MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a preacher’s son who withstood a recall election spawned by his fight with public employee unions, is joining the crowded Republican presidential race, aides said Thursday.

Having spent the past several months traveling the country, speaking to conservatives, courting voters and scoring well in some early polls, Walker will officially enter the race with a campaign announcement in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha on July 13, the aides said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the campaign launch.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has had success in his state with numerous Republican priorities such as cutting taxes, making abortions hard to get and requiring IDs to vote. The Associated Press

Walker started a countdown of sorts to his kickoff by posting a slice of his presidential campaign logo on Instagram, with eight more pieces to come in the days ahead. He also tweeted an image of himself waving next to an American flag with the message: “It begins.”

In fact, the race has been underway for months. The jumbled Republican race already has attracted 14 candidates, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie getting in earlier in the week.

Walker rose to national prominence soon after his election as governor by pushing for a law in 2011 that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers in the state. Four years later, he pressed to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state where employers and unions are barred from requiring all workers to pay union dues.

In 2011, protests at the Statehouse grew as large as 100,000 people at times, and Democrats in the state Senate fled Wisconsin for three weeks hoping to undermine Walker’s efforts. His victories over organized labor certified him as a rising Republican star.

It also made him a top target for Democrats and union leaders, who tried to recall Walker in a special election in 2012. Walker beat back the effort, winning by a larger margin than in 2010 and becoming the first governor in U.S. history to survive such an effort.

Along the way, he shattered state campaign finance records, collecting six-figure checks from prominent conservatives across the country and building a network he’s tapping now for his presidential bid.

Walker, aided by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, also worked down a list of conservative priorities. He cut income and corporate taxes by nearly $2 billion, lowered property taxes, legalized the carrying of concealed weapons, made abortions more difficult to obtain, required photo identification when voting and expanded the state’s private school voucher program.

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