MADISON - Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Wednesday he did not talk with President Barack Obama about potentially running for governor during the president's visit to Wisconsin.

The Democratic Party is without a major candidate for governor one year away from the election, and Barrett is receiving enormous pressure to run.

Barrett said he spoke briefly with Obama on the tarmac in Madison when he arrived for a speech at a middle school. They talked about education, the topic of Obama's speech, but not the governor's race or politics, Barrett said.

He said he would make a decision on entering the race soon.

The mayor said the president also did not talk with him about the controversial proposal Barrett supports that would give him control of the Milwaukee schools. Barrett said the fact that Obama decided to come to Wisconsin to talk education shows he supports the idea.

"His message today was right along the lines of what we've been talking about and that is you've got to close the failing schools, you've got to have dramatic change, there has to be dramatic reform," Barrett said. "He knows, the secretary of education knows, that this debate is going on. He wouldn't be here if he wanted to stay away from that."

Gov. Jim Doyle also backs the mayoral takeover plan, which has yet to be introduced in the Legislature but may be taken up in a special session later this month or next. Doyle has said that such a move could improve Wisconsin's chances to get some of the nearly $4.5 billion in federal stimulus money available under the Race to the Top grant program.

Race to the Top was the topic of Obama's speech to about 600 students, parents, teachers, politicians and others at Wright Middle School. But Obama did not wade into the Milwaukee controversy during his 35-minute speech.

A package of other reforms are slated to be passed by the Wisconsin Legislature on Thursday, including one bill that allows student test data to be used when evaluating teachers. Wisconsin is one of only two states, along with Nevada, that still have such a prohibition.

Obama noted in his comments that states need to be aggressive in order to be able to compete for Race to the Top.

State Rep. Tamara Grigsby, D-Milwaukee, was at Obama's speech and said she remains opposed to the mayoral takeover bill and doesn't believe there are enough votes among Democrats in the Assembly to get it passed.

"I do know that it is tearing apart Milwaukee," she said of the proposal

Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus said Obama's visit to discuss education was nothing more than a ruse. The real goal, he said, was to get Barrett into the governor's race "while the Democrats in Wisconsin are sucking for air."

Obama's visit to Madison marked the second visit to Wisconsin this year. He came to Green Bay in June to talk about health care reform.

Doyle flew back to Washington, D.C., with Obama on Air Force One for a series of meetings with administration officials and others, the governor's spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner said.

A recent poll shows his popularity in Wisconsin, a state he won by 13 points a year to the day from his visit, is waning. A St. Norbert College Survey Center poll released last week showed that Obama's approval rating was 50 percent, down from 60 percent in April. Only 38 percent of respondents said they thought the country was headed in the right direction.