Walker Indicates He May Run For President ‘Someday’

Gov. Scott Walker is refusing to rule out a run for president on Wednesday, though he emphasized that his focus is on the governorship.

Walker said nothing new about technical college education during at least the first of his stops Thursday at technical schools around the state. So when he met with the media at the Milwaukee Area Technical College in Oak Creek the first question for Walker was the subject of much speculation since he won re-election Tuesday: Is he running for president in 2016?

“After three elections in four years, I’m just happy to be governor right now. Someday, I don’t know when that might be — it could be six years, it could be 12 years from now, maybe. I’m pretty young at 47. But right now, my focus is on enacting the things we talked about in the campaign,” said Walker.

Walker said he talked to almost all of the newly elected Republican members of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, but said it was about them leading in Washington, D.C.

University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Ken Mayer said if a politician is seriously thinking about running for president, he or she usually takes some early steps: “Trips to key primary states — Iowa and New Hampshire — and Walker’s already made a couple of forays into those states.”

Mayer said early steps also include giving policy talks in national forums. Later on, there are more formal steps like setting up and registering an exploratory campaign committee, and after that a formal campaign panel.

Mayer said it was clear that by early 2007 that Barack Obama was running for president in 2008. In other words, Scott Walker and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan may have just a few months to decide something official for 2016.