Tim Pawlenty

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Tim Pawlenty
Governor Pawlenty speaking, December 2007
39th Governor of Minnesota
Incumbent
Assumed office  January 6, 2003
Lieutenant	Carol Molnau
Preceded by	Jesse Ventura
Born	November 27, 1960 (1960-11-27) (age 47) St. Paul, Minnesota
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Mary Pawlenty
Profession	Lawyer
Religion	Baptist[1]

Timothy James Pawlenty (born November 27, 1960) is the 39th and current Governor of Minnesota (since January 6, 2003) and a member of the Republican Party. After winning re-election in 2006, he "downplayed any national ambitions", but some speculate that his vocal support of John McCain makes him a potential Vice Presidential candidate.^[2][3][4]

[edit] Background

Pawlenty was born in St. Paul as one of five children born to a truck driver and a housewife. He played hockey in high school, and has played non-competitively with the Minnesota Wild. Pawlenty earned his undergraduate and law degrees at the University of Minnesota, and worked as a labor law attorney.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Pawlenty converted to the Lutheran faith as an adult.^[5] However, in recent years he has regularly attended Wooddale Church (a member of the Minnesota Baptist Conference) in Eden Prairie, where his wife maintains membership, and where National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson serves as senior pastor.

In 2007, Pawlenty's wife Mary Pawlenty stepped down from her post as a district court judge in Dakota County. The couple has two daughters, Anna and Mara.

Pawlenty's brother Dan is the Public Works Superintendent for the city of White Bear Lake, a St. Paul suburb. Pawlenty and his brothers Dan and Steve play on a charity hockey team. Pawlenty also likes to run.

He has been afforded a weekly one-hour radio show on WCCO-AM, a tradition he inherited from his predecessor as governor, Jesse Ventura.

[edit] Political career

[edit] Early career

Pawlenty entered politics as a City Council Member in the city of Eagan. In 1994, he was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, after he chaired Jon Grunseth's losing bid for Governor. He briefly explored a race for governor in 1998. In 1999, he became the Republican Party Majority Leader when Republicans gained control of the House. As Majority Leader, he was instrumental in passing Governor Jesse Ventura's tax cuts.

[edit] 2002 Senate campaign

Pawlenty initially wanted to run for governor in 2002, but party leaders made it clear that they favored businessman Brian Sullivan for that spot. So Pawlenty shifted his sights to the U.S. Senate. But he abandoned those plans when Vice President Dick Cheney asked him to step aside to allow former St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman to challenge Senator Paul Wellstone without Republican primary opposition.^[6] Pawlenty then decided to revert to his original gubernatorial ambitions and to challenge Sullivan.

[edit] 2002 gubernatorial campaign

After a hard-fought and very narrow victory over Sullivan for party endorsement, Pawlenty in the general election faced two strong opponents. His main rival was veteran DFL state senator Roger Moe. Complicating matters, former Democratic Congressman Tim Penny ran on the Independence Party ticket, with polls at times suggesting a very tight three-man race. In September 2002, the three were essentially tied. Pawlenty campaigned on a pledge not to raise taxes to balance the state's budget deficit, requiring visa expiration dates on driver's licenses, a 24-hour waiting period on abortions, implementing a conceal-carry gun law, and changing the state's education requirements. Pawlenty prevailed over both challengers at the polls. Analyses afterward indicated that his largest gains since the September poll were among voters in the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

[edit] As governor

Pawlenty is the chairman of the National Governors Association. He has been called the most conservative Minnesota governor since the 1920s.^[7]

[edit] Budget

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Pawlenty was elected on a platform of balancing the state's budget without raising taxes. During his first year as governor, Pawlenty balanced a deficit of $4.3 billion without raising taxes, mainly by reducing the rate of funding increases for state services, including funding for transportation, social services and welfare, with cuts in areas such as local government aid (LGA). As a matter of economics, some argue that the savings Pawlenty claimed to have achieved were illusory. In the next biennium budget, for instance, a reduction in state governmental aid to cities pressured many cities to increase local property taxes in addition to the expected reductions in local services. Conversely, others argue that the pressure to raise city taxes can be attributed to the will of the residents of the cities. Nonetheless, keeping his campaign promise to reduce government spending was seen by some to be a political success for Pawlenty.

