Very good article from KOS--Thu Sep 24, 2015 at 02:15 PM PDT Scott Walker: What Really Happened and

Walker spent money like a drunken sailor!


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/24/1424623/-Scott-Walker-What-Really-Happened-and-His-Future-Plans


Thu Sep 24, 2015 at 02:15 PM PDT
Scott Walker: What Really Happened and His Future Plans

by
Puddytat


What happened to Scott Walker? Donald Trump isn't necessarily the bad guy here. A lot of what happened was self-inflicted and some of it quite surprising even to a seasoned Scott Walker watcher like me. The finger pointing has already begun.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pulled the plug on a bloated campaign that was headed into debt and was being undermined by furious donors, a warring staff and — at the root of it all — a candidate who was badly out of his league.

It gets worse.

When Walker and Wiley (campaign manager Rick Wiley) began building the campaign team in January, they made a bold, and ultimately foolhardy decision: Go big. Walker was the front-runner in Iowa polls through the spring and early summer, and he tried to capitalize on that momentum by hiring former Republican National Committee aides and Washington operatives, plus a Beltway PR firm to target conservative media, a full-time photographer and well-known consultants for outreach to evangelicals.

At the time, Walker could afford it. But as he began to fumble issues, and Donald Trump took over the race, the cash flow began to slow. Then, on the night of Walker’s mediocre performance in the first debate, Grebe warned senior staff that the campaign would need to prepare for a severe fundraising ebb — and the possibility of staff cuts.

(information in italics is my addition for clarity, bolding is mine for emphasis)

A lavish and large entourage including a full time photographer for a guy who ran past campaigns saying he was so frugal he brought his lunch in brown paper bags? Those bags, emblazoned with Walkers campaign logos were everywhere during his past campaigns as a visible symbol that he would be just as stingy with taxpayer dollars (PS: he never was).

And then there's more.

Johnson (Washington Post reporter Jenna Johnson), who starting following Walker on the campaign trail in April, wrote that it was unclear why he wanted to be president, seemed to lack an inner circle, and noted that, "For an everyman candidate, his campaign events were often elaborately staged."

"In late July, Walker held a town hall at a family-style restaurant in Red Oak, a town with fewer than 6,000 residents in western Iowa. An advance team with a moving van of equipment arrived hours early to hang up flags, set up a sound system and arrange a stage with tiered seating to provide a backdrop of Iowans," she wrote. "Walker arrived with a large entourage: his security detail, campaign manager, personal aide, full-time campaign photographer, two Iowa-based staffers and a horde of low-level employees who handed out brochures. As he spoke for roughly an hour, one man on the stage had to shield his eyes from a bright spotlight.