Minnesota governor looks to national stage

By Monica Davey

updated 6:09 a.m. ET Aug. 8, 2008

ST. PAUL - As is his way, Gov. Tim Pawlenty made a self-deprecating aside on a local radio show this spring during the ceremonial start of the state’s beloved fishing season. He praised his wife’s willingness to fish with him and to watch hockey games, then added, “And I jokingly say, ‘Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me.’ ”

Some Minnesotans cringed. Others, including his wife, Mary, a former judge who met her future husband in law school, said he was just being himself, joker and all.

Outside his home state, Mr. Pawlenty is among the least-known of the prospects Senator John McCain is said to be considering as a vice-presidential partner. But those who have followed his political rise here say Mr. Pawlenty’s personal story — his direct, everyman appeal to ordinary people — is among his most powerful attributes.

Long before the polls began suggesting that Republicans could face trouble in November, Mr. Pawlenty, now in his second term, was urging his party to become “the party of Sam’s Club,” not just the country club.

“We need everybody — to grow the party and to move forward,” Mr. Pawlenty explained in a recent interview. “One of the most powerful reasons people go to Sam’s Club or Target or Costco is they want value, and Republicans are well suited to be the party that says, ‘We’re going to have a limited but also effective government.’ ”

Mr. Pawlenty can talk about such things from experience. He now lives in the well-off suburb of Eagan, but holds blue-collar credentials. He grew up in South St. Paul, then a working-class town where life revolved around the stockyards, where his father drove a truck, where he played hockey, where his mother died of cancer when he was still a teenager, and where he went on to become the first in his family to graduate from college.

For Mr. McCain, whose campaign would not comment about the vice-presidential selection process, Mr. Pawlenty might be appealing on other fronts. At 47, tall and runner-thin, Mr. Pawlenty is the same age as Senator Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee. He also carries qualifications important to many conservatives: opposition to tax increases, longtime attendance at a church with a pastor who leads the National Association of Evangelicals and a mostly consistent conservatism on social issues.

If anything, Mr. Pawlenty’s critics say, he is too prepared for this moment; they say he has been so conscious of the possibility of higher office that he has been overly careful as governor. This year, he vetoed 34 bills passed by a Democratic-dominated Legislature, more than any other Minnesota governor had vetoed in a year since at least World War II, leading his most fervent critics to describe him as more of a goalie fending off pucks than a leader rushing the net.

Some critics even note changes in his haircut — once a mullet-style, now a cropped conservative look less common at a Minnesota hockey rink — as evidence of his political calculations.

“He’s done popular stuff, easy stuff, symbolic stuff,” said Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman who lost the governor’s race to Mr. Pawlenty in 2002 as the Independence Party candidate and who says he supports Mr. McCain for president. “I can’t think of a single issue in which he has been leading public opinion. What you find here is an unremarkable record.”

Mr. Pawlenty’s supporters strongly disagree, and point to a list of accomplishments: holding the line on taxes while resolving a $4.5 billion deficit in his first term, changing the state’s education system, including creating performance pay for teachers, and pressing environmental efforts, less common in his party, on conservation and renewable energy.

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“Is he ambitious? Yes,” said Charlie Weaver, once Mr. Pawlenty’s chief of staff. “Does that ambition cloud his judgment and cause him to do things not within his values? No.”

In a way, Mr. Pawlenty was an accidental governor.

In 2001, he was considering a run for the United States Senate, having served as the State House majority leader, a City Council member in Eagan and a member of the city’s planning commission. Republican leaders in Washington, though, suspected that Norm Coleman would be a stronger candidate and urged Mr. Pawlenty to back off.

Mr. Pawlenty ran for governor instead, although some allies, including former Senator David F. Durenberger, for whom Mr. Pawlenty once worked, say they believe he would have been more comfortable in the Senate, given his experience as a lawmaker.

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