A more controversial part of his approach to the budget came from his attempts to hold the line on taxes by raising fees instead. As members of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board complained, students' share of the cost of tuition increased by double-digit percentages in 2003 and the years following. Some defended the practice by citing increasing tuition at universities nationwide; liberals maintained that Minnesota had a special responsibility to ensure affordable higher education at its public universities. In 2004, Attorney General Mike Hatch suggested that sex offenders found in a couple of Minnesota nursing homes were the results of budget cuts.^[8] When the I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapsed in 2007 in Minneapolis, killing thirteen people and injuring dozens of others, some Minnesotans, including Edina mayor James Hovland, quickly blamed Pawlenty's tax policies, even as the cause of the collapse was still being investigated.^[9]

In 2005, a government shutdown resulted from a deadlock between the governor's office and the split-party legislature on the state budget. Transportation, state parks, and other key infrastructures were threatened with the shutdown, dampening the tourism industry.

In keeping his pledge not to raise taxes, Pawlenty has made finding alternative revenue sources a priority. One ambitious proposal was to enhance the Canterbury Park horse track into a "racino", which would be operated in cooperation with Native American tribes from the northern part of the state. This plan was poorly received by the few Native American tribes with casino ties who already had established casinos in the state. A very small percentage of tribes actually receive benefits from Native American casinos.^{[citation needed]} Some social conservatives objected to an expansion of gambling on the grounds of immorality and some politicians (mostly Democrats) feared losing a lucrative campaign-finance source.^[10] Tribes with existing casinos spent millions nationwide lobbying legislatures in 2004.^[11]

A more popular strategy was to raise revenue through a fee on cigarettes. But Pawlenty ran into obstacles as he was caught between his pledge not to raise taxes and the need he acknowledged for the state to take in more money in the face of a $404 million budget deficit. Pawlenty proposed that the state collect 75 additional cents per pack of cigarettes, coined a "health impact fee." Initially, the reaction of skeptics, including some at the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, was that Pawlenty had reneged on his campaign promise, arguing that the proposal was simply a tax increase by another name. The measure carried, but since the terms of the 1996 tobacco settlement stipulated that the state reserved a right to raise taxes, but not fees, on cigarettes, cigarette wholesalers sued, and on December 21, 2005, a District Court judge struck down the fee. The Minnesota Supreme Court later reversed that decision, upholding the fee.

On November 30, 2005, a $701 million projected surplus for the 2006-7 biennium was announced, the first budget surplus for the Minnesota state government since 2001. While this came as a considerable relief, it happened just three weeks before Pawlenty's cigarette fee, or tax, was struck down in district court. It also did not include over $700 million for budget deferments owed to the educational system under agreements negotiated during the 2002-4 and 2004-6 biennial budgets.

Pawlenty worked throughout 2006 to fund a Minnesota Twins baseball stadium using tax dollars and signed the resulting Minnesota Twins-Hennepin County ballpark bill, passed by the state legislature, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The Minnesota Twins-Hennepin County ballpark bill exempted the county from a state law which normally requires a referendum for any new local taxes, thereby denying the people who pay the bulk of the tax a chance to vote it down.^{[citation needed]}

In June 2006, Pawlenty signed a $999.9 million public works bill that included funding for additional work on the Northstar Commuter rail line (a change in position from reservations about the idea he initially expressed), an expanded Faribault prison, a bioscience building at the University of Minnesota, and science facilities at Minnesota State University Mankato. The bill also funded a $26 million expansion of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.^[12]

[edit] Education

During his term, Governor Pawlenty created the Minnesota Academic Standards and new graduation requirements. Pawlenty's argument was those policies ensured accountability in education, while critics point to education bureaucratization and a push to encourage more privatized schooling.

Pawlenty's choice for state education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, was met with some controversy. Yecke lost her job when Democratic-controlled Minnesota Senate refused to confirm her.^[13]

In June 2006, Governor Pawlenty proposed a program that would send the top 25% of high school graduates to college. The program would pay for tuition for the first 2 years (4 years for selected fields such as science, technology, engineering and math) and would cost the state and estimated $112 million per 2-year cycle.

