ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – The nation’s Republican governors are meeting in battleground Florida with an unexpected opportunity: a president-elect of their own party with political IOUs to pay, perhaps the projects the party’s heads of the states prefer.
Donald Trump owes no governor more than Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, the onetime rival for the GOP presidential nomination who ended up endorsing the billionaire and whose state had been thought to be a Democratic firewall. But for the first time since 1984, Wisconsin voted for a Republican last week. When Trump won that state and Pennsylvania, The Associated Press around 2:30 a.m. EST declared him the winner of the presidential race over Hillary Clinton.
Walker, the incoming chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association, said Tuesday that Trump’s election elevates “the possibilities in terms of what we can do to take power out of Washington and send it back to the states.” More importantly, he said on MSNBC, “back to the people.”
What the people can agree on as a top post-election priority is fixing the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure, according to a survey at the end of the election. Clinton and Trump voters polled on 13 issues after the election agreed on two problem areas – drug addiction and crumbling infrastructure in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
Walker said the federal government’s focus should be on “fixing and maintaining our existing infrastructure” not “grandiose” high speed rail lines, for example.