The did-something candidate: Scott Walker stands out in the 2016 field for running on his record. How does it stack up?

• Author: Suderman, Peter

On April 13, when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) officially announced that he was running for president, the first-term senator didn't mention a single successful policy that he had championed while in office. A day earlier, when Hillary Clinton launched her long-awaited White House bid, her campaign website didn't even have an issues page.

And then there was Scott Walker.

The Wisconsin governor, best known for his hard-fought, victorious showdowns against public sector unions, stands out in the field as the upper-tier potential candidate (he had not officially announced as of press time) most aggressive in touting his recent job performance. In wave-making pre-campaign speeches--a January address at the Iowa Freedom Summit that catapulted him from 4 percent in local polls to the head of the Iowa pack, and a February speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that solidified his place near the top of national surveys--Walker didn't just talk about what he would do. He talked about what he did.

At CPAC, Walker's speech opened with the same kind of fuzzy, patriotic uplift you see in almost every modem presidential campaign speech--how he "grew up loving history," how he loved "reading about our Founders" who "were like superheroes" to him, how he's "the son of a small-town preacher and a mom who was a small-town secretary," how he seeks to "reignite the American spirit, to move this great country forward."

But then came an extended section that read more like a professional C.V. Wisconsin, Walker bragged, went from a 9.2 percent unemployment rate in 2010 to 5.2 percent at the end of 2014. Not only did he put an end to public school teacher seniority and tenure, and not only did he establish the ability to hire and fire on merit, but the changes produced results: rising graduation rates, rising reading levels, the second-best ACT scores in the country. He described Wisconsin as a state "that had been taxed and taxed and taxed" until he came along and reduced the burden by nearly $2 billion, with more property-tax cuts to come. "Because of our reforms, our state is indeed better," Walker said.

And what's really remarkable is that it's all true--although some caveats apply.

Wisconsin's unemployment rate has dropped. But some of that is just the natural effect of the dwindling recession; nationwide over the same time frame, the rate has decreased from 9.8 percent to 5.6 percent. Walker campaigned on adding 250,000 jobs to the economy during his first term, but fell about 100,000 short.

The ACT scores are as strong as he claims, although, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last year, test results also showed that about one-fifth of Wisconsin graduates who took the ACT were unprepared for college on any of the test's major dimensions. The four-year highschool graduation rate rose from an already high 85.7 percent in 2010 to 88 percent in 2013--one of the country's very best rates--but minority graduation rates in two big urban areas, Madison and Milwaukee, struggled to keep up.

Under Walker the state has indeed reduced taxes substantially, but not without tradeoffs. The governor announced in February that he would delay a $108 million principal payment on Wisconsin's debt in order to help fill a $283 million deficit. Over the next two years, the additional costs from this restructuring will stick more than $19 million onto the state's tab.

Still, Walker's record is real. Unlike the showy senatorial trio vying for the nomination --Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz--he can talk about his pragmatic work as an executive. Unlike his perceived main rival for establishment GOP affection, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Walker governed through the more challenging post-recession era, and his record does not include strong support for a federal education program --Common Core--that is widely mistrusted by the conservative base. And unlike fellow sitting governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey, Walker is showing well in early polls and is able to campaign on a story of governance that has at times captivated the nation.

The Fighter

One reason that Walker had shot to the top of several national Republican primary polls by mid-April is that he checks off all of the GOP's traditional boxes: He's a committed Christian, the son of a Baptist preacher. He's a fiscal conservative who cut taxes and closed budget deficits. He's a foreign policy hawk, albeit one without much experience on the issue. He loves Ronald Reagan and frequently refers to labor leaders as "union bosses."

But most of all, Walker knows how to pick political fights and win them. The kinds of fights he likes to pick share a number of qualities. They have real policy consequences, but they're also heavy on political symbolism. They demonstrate his commitment to conservative, Republican governance while doing double duty as partisan protest. And he's been picking and winning these fights since even before he took office.

His predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, had managed to coax the Obama administration into awarding an $810 million stimulus grant to build a train line between Wisconsin's two major metro areas, Madison and Milwaukee. Doyle pitched it as a jobs plan in the short term and an economic boon in the longer term. He countered in-state critics of the idea by saying that it was all going on the federal government's tab.

Walker campaigned against the train, arguing that it would inevitably cost more than expected, leaving the state to fill in the gaps--and that even if it didn't, Wisconsin would still be on the hook for millions every year to support repairs and regular operations.

In December 2010, barely a month after Walker had won the governorship, the federal government gave up on the plan and cancelled the line. For Walker, this wasn't just a victory over his Democratic predecessor. It was a victory over the Obama administration and one of its biggest initiatives. A major build-out of new rail lines across the nation was one of the chief selling points for the stimulus, and a high priority within the...