[edit] Transportation

During Pawlenty's term, urban traffic congestion has come up as a significant concern of voters. He appointed his lieutenant governor, Carol Molnau, as transportation commissioner, who has attempted to reform the transportation department, (Mn/DOT), using concepts such as "design-build". Molnau has said she did not read bridge inspection reports and has been blamed by some for the bridge collapse. Legislators criticized Molnau's performance as transportation commissioner, citing ineffective leadership and management, and removed her from that role in February 2008, a decision Pawlenty thought of as motivated by partisanship.^[14][15]

For most of his term, Pawlenty favored raising fees and imposing toll lanes on roads as the primary means of discouraging excessive traffic. Pawlenty used or threatened vetoes in 2005, 2007 and 2008 on legislation funding proposed highway expansion, infrastructure repairs, road maintenance, and mass transit.^[16] The 2008 veto was in spite of Pawlenty's announcement that he would consider reversing his longstanding opposition to a state gas tax increase for funding road and bridge repairs, in the wake of the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge.^[17]

During his term, the carpool lanes of Interstate 394 leading into downtown Minneapolis were converted into high-occupancy toll lanes. Pawlenty did not favor expansion of the metro area's light rail system. However, he changed his position in support of funding for Northstar Commuter Rail in late summer 2006, after polls^{[citation needed]} had shown widespread support for it.

In April 2008, Pawlenty caused controversy with his line-item veto of $70 million that was to go toward the building of the Central Corridor light-rail project, intended to connect Minneapolis and St. Paul. In vetoing the expenditure, Pawlenty did not consult Peter Bell, the head of the Metro Council, which is overseeing the project.^[18] Pawlenty stated that he vetoed the bill in order to send a message to the Legislature, which had exceeded his initial budget request, that they need to "stay focused, be fiscally disciplined, set priorities and solve this budget crisis in a fiscally disciplined way."^[19] Many Republican state legislators were supportive of the cuts, including Doug Magnus, the ranking Republican on the House Transportation Finance Division, who praised Pawlenty's "fiscal responsibility."^[20] Pawlenty had been supportive of the project in the past, and had even requested the money in the bonding bill he submitted to the Minnesota State Legislature.^[21] Other critics, including Chris Coleman, the Mayor of St. Paul, called Pawlenty's veto "political gamesmanship,"^[22] seeing the move as retribution for the Legislature's successful override of Pawlenty's veto of a transportation bonding bill. They note that Pawlenty's cuts overwhelmingly targeted Democratic districts,^[23] and Democratic stronghold St. Paul most heavily.^[24] Critics say that Pawlenty's veto may have endangered the ability of the state to receive federal matching funds for the project, though Met Council chairman Peter Bell said the "project has not been derailed."^[25] The veto disappointed some of Minnesota's congressional representatives in Washington, including Minnesota's Republican Senator Norm Coleman, who pledged to "raise my voice as strong as I can, as loud as I can. The federal commitment is there."^[26]

[edit] Ethanol

Minnesota has mandated a 10% mixture of gasoline and ethanol (gasohol) since 1997, while most cars are designed to safely handle 15%. Pawlenty signed into law in May 2005 a bill that will raise the minimum mandated mixture to 20% in 2013. Pawlenty has also lobbied the Governors' Ethanol Coalition to mandate higher ethanol use nationwide.^[27]

Conservative Republican governors were not supportive of Pawlenty's presentation on clean energy to the governor's association, which he gave in cooperation with Ed Rendell, who is the governor of Pennsylvania and the NGA's Democratic vice-chairman. With Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Pawlenty is co-chairman of the association's energy committee. The effort received "adamant opposition" from governors of oil producing states.^[7]

[edit] Health

In 2004, the credibility of Pawlenty's commissioner of health, Dianne Mandernach, suffered when a website posting by the department suggested that abortion might have a role in breast cancer. She also angered many when it was learned she had delayed releasing government research on cancer in miners.^[28] In 2007, Mandernach resigned.

Governor Pawlenty initially supported but later disapproved of the importation of less-expensive prescription drugs from Canada to be used with the state's MinnesotaCare health plan,^{[citation needed]} and also as a means to band together with other states and negotiate lower drug prices. Many Minnesota residents traveled to Canada, as well, to get prescriptions filled and the governor was supportive of their efforts to save money. However, the U.S. government put pressure on Canada to cease these practices and banned the importation of drugs from Canada in 2006.

[edit] Foreign relations

Since the 1980s, Minnesota governors have increased their travel abroad with the goal of increasing Minnesota's visibility around the world. For example, Governor Pawlenty took a delegation of nearly 200 Minnesotan business, government, academic and civic leaders on a voyage to China in mid-November 2005. The objectives of the weeklong trip were to provide a forum for companies to acquire market information, assess market potential, evaluate market entry strategies and identify potential business partners, as well as to promote Chinese investment in Minnesota. Pawlenty also led Minnesota trade delegations to the Czech Republic in 2004 and Canada in 2003, and went to India in October 2007.^[29]

Tim Pawlenty meeting Minnesota National Guard troops in Kosovo (April 12th 2008)

Pawlenty's first term coincided with the deployment of National Guardsmen from numerous states, connected with the War on Terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pawlenty made trips to Bosnia (2003), Kosovo (2004) and (2008), Poland, Iraq and the Czech Republic visiting Minnesota troops.

