GREEN BAY, Wis. — In June 2012, the morning after Scott Walker became the first governor ever to survive a recall election, the talk of higher office began in earnest.
Some conservatives said his victory instantly placed him in the mix of potential Republican candidates for president in 2016. Then came a memoir, and then a trip with other potential candidates to a meeting widely understood to be an audition before Sheldon G. Adelson, the casino billionaire and top Republican donor.
But that was then.
Now Mr. Walker, 46, finds himself in a political corner, locked in a rough fight to hold on to his job. But as he battles Mary Burke — a Democrat who was once the state’s commerce secretary, appointed by former Gov. Jim Doyle, but barely known statewide until this campaign — Mr. Walker’s day job is not all that is at stake. His currency as a presidential contender will surely vanish if he cannot win a second term as the governor of Wisconsin.
Even as Republicans are buoyed by hopes of retaking the United States Senate, Mr. Walker has his back to the wall. So intense is the fight that the governor, who defined himself by clashing with labor unions, is pressing to get his political base to the polls. In a state that twice has picked Barack Obama, Mr. Walker might have pursued a more centrist strategy. Instead, he is talking tough, as he did the other day here in Green Bay, pacing around a truck garage, laying out his plan to drug test people seeking food stamps or unemployment benefits.
Midterm Elections 2014
The latest news, analysis and election results for the 2014 midterm campaign.
“The American dream isn’t how long you can sit on your couch watching TV or playing Xbox every day when you should be working and you can,” Mr. Walker told a nodding audience of mechanics and local businesspeople, detailing a proposal that would also remove “working-age” people without children from some public assistance after shorter stretches of time.
“Now, in Madison, they howled the other day,” Mr. Walker said of the state’s left-leaning capital. “They said, ‘Oh, the governor is making it harder to get government assistance.’ I said: ‘No, I’m not. I’m making it easier to get a job.’ Isn’t that what it’s really all about?”
The contest here is really all about this state’s sharp right turn over the past four years under Mr. Walker’s leadership, Wisconsin’s economy and Mr. Walker himself.
Ms. Burke, who if elected would be Wisconsin’s first female governor, is polling even with Mr. Walker. While this is the sort of divided state that can simultaneously accommodate polar opposites like Senators Ron Johnson, a Republican, and Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, most voters already have firm opinions, one way or the other, about Mr. Walker.
In a way, this election is a final exam for the policy laboratory Mr. Walker has created, including cutting collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions and eliminating $2 billion in taxes.
“The largest issue is the economic slide that Wisconsin has not been able to recover from,” said Joanne Grunau, a voter who lives in Milwaukee, and sees the state’s economy looming over the race. Mr. Walker promised four years ago to bring 250,000 new jobs to Wisconsin during his first term, but closer to 110,000, by some counts, have materialized.
Ms. Grunau said she was among those who opposed efforts two years ago to remove Mr. Walker from office. “To me, a recall should be for an impeachable offense, something horrible, not just that you don’t like the person,” she said. This time, she plans to vote for Ms. Burke. “I think she may be the person who can help us out of this,” she said.
Mr. Walker, a former state legislator and county executive, was elected governor in 2010 as part of a national Republican wave that also flipped control of this state’s Legislature to Republicans.
Within weeks of taking office, Mr. Walker announced that he needed to solve a budget deficit by cutting benefits and bargaining rights for most public-sector workers. In a state more accustomed to polite discussions across partisan lines, thousands of protesters marched outside his office for weeks; Democratic lawmakers fled the state to avoid a vote; and a series of back-and-forth recall efforts, including the one against Mr. Walker, followed.
Mr. Walker and the Legislature made other, sweeping changes. They cut taxes and froze public university tuition. They set new limits on early voting, permitted concealed weapons and expanded school vouchers. They required photo identification for most voters, though it will not be permitted during this election as a court fight continues.
“We have been good stewards of the state,” said Scott L. Fitzgerald, the State Senate majority leader.
Not long ago, at a women’s luncheon inside a Milwaukee community center, Ms. Burke went over an agenda that might well have been boiled down this way: I will do the opposite of Mr. Walker.
Ms. Burke, who is 55 and whose only previous political campaign secured a seat on Madison’s school board, has said she favors raising the minimum wage; accepting the federal Medicaid expansion that Mr. Walker rejected; stopping an expansion of school vouchers; and restoring collective bargaining, though not reversing requirements Mr. Walker set that public workers contribute more for benefits.
By far, the economy is what Ms. Burke talks about most. “Right now, under Governor Walker, we’re dead last in the Midwest in terms of job creation while he has been in office,” Ms. Burke told the lunch group as a PowerPoint presentation of her economic plan flashed on a screen beside her.
Mr. Walker and Ms. Burke disagree over how to measure the state’s economic health, pitting new jobs numbers, which fell short of Mr. Walker’s 250,000 pledge, against unemployment figures. Mr. Walker points to Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, 5.5 percent in the latest preliminary estimates, better than the nation’s 5.9 percent.
Mr. Walker routinely uses a football metaphor to explain why he failed to meet his jobs promise. “When I took over for Wisconsin it was like inheriting a team that was 0 and 16 and I promised that we’d go to the Super Bowl,” Mr. Walker says. “We’re not at the Super Bowl yet. I’m asking for a four-year contract renewal to get there. But we’re winning again.”
If the appeal of Mr. Walker, who is the son of a preacher and left college without graduating, is his earnest, regular-guy ability to win a room, Ms. Burke’s is her résumé: Georgetown, Harvard Business School and time in the private sector, including at the Trek Bicycle company her father founded.
Ms. Burke, who is single and has contributed enough of her own money to her campaign to be teased by critics as “Millionaire Mary,” seems untroubled by the notion that she comes off more like a reserved chief executive officer holding a meeting than a polished politician rallying the troops. “I don’t think that this hyperpartisan atmosphere that we see today is who we really are here in Wisconsin,” she said in an interview.
Ms. Burke has appeared off-balance in recent weeks, as reports emerged that portions of her much-trumpeted jobs plan, “Invest for Success,” were identical to sections of earlier plans from candidates for other seats in other states. Ms. Burke has tried to play down the episode, saying she cut ties with a consultant who took part in the report and who had once worked for the other candidates.
For months, a different scandal has threatened Mr. Walker’s political future, as revelations emerged from investigations into operations at the Milwaukee County executive’s office, which he led before he was governor, and into possible coordination between conservative organizations and his campaign in the 2012 recall election. Mr. Walker has been charged with no crimes.
In an interview, Mr. Walker said he and his wife, Tonette, were looking forward to the prospect of a “true four-year term,” not another one interrupted by a recall. “It would be nice to get things done,” Mr. Walker said. But asked whether that meant he has ruled out running for president, Mr. Walker demurred. “I never in my life — in the Assembly, as county executive, or now as governor — set exact terms, but my plan is for the next four years to be getting Wisconsin even more on track,” he said.
Few are more aware of the stakes of this race than Democrats here. “If we beat him here, that’s it — game over,” said Chris Larson, the minority leader in the State Senate. “Ticket-splitting used to be a tradition in this state,” he said, “but with what’s happened, now everyone is kind of straight down the line. That’s the real upshot of 2010.”