by Jason L. Riley | Wall Street Journal
Will Midwestern plain-spokenness sell in the Sunbelt? Doug Ducey, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, is betting on it.
“I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, son of a cop, very much a product of the working class,” Mr. Ducey told a small gathering here one evening last week. Biography is a major theme of his stump speech, along with the business experience he gained after moving to Arizona in the early 1980s to attend college and then running a successful ice-cream company, Cold Stone Creamery, which he sold in 2007. For the past three years Mr. Ducey has been state treasurer, emerging as the gubernatorial nominee in August after a hard-fought GOP primary with five other candidates.
He also wants voters to know about his Midwestern roots because the region very much informs his governing philosophy. At campaign stops he invokes Republican governors like Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Mike Pence of Indiana, along with Mr. Pence’s predecessor, Mitch Daniels , as model state executives. He appreciates the way that both states have taken advantage of their proximity to high-tax, over-regulated Illinois to lure businesses and spur job creation. He views California as Arizona’s Illinois.