He also welcomed Mexican President Vicente Fox in 2004 in an effort to strengthen trade. The president announced that his country would open a consulate in Minnesota the next year, removing the need for Mexican residents in the state to travel to Chicago for identification papers and other materials.

Early in 2006, after issuing a study that estimated the cost of illegal immigration to the state as approximately $188 million, Pawlenty announced a program for reforming the way the state deals with persons who are in the United States without permission from the federal government. By mid-year he had begun to send Minnesota National Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Critics have accused Pawlenty of exaggerating the dangers of illegal immigration -- an issue that arguably has more direct implications for southern and southwestern U.S. states than for Minnesota.

[edit] 2006 re-election

Main article: Minnesota gubernatorial election, 2006

Governor Pawlenty sought re-election in November 7, 2006. He won renomination in the Republican primary in September, and faced DFL Attorney General Mike Hatch, Peter Hutchinson of the Independence Party, and Ken Pentel of the Green Party in the November 7 general election. Pawlenty won, defeating Hatch by a margin of 1%.

[edit] 2010 campaign

Governor Pawlenty has not yet decided whether or not to seek a third term in 2010, though he is allowed to under Minnesota law.

One Democrat, Susan Gaertner, filed preliminary campaign paperwork for the race in April 2007.^[30] Gaertner is the top prosecutor for Ramsey County, the second most populated county in Minnesota and home to St. Paul. She was first elected to that office in 1994 and re-elected in 1998, 2002, and 2006.

Another Democrat, former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, announced in May 2007 that he, too, plans to run for governor. He told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he "intends to run" in 2010.^{[citation needed]} Dayton previously ran for governor in 1998, placing fourth in the Democratic primary.

[edit] Presidential speculation

Governor Pawlenty has been informally suggested by top conservative activists and the press as a potential candidate for President.^[31][32][33]

When formally announcing his candidacy for a second term as Governor of Minnesota on May 31, 2006, Pawlenty said, "As to my future, if I run for governor and win, I will serve out my term for four years as governor."^[34][35] On January 15, 2007, after being reelected, Pawlenty said, "I am committed to serving out my term as governor. That's what I am going to do."^[36]

On January 7, 2008, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune speculated that Pawlenty's promotion of a staunch immigration reform plan was aimed at countering McCain's plan for guest worker visas. National pundits have long felt that McCain's stance on immigration reform would be a weakness in winning over conservative voters, and the Star-Tribune noted that by staking out an immigration plan opposite of McCain, Pawlenty was setting himself up for balancing McCain's ticket should he be chosen as the vice presidential running mate.^[37]

On January 15, 2007, it was announced that Pawlenty would be serving in a lead role for McCain as a national co-chair of his presidential exploratory committee^[38] which led to Pawlenty becoming co-chairman of McCain's campaign (along with Phil Gramm and Tom Loeffler).^[39]

See also: Politics of Minnesota

[edit] Electoral history

[edit] External links

• Minnesota Office of the Governor Tim Pawlenty official state site
• Tim Pawlenty at Minnesota Legislators Past & Present
• National Governors Association - Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty biography
• Follow the Money - Tim Pawlenty & Carol Molnau 2006 campaign contributions
• On the Issues - Tim Pawlenty issue positions and quotes
• Project Vote Smart - Governor Tim Pawlenty (MN) profile
• Governor Pawlenty official campaign site
• Campaign 2002 - Minnesota Governor Minnesota Public Radio
• Campaign 2006 - Tim Pawlenty Minnesota Public Radio

[edit] References

v • d • e Governors of Minnesota Sibley • Ramsey • Swift • Miller • Marshall • Austin • Davis • Pillsbury • Hubbard • McGill • Merriam • Nelson • Clough • Lind • Van Sant • Johnson • Eberhart • Hammond • Burnquist • Preus • Christianson • Olson • Petersen • Benson • Stassen • Thye • Youngdahl • E. Anderson • Freeman • Andersen • Rolvaag • LeVander • W. Anderson • Perpich • Quie • Perpich • Carlson • Ventura • Pawlenty