There has been a change of plans in today’s meeting between President Obama, who is visiting Wisconsin to promote his economic policies, and the state’s conservative star Gov. Scott Walker.
Walker’s office has confirmed that due to a stomach flu, Walker will no longer accompany Obama on a tour of the local Master Lock factory, at which Obama is scheduled to speak in the afternoon.
Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie confirmed to TPM, however, that Walker still plans on greeting Obama on the tarmac at the Milwaukee airport.
Obama name-dropped Master Lock in his State of the Union address in January, as an example of jobs coming back to America — and unionized jobs, at that.
Obama declared:
We can’t bring every job back that’s left our shore. But right now, it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China. Meanwhile, America is more productive. A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home. (Applause.) Today, for the first time in 15 years, Master Lock’s unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.
Meanwhile, Walker is the target of a recall election this year, after a signature campaign mounted by the state Democratic Party and organized labor, in a backlash against his anti-public employee union legislation and other parts of the state budget.
Second only to the presidential campaign, it will likely be the biggest and most expensive race in the country.
And just this past weekend, Walker delivered a headline speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington — and appealed to conservative activists there by specifically casting the recall as a national race, against liberal groups.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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