A Sudden Turn? You Betcha

Governing in these days of state budget deficits is not supposed to be easy or fun. Ask Gov. Gray Davis. It helps, however, if your predecessor was onetime pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, who bounded with a stage growl into the political ring in 1998 only to crawl back through the ropes last year, battered and grumpy.

It helps, too, if you’re the anti-Jesse.

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, virtually everyone agrees, is awfully nice. That might be enough, after four years of the perennially surly Ventura. The 42-year-old is also smart, boyishly handsome and a policy wonk. He holds two-hour news conferences rather than shutting out reporters and calling them “jackals,” and he plays amateur hockey, or “human pinball,” as he calls it -- a Minnesota kind of sport that voters find far less flamboyant than pro wrestling.

“Many people liked Ventura’s style,” said the staunchly conservative Pawlenty. “But then things turned serious.”

In less than eight months in office, Pawlenty, who is often referred to as a “Boy Scout,” has achieved more legislative change than the independent Ventura did in four years.

As Californians, incensed over the state’s $38-billion budget gap, began a recall drive that now threatens to remove Davis, Pawlenty made swift work of his state’s red ink. Minnesota faced a $4.6-billion shortfall -- the fourth-largest in the nation -- and Pawlenty threatened to shut down state government if legislators didn’t balance the budget without raising taxes. Democrats all but stepped aside grumbling as he pushed through a massive budget-cutting bill.

With Republicans enjoying a virtual stranglehold in the Legislature, Pawlenty also has gotten passed other laws long sought by conservatives, including one that requires women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours and another that allows most Minnesotans to carry a concealed handgun.

In a state that has produced such liberal icons as former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, as well as in Ventura the first independent governor, Pawlenty’s rise has been largely viewed by outsiders as a bizarre turn to the right.

Liberal Heartland

From 1948, when then-Minneapolis Mayor Humphrey showcased Minnesota values with an impassioned speech on civil rights at the Democratic convention, Minnesota, with its Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, was the nation’s heart of reliable Democratic liberalism. That lasted through Humphrey’s loss in the 1968 presidential election and well into the 1980s.

Pawlenty’s win, however, is less evidence of a shift toward Republicanism than of a more subtle and complicated trend playing out in many states but perhaps nowhere so markedly as in Minnesota. Voters, beginning here with the election of Ventura, are forgoing strict allegiance to either party.

Fully two-thirds of the state’s voters consider themselves centrists, and polls, voter registration and anecdotal evidence suggest that Minnesotans are not growing more conservative but rather are ready to side with the most convincing party or candidate.

“Party loyalty is not what it used to be,” said Steven Schier, a political science professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. “Many voters consider themselves independent, even if they are registered as Democrats or Republicans, and they’re entirely willing to vote for the person they see as the best candidate, regardless of party.”

Over the last two decades, Minnesota has morphed from a bastion of liberalism into the ultimate centrist state.

No one has won a Senate race here with more than 50.4% of the vote since the mid-1980s. After Wellstone died in a plane crash in 2002, local Democratic hero Walter F. Mondale stepped in but lost to Republican Norm Coleman, who took 50% of the votes in a five-way contest.

Pawlenty took just 45% of the vote when he beat Democrat Roger Moe in last year’s four-way race for governor. In 1998, Ventura won with just 37%, beating Humphrey’s son, Hubert “Skip” Humphrey III, also in a four-way race.

The ranks of the politically unattached appear to be growing beyond the twenty- and thirtysomethings energized by Ventura’s rollicking campaign, to include erstwhile stalwarts of both parties who share their disillusionment.

“I’m appalled by both Republicans and Democrats,” said Allen Sigafus, 78, a retired county welfare director who spent much of his life as an active Republican. “I and many others now support the candidate who is most ethical and honest, most like us, no matter their party.”

One of the costs of Ventura’s tenure, it seems, was the rise of Pawlenty.

