At first glance, Tim Pawlenty - two-term Republican governor and self-proclaimed conservative - seems misplaced in the state famed as the home of liberal Democratic Sens. Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Paul Wellstone. More often than not, Republicans who rose to the top in the Gopher State were cut from the cloth that pundits Stephen Hess and David Broder referred to as “dynamic progressivism;” Govs. Harold Stassen (1938-41), Harold LeVander (1966-70), and Albert Quie (1978-82) were all decidedly non-conservative.
So that’s why the 47-year-old Pawlenty is so intriguing to national pundits. The governor of Minnesota dubs himself as “a strong and vocal supporter of pro-life issues,” “strongly Second Amendment,” and, with little provocation, will tick off where he has achieved tax reduction as both governor and as Republican leader of the state House of Representatives before that. At a time when increasing public and media attention focuses on judicial appointments, Pawlenty recently named as chief justice of the state supreme court Eric Magnuson, chairman of his judicial selection panel and author of an amicus brief for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life arguing taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund abortions with their tax dollars.
“I’ve got people in Minnesota saying ‘well, this guy is the most conservative governor we’ve ever had,” Pawlenty told me during a recent interview, “Not just recently, but in the history of the state. And I’m proud of that.”
A graduate of the University of Minnesota and its law school, Pawlenty was elected to the City Council of his hometown of Eagan at age 30, became state representative at 32, and House majority leader at 38. In 2002, when Reform Party Gov. Jesse Ventura retired after one term, Republican Pawlenty won a four-candidate race for the governorship with 44% of the vote. In ’06, he was re-elected with 47% over two opponents.
Although there was some talk of Pawlenty making a run for President himself in ’08, the Minnesotan declined to run and became an early backer of John McCain. Now that his candidate has secured the Republican nomination, speculation mounts about a McCain-Pawlenty ticket and putting Minnesota’s ten electoral votes in the GOP column for the first time since 1984.
But, with that speculation has come recent critical scrutiny of Pawlenty by some on the right. Syndicated columnist Robert Novak and the Wall Street Journal have named areas in which the governor may have gotten off the conservative path: on President Bush’s veto of the $35 billion extension of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress, on whether he preaches from the Book of Gore on global warming, and on the increase in his state’s cigarette tax.
Pawlenty did not flinch when he addressed these criticisms in our interview. “On behalf of the NGA [National Governors Association], I presented to the federal government, including the president, the NGA’s position on SCHIP,” he recalled, adding that the NGA stand was “there should be a renewal of the program, but we took no specific position on the funding mechanism - in this case, the Democrats were proposing a cigarette tax increase, which was opposed by most Republican governors. And we also stayed out of the details of what it should look like, because we didn’t have consensus within the NGA, and we’re a consensus organization.”
The governor believes “that got translated by some columnists and others as ‘Pawlenty encouraged the president not to veto the bill,’ or ‘supported the Democrats’ version of the bill,’ and that is not accurate. And I’m glad I had the chance to explain that to you.”
Pawlenty went on to cite differing scientific views of global warming and said his own conclusion on the issue was “we want to proceed with caution.” He feels “we should err on the side of taking reasonable steps to address it without wrecking the economy or setting ourselves up as a state or a nation to be uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
“My perception on this is the root word of conservative is conserve. If you go to the dictionary and look up the definition of conserve, it says things like ‘to use resources wisely,’ ‘to not disregard or not to absorb or utilize resources in a reckless manner.’ So, as conservatives, I think it’s okay to think about it in terms of using resources wisely.”
Sounding not much different from President Bush on the environment issue, Pawlenty feels “instead of having everyone drive slower in smaller cars, let’s get the technology on the road that’s going to allow our fuel standards to be better. When it gets to the issues of how we’re going to provide power in the future, I’ve been a proponent of nuclear power.
We opened the debate on nuclear power here, because it has almost no emissions. I mean, we now have the ability to potentially process fuel-rods. I’ve been a proponent of coal, clean-coal technology. So this is not about fundamentally changing our economy or wrecking it, it’s to find some ways to advance using the strengths that we have. And I think if you add clean coal and nuclear back to the discussion, those are positive contributions that I think many conservatives would like.”
He also cited his Christian faith on the issue, pointing out “I am a person of faith. I believe in the Bible, God instructs us to take good care and be good stewards of what He has given us, and that certainly includes our environment and natural resources. And he expects us to act measured and responsible in that regard.” (In answering a personal question about him that has been recently raised, Pawlenty told me he “was born and raised Catholic,” but since he married wife Mary in the late 1980’s, he has worshiped at Pastor Leith Anderson’s Church at Woodale. The governor described the church as “a Biblically-based, non-denominational church, but it is affiliated with the Baptist General Conference, and for most of its history was a Baptist church.”).
As for the cigarette tax increase that occurred under his watch, Pawlenty insists it was “a user fee” and “that issue was litigated in our court system in Minnesota, and actually the court declared it to be a user fee.” He then pointed to his overall record on fiscal issues:
“we’ve added all this up, and all the revenues increased, all the taxes cut, we have reduced taxes in Minnesota, noticeably and significantly. And we moved Minnesota out of the top ten on taxes.” Recalling how he helped guide record tax decreases to enactment while he was House Majority Leader in the late ‘90’s, Pawlenty noted that “we reduced income tax rates, property tax classifications, and business taxes, a variety of sorts. Since I’ve been governor, we have enacted a number of things, including something called levy limits, which is our temporary form of property tax caps in Minnesota. The sun set, so they’re not still on. We had reduced a variety of business taxes in Minnesota, and credits.
“In terms of the number of state employees in our state, if you don’t include the higher ed folks, there are reduced number of state employees.”
So would he accept second spot on a McCain ticket? “I’ve got a day job, I want to stay fully focused on that, and I’m honored to be governor in the state of Minnesota,” he told me. “I support John McCain because I think he’s a great man. He would be a great leader for our country. But we’re not getting into the speculation about the vice presidential role.”
