Walker: I'm leading by exiting campaign

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was in Iowa on Sunday making an impassioned case for his presidency. Less than 24 hours later, he was on national television throwing in the towel.

Walker on Monday became the second Republican to drop out of the 2016 presidential race, following two lackluster debate performances, plummeting poll numbers and fundraising concerns.

A national CNN/ORC poll released Sunday showed the governor with less than half of one percent support.

Some Walker supporters said they were shocked to see such a hasty departure, but Republicans close to the candidate said fundraising became a critical issue in the final days of the campaign.

For his part, Walker cast his exit as a way to lead by helping narrow the field for voters.

“Today, I believe that I’m being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field,” Walker said in a short speech Monday evening in Madison. “With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.”

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Walker called on other Republican candidates to exit the race in an effort to help voters coalesce around a “positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner.”

That front-runner, of course, is business mogul Donald Trump, who has dominated polls and television news cycles for most of his campaign.

“You could very well say Governor Walker is the second casualty of the ‘Summer of Trump,’” said former Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn, referring to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Perry also ended his presidential campaign this month. “(Trump) not only was sucking all the attention and oxygen out of the race but made it difficult for any candidate to try and punch through that noise.”

In recent weeks, Walker has repeatedly tried to adjust his campaign strategy to combat the Trump phenomenon in which the businessman and fellow political “outsiders” Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina have rocketed to the tops of polls.

At campaign stops in Iowa, Walker refocused his message to highlight his own shakeup of the Republican establishment after he was elected governor in Wisconsin. He also adjusted his rhetoric to try to tap into the frustration some Americans feel with their elected leaders.

But after another lackluster debate performance last week, a source close to the candidate said fundraising ground to a halt.

The source told The Des Moines Register that Walker held a meeting with senior outside advisers where “he was presented with some options and ultimately decided that he was going to go out on his own terms."

Other options included reducing campaign staff and making a push through Iowa — an option that as recently as Monday morning appeared to be on the table.

"(Iowans) are going to know us like they know their governor in this state, there's no doubt about it," Walker told Bloomberg Politics for a story that published Monday.

Walker made stops in Iowa through the weekend and just one week ago announced a 99-county campaign leadership team.

A second source close to the candidate said the Walker campaign still has money in the bank, but wasn’t hitting any of its fundraising goals and faced uncertainty that it could continue paying its bills.

Walker, unlike many of his Republican counterparts, doesn’t have a large amount of personal wealth to fall back on. According to reports, Walker has personal credit card debt as well as debt related to college costs for his two sons.

The governor’s official candidacy survived just more than two months; he announced his run on July 13.

In that time, Walker campaigned heavily in Iowa and committed to completing a “Full Grassley” Winnebago tour of the state’s 99 counties. To date, Walker has spent 21 days in Iowa, putting him at the middle of the pack among Republican candidates.

Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, endorsed Walker and was with him at several of his campaign stops during the weekend. He said he had no indication at all that the governor was bowing out.

“We had an incredible organization in Iowa,” Zaun said. “Better than any campaign that I’ve ever been involved in in the caucus process. It’s really unfortunate because I think we had an incredible candidate as well.”

Zaun, who supported Mitt Romney in 2008 and Michele Bachmann in 2012, said he’s planning to “decompress” and has not decided whether to switch his allegiance to another campaign.

With so many candidates running, Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said Walker’s exit is unsurprising in some ways.

“I assumed we would lose some of our candidates, and I assumed we would lose some of our quality candidates,” Kaufmann said. But he also acknowledged that after hearing Walker speak in Iowa this past weekend, he was caught off guard by Monday's announcement.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t see anything obvious that I can say 'Scott Walker should have done this or should have done that (during his campaign),'” he said.

In January, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll showed Walker leading the GOP pack, with 15 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers calling the Wisconsin governor their first choice. In May, he was at 17 points, seven percentage points ahead of his nearest competition.

But in recent weeks Walker struggled to hold steady and watched his poll numbers steadily drop.

In an Iowa Poll released in August, Walker had dropped into single digits with only 8 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers' support.

Walker became a conservative hero following a series of clashes with organized labor as he sought to reduce collective bargaining rights as Wisconsin’s governor in 2011. Tens of thousands of protesters descended on the capitol and Walker and his family faced death threats, drawing national attention.

In 2012, Walker became the only governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election — a point he’s touted on the campaign trail in Iowa and around the country.

Those state-level battles gained him national notoriety, and a well-received January speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit helped elevate him into the 2016 presidential conversation.

“I think he can exit the Hawkeye State with his head held high,” Kaufmann said. “This is a young man. We haven’t seen the last of Scott Walker.”