Scott Walker Suggests He'll Skip Florida Primary Battle

— -- If he becomes a presidential candidate, Scott Walker said he’ll compete in every state except for maybe one: Florida.

“The neat thing about being around the country is if we choose to get in, I don’t think there’s a state out there where we wouldn’t play in, other than maybe Florida, where Jeb Bush [and] Marco Rubio are, at least in some of the polls, essentially tied,” the Wisconsin governor and likely GOP presidential candidate said in an interview with conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday.

Florida, of course, is the state that both Bush and Rubio call home. And Walker suggested that competing in Florida will eat up a lot of campaign dollars that could be otherwise spent in the competitive early states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Walker did not commit to participating in the Iowa straw poll later this year -- a contest that Bush has said he will sit out -- deferring any announcement on the topic until he is a declared candidate.

“I love Iowa,” Walker said, noting that he spent part of his childhood living in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. “If we get in as a candidate, we’re going to make a strong play in Iowa.”

Asked about his performance at last week’s Southern Republican Leadership Conference, where he finished second place in a straw poll, Walker attributed his positive reception in part to voters who are looking for “someone who can fight and win.”

Walker has indicated that he will make his presidential intentions known soon after the Wisconsin state budget is completed in late June.