MILWAUKEE, Wis. and GARY, Ind.—Inside a double-decked brick building on an old industrial lane in Milwaukee, 37-year-old Marcel Griffin sweeps a paint roller up new drywall. Gray and green latex have splotched his white shirt and meaty hands—but no matter. For Griffin, those are marks of a steady income and a new life trajectory.

Last summer Griffin joined a three-month professional painting class at Pro Trade Job Development, a company that teaches painting and carpentry skills to Milwaukee men and women who have difficulty landing jobs. Griffin served a prison sentence for drug and other offenses from 2009 to 2013, and after his release got in trouble again when a police officer found a roach—the burnt butt of a marijuana joint—in his ashtray during a traffic stop. He avoided further prosecution by joining an inpatient treatment program, and afterward signed up for Pro Trade.

“When I first came I wasn’t even motivated at all,” said Griffin. “I didn’t want to participate.” But through the encouragement of Pro Trade’s teachers and motivational DVDs, Griffin said he’s gone “from no purpose to a purpose.”

Today he’s an employee of a sister company, 1-800-Pro-Painter, and a wage subsidy of $7.25 an hour is helping Griffin on his new path. The subsidy comes through “Transform Milwaukee,” a broad initiative Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker launched in 2012, a year when the city’s unemployment rate stood at 11 percent. Transform Milwaukee represents a distinct poverty-fighting strategy: Attracting businesses and jump-starting job growth can help some disadvantaged residents get back on their feet.

Democrats and Republicans often butt heads over the best ways to help the poor. Should the government send welfare checks or rely on private charity? Beginning this year, for the first time since 1983, all five main states of the old Northwest Territory—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin—have Republican governors. Some, in office for two years or more, have had ample opportunity to promote their own strategies of poverty fighting.

WORLD examined the anti-poverty efforts of three governors who are potential presidential contenders: Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio, and Mike Pence in Indiana. Their actions suggest committed conservative leadership can encourage charitable work and job creation, but that it’s hard—even for governors—to turn down government handouts.

Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, Transform Milwaukee is helping transform careers like that of Griffin. Its transitional jobs program is based on an earlier, successful pilot program: Out of 800 Wisconsin men and women (many with felony convictions) who obtained subsidized jobs through the pilot in 2010 and early 2011, half went on to secure unsubsidized jobs and quadruple their incomes.

“To Gov. Walker’s credit, he put an additional $8.75 million into transitional jobs for the two-year budget that we have,” said Conor Williams, a consultant for the Public Policy Institute at Community Advocates, a Milwaukee-based social services agency. The extra funding has helped about 570 people start transitional jobs or job training since last year.

Williams said spending $8,000 to subsidize a six-month transitional job is a good investment if it keeps a person in work and out of trouble. A year of prison costs Wisconsin over $30,000 per inmate.

The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), a quasi-private organization created by the state in 1972, is responsible for implementing Walker’s Transform Milwaukee initiative. It operates by lending money and allocating federal tax credits, partnering with state agencies, private companies, and nonprofits to invest $275 million into city neighborhoods and business districts to spur job growth.

The results include repaved airport runways, new research facilities, funding for crisis housing, loans for low-income housing, and the demolition or remodeling of hundreds of blighted or tax-foreclosed homes.

WHEDA partnered with a bank to loan a local business, Compo Steel Products, $504,000 to buy a 6,000-watt laser that can cut through an inch of solid steel. Compo’s manufacturing facility sits next to an aging Milwaukee neighborhood spotted with lounges, auto repair shops, dilapidated porches, and a fenced-in federal Superfund site. Inside Compo in February, workers in helmets threw blue and orange sparks while welding and grinding the edges of giant steel boxes—enclosures for train engine computer components. Nearby, the new laser hummed as it carved holes into sheets of steel.

“Like a knife through butter,” said Nicholas Storniolo, Compo’s chief financial officer. “That laser helped this company add about 30 jobs.” Some of Compo’s employees have come from prison or used to run in gangs together, Storniolo said. “We hire people that might not be attractive to other industries. … We have good luck with these guys.”

By making Milwaukee’s industrial corridor a better place for business, these investments should reduce unemployment, increase property values, and “decrease the city’s reliance on social service assistance,” according to the Transform Milwaukee website.

“We believe that if we can help more people support their families, then many of the social conditions that we see go away,” said Wyman Winston, executive director of WHEDA. “If people are working and productive, they tend not to steal. … Our view is to get people back to work.”

Ohio

John Kasich, governor of Ohio since 2011, also believes in the power of work. “You know the single biggest cure for poverty? A job,” he said in a February speech.

Ohio has gained 350,000 private-sector jobs under Kasich, and the state’s 5 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in a decade. Like Wisconsin, Kasich created a quasi-private organization, JobsOhio, that uses grants and loans to entice businesses to the state. He requires Ohioans receiving unemployment checks to register with the state’s job search website, and has weaned 116,000 people off Ohio’s cash assistance program for needy families.

Kasich restricted federal food stamps in Ohio slightly and instead sent money to private food banks affiliated with Feeding America—about $38 million through state budgets and $7 million through executive orders since 2012.

‘You know the single biggest cure for poverty? A job.’ —John Kasich

“In my 12 years as CEO of Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, John Kasich has been the most effective hunger-fighting governor that I’ve seen,” said Daniel Flowers, whose organization feeds people in eight northeastern Ohio counties.

