Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty (born November 27, 1960, South St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.) is an American politician who served as governor of Minnesota (2003–11). He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Pawlenty grew up in South St. Paul, Minnesota, the youngest of five children in a working-class family. His mother passed away when he was young. Pawlenty, who began working as a teenager, paid his own way through the University of Minnesota, where he earned a B.A. in political science in 1983. After graduation he worked at the law firm of Rider, Bennett, Egan, and Arundel while pursuing a law degree from the University of Minnesota, and he continued working there after receiving the degree in 1986.

Pawlenty’s first foray into politics was a college internship with U.S. Sen. David Durenberger, a Minnesota Republican, in 1980. Two years later Pawlenty returned to work on Durenberger’s campaign, and in 1988 he served as political director for the senator’s reelection bid. In 1989 Pawlenty was elected to the Eagan City Council, and in 1992 he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, where he served as Republican House majority leader (1999–2003). He initially ran for governor in 1998, but he stepped aside in favour of another candidate—Norm Coleman, the mayor of St. Paul, who had switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 1996. In 2001 Pawlenty intended to make a bid for the U.S. Senate but was persuaded not to run—again in favour of Coleman—by Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, and he ran for governor instead. Campaigning on a socially conservative platform (he was pro-life and opposed gay rights) and a pledge not to raise taxes, he won election in 2002 and took office the following year.

As governor, Pawlenty worked toward more efficient and cost-effective health care and continued to oppose tax increases. However, he solved budget issues by imposing other fees, including an unpopular cigarette “health impact fee,” and by cutting state spending. In 2006 Pawlenty was narrowly reelected to a second term. He had balanced the state’s budget during his first term, but in 2008–09 the global economic downturn took its toll on the state’s balance sheet (as it did for most other states), so that, by the end of his second term, Minnesota was facing a deficit of more than $6 billion. During the 2008 presidential election, Pawlenty cochaired John McCain’s campaign and was widely speculated to be short-listed as a possible running mate, though the vice presidential nomination eventually went to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Pawlenty announced in June 2009 that he would not seek a third term as governor, and he left office in January 2011. In March he announced the formation of an exploratory committee for the 2012 presidential election, and in May he officially declared his candidacy. Pawlenty’s strategy focused on doing well in Iowa, Minnesota’s southern neighbour, which traditionally holds the first caucus in the presidential nominating season. In the months after he launched his campaign, however, Pawlenty failed to make inroads in Iowa, particularly after the entry into the campaign of fellow Minnesotan Michele Bachmann, who appealed to many of the same conservative Evangelicals Pawlenty hoped to attract. In mid-August 2011, following a Republican straw poll in Ames, Iowa, in which Pawlenty finished a distant third behind Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Pawlenty withdrew from the race. The following month he announced his endorsement of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the nomination.

In 2012 Pawlenty became president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), a lobbying group. He left FSR in March 2018, and the following month he announced his bid for a third term as governor of Minnesota. He was defeated in the primary, however, and some cited his earlier criticism of Republican Pres. Donald Trump as contributing to his unexpected loss. Pawlenty’s autobiography, Courage to Stand: An American Story, was published in 2010.