WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) -- Governor Scott Walker campaigned in north central Wisconsin Wednesday, where he said this campaign is still about the economy and creating jobs. Walker says he’s going in the right direction, reversing the course set by his opponent Mary Burke and former Governor Jim Doyle.
Walker says the voters that are neither Democrat or Republican can appreciate the positive changes made since he took office. “The independent voters look at the difference in jobs, look at the difference in the economy, they see a marked improvement from where we were at just a few years ago here in the state of Wisconsin. We’d like to have four more years to continue to do that and build on that going forward.”
The Governor says his administration and the Department of Workforce Development have made improvements to help job seekers and employers match up, but admits there may be some retraining necessary for some people to re-enter the workforce. “We’ve got aggressive efforts to not only help find jobs, jobcenterwisconsin.com is a site where we have on any given week about 50,000 job listings.”
There have been three large scale layoffs announced just this week due to plant closings. The Rothschild postal mail sorting facility, the Copps Distribution Center in Stevens Point, and Engendren's ArcRon LLC's manufacturing facility in Menominee Falls. The Governor is concerned about that, but is also looking at the bigger, statewide jobs picture. “I empathize for the people in the positions where they are facing those struggles, but I also look at the net increases. We’ve created over the past three-and-a-half years over 100,000 new jobs in this state. The four years before we took office, we had lost 133,000 jobs, we’d lost 27,000 businesses. We’ve now gained more than 100,000 jobs. We’ve gained more than 20,000 new businesses.”
Walker is asking voters to send him back to the Governor’s office for another term to build on what he calls putting Wisconsin forward in the right direction. “There’s been a marked improvement in terms of the number of jobs created under our administration, even coming off of tough times, and we want to be able to build on that. I want to have four more years. I’m asking the voters for four more years to make sure that four years from now, we’re even better off than we were four years ago.”
Walker stopped at Wausau Container Corporation in the morning, and joined Oneida County Republicans for lunch before touring a business incubation facility in Rhinelander.