Kasich has created anti-addiction programs, including for gambling addiction; but a conservative group, the American Policy Roundtable, is suing him for expanding slot machines at racetrack facilities. The Ohio Lottery will fund a new mentorship program set to begin this fall, providing $10 million in grants to nonprofits and churches willing to mentor students in low-income school districts, although “no proselytization [will be] permitted during the mentorship process.”

Some Ohio conservatives aren’t happy with Kasich because he expanded Medicaid under Obamacare—a law he otherwise opposes. Under the healthcare law, if states agree to expand Medicaid coverage to individuals earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of new patients through 2016 and 90 percent of the cost after 2019. (A future Congress could change the reimbursement rate.)

Kasich agreed to the deal, in ramrod fashion: After Republicans in the Ohio legislature passed a budget specifically prohibiting the Medicaid proposition, Kasich line-item vetoed the prohibition, then passed the expansion using an obscure, seven-member committee. The move prompted 39 Republican lawmakers to sign a letter of protest, infuriated tea party groups, and sparked a lawsuit (later tossed out). As of February, the expansion has added 492,000 Ohioans to the ranks of Medicaid. Across the country, 15 states with Republican governors have refused the Medicaid expansion carrot under Obamacare. Wisconsin’s Gov. Walker is one.

Turning down some $500 million in federal cash, Walker added over 150,000 adults under the poverty line to BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, while kicking off 77,000 others who earn higher incomes and can obtain subsidized plans on the federal exchange. “Silly me, I actually thought Medicaid was meant for poor people,” Walker retorted to critics.

Kasich appealed to biblical morality to justify his welfare move. “When you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he’s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small,” he once told reporters. “But he’s going to ask you what you did for the poor. You’d better have a good answer.”

But does help for the poor require bigger government checks? “I don’t think anyone questions the governor’s genuine compassion for those who are less fortunate,” said Robert Alt, president of The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. “I would return simply to Reagan’s wisdom on this: The size of the budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.”

Indiana

On Jackson Street in Gary, Ind., across from the tiny white house where late pop star Michael Jackson lived as a boy, a brand new home with beige vinyl siding popped up last year. A new home is unusual for this block, where there are broken windows, drooping roofs, and a hand-painted sign advertising a house for sale: “$14,000 OR BEST OFFER.”

Inside the beige house in January, drills, a hammer, and other tools lay scattered, and Lamar and Denise Strickland had covered their fingertips in sticky white caulk while patching nail holes in new white trim. The Fuller Center for Housing, a Christian nonprofit whose goal is to fight “poverty housing,” built the home for the Stricklands and requires them to invest their own time and sweat into the project. Fuller, using private donations and volunteer labor, finances houses for individuals or couples who have steady incomes but may be unlikely to qualify for a traditional loan.

In spite of plywood floors, dust clouding the air, and a chop saw in the master bedroom, Denise was already imagining her three young boys and cat, Ginger, romping around. “I like greenery, so I’m definitely going to have some plants,” she said.

Gov. Mike Pence is to credit for bringing The Fuller Center to Gary. A few months after Pence took office in 2013, two of his assistants initiated a private meeting involving Gary pastors, the city mayor, and Fuller President David Snell. From that meeting, the local pastors ultimately launched a Fuller affiliate in Gary. The city agreed to help by donating blighted properties.

As the Stricklands make mortgage payments to The Fuller Center, any profit will be reinvested into other Fuller houses in Gary. The affiliate has already remodeled two other homes on Jackson Street and has two prefabricated houses waiting in storage.

The project is an example of a governor facilitating private charity without involving the state purse or bureaucratic strings.

Some conservatives have taken issue with Pence over Medicaid. Like Kasich, he accepted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and its federal dollars—on condition Indiana could add its own rules, such as requiring Medicaid recipients to pay a monthly premium. Pence haggled with the Obama administration for several months and had to make concessions.

The final deal, known as the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, will add an estimated 350,000 low-income Hoosiers to Medicaid rolls. It requires enrollees to pay monthly premiums of between $1 and $27 or risk being locked out of coverage for six months, and risk losing dental and vision benefits.

“The consensus among a lot of conservatives is that Pence had to give up too much for what he got,” said Devon Herrick, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Elsewhere, Pence has encouraged innovative models of private poverty work—like the Clearinghouse Project in Madison, Ind. Ten assistance programs and a food pantry supported by 17 churches recently moved inside a 30,000 square-foot building, where they share gas and electric bills. “Essentially it’s creating a one-stop location for employment services,” said Molly Dodge, the director.

Dodge said the governor’s office has publicized the project and worked behind the scenes to connect her to partners. The city of Madison also got a $500,000 state grant to renovate the Clearinghouse facility.

Pence has also pushed a bill at the Statehouse that, if passed, would allow doctors to volunteer their services at food pantries, a YMCA, or a Boys & Girls Club without needing expensive malpractice insurance. In October he announced a faith-based prison program for first-time offenders that uses volunteers and mentors to help inmates transition back into society smoothly.

Jay Height, the director of a Christian poverty-fighting organization in Indianapolis, Shepherd Community Center, thinks Pence has succeeded in doing what all three governors have attempted: “You can be a conservative, you can be a Republican and live out your faith.”