MACKINAC ISLAND, Michigan (AP) – Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker passed on a chance to speak to thousands of Michigan Republicans and traveled instead to an event with religious conservatives in first-voting Iowa, on which the Wisconsin governor’s White House hopes rely.
While Walker shuffled his plans, Republican candidates were spinning what they could from Wednesday’s debate into early voting states and some general election battlegrounds, as the campaign entered the critical fall stretch.
Walker was to kick off the second day of the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, a biennial gathering of GOP activists and elected officials on Michigan’s picturesque Mackinac Island. Walker aides said a charter flight he had arranged to take from Chicago was grounded due to inclement weather.
Walker had originally agreed to kick off the three-day event Friday evening with fellow GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. But he cancelled last week, saying he couldn’t get from the Republican forum in South Carolina late Friday.
“We have moved heaven and earth to get him here,” Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel told the more than 1,000 who attended Saturday’s breakfast expecting to hear Walker.