidential candidate, Walker said on the Laura Ingraham radio show that it would be difficult to compete in the Sunshine State with Bush and Rubio in the race.

“If we chose to get in, I don’t think there’s a state out there we wouldn’t play in, other than maybe Florida, where Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, in some of the polls, are essentially tied,” Walker said.
 
At the time, Walker predicted Bush would have to “eat up a good amount of that financial advantage” he has on the field by spending money campaigning in the state’s expensive media markets.

Walker quickly walked the comments back, vowing he would “compete to try and win anywhere in the country.”

“If I didn’t think I could compete, I wouldn’t be here today,” Walker told reporters after a cattle call of GOP contenders in Florida. “I wouldn’t have made four trips to Florida [this year] and many trips in the past.”

Still, Walker appears to be plotting a path to the nomination that banks on him accumulating delegates from Midwestern states in what’s expected to be an extended primary.

That starts with Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, where Walker has been the frontrunner for months.