Despite Ventura’s celebrity, he quickly became viewed here as an ineffectual, mean-spirited showboat. Minnesotans say they might have tolerated his self-promoting talk-show appearances and his moonlighting as an author and football commentator had he been able to enact change. Instead, he spent much of his time calling not only the press, but also legislators from both sides of the aisle, nasty names. In turn, Democrats and Republicans teamed up to quash Ventura initiatives, from his plan for a one-house Legislature to campaign-finance reform.

When Ventura, with approval ratings in the low 40s, decided not to seek a second term, Pawlenty was planning to seek the seat held by Wellstone. Seeing an opportunity for Republicans to take the statehouse, Vice President Dick Cheney phoned Pawlenty and asked him to run for governor. Pawlenty agreed.

By election day 2002, the once-powerful DFL had splintered after four years of Ventura and redistricting, party leaders say. Many DFL candidates were also tarnished by a nationally televised memorial for Wellstone, which turned into a Republican-bashing political rally that many Americans found unseemly.

A Republican Majority

Minnesota voters not only elected Pawlenty and Coleman but also gave Republicans a 30-seat majority in the 134-member state House. They whittled the Democrats’ lead in the 67-seat Senate to just four votes.

For the first time in recent history, Minnesota Republicans are enjoying a conservative in the White House, control of the state House and one of their own in the governor’s mansion.

“After Ventura, we wanted a nice, regular person,” said state Rep. Mindy Greiling, a Democrat. “Tim Pawlenty is charismatic, handsome, courteous, cordial, charming. He didn’t look dangerous. But he’s doing some dangerous things now. We’re in an extreme Republican position now, and that’s not Minnesota.”

Despite having no clear mandate from the people, Pawlenty took to the Capitol a clear, conservative vision of smaller government and traditional values. He quickly began steering the ship of state hard to the right.

The budget bill he easily pushed through cuts deeply into many social programs, from aid to the poor to funds for libraries. Pawlenty was careful not to slice health care and education, but he is molding a back-to-basics school curriculum that reduces arts programs and requires most students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at least once a week.

Pawlenty now seems likely to face a question that even supporters worried about during the campaign: Are his natural likability and political acumen enough to carry tough, lean conservative causes in a state full of independent-minded voters?

“He absolutely cleaned up in the legislative budget battle,” said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “I’ve never seen such a clean sweep.... But one of the first rules in politics is blame-avoidance. As the cuts in the budget begin to play out, it will be clear that this is a Republican budget and the blame will focus on the governor. What will be the cost of his huge win?”

50% Approval Ratings

Many believed that Pawlenty would enjoy a gleeful and extended post-Ventura honeymoon, but his conservative coups have left many Minnesotans nervous and have kept his approval ratings at just 50%.

“Compared to Gray Davis, Pawlenty’s a candidate for sainthood,” said Carleton College’s Schier. “But 50% approval ratings are only modest. And there is considerable ground for controversy over this budget -- he managed to cut almost everything.”

Nevertheless, Pawlenty has thus far remained keenly focused, uncompromising and unflappable.

When Democratic legislators called for raising taxes to make up for the budget deficit, Pawlenty mocked them by playing the Beatles’ “Tax Man” at a news conference.

When reports surfaced that he was on the board of directors of a telecommunications company fined for “slamming” customers -- switching their long-distance carriers without their knowledge -- he answered reporters’ questions until the questions ran out, and he apologized for not paying more attention to the company’s practices.

His lengthy news conference might actually have breathed a few days of life into the story, but nonetheless came across as refreshingly candid.

Pawlenty also received $60,000 from a political ally in the telecommunications business while running for governor.

Neither episode seems to have badly tarnished his image, although when people call him a Boy Scout, they often mean it with all the term’s connotations -- clean-cut and honest but also rigid and perhaps dated.

Pawlenty, who keeps his office CD player loaded mostly with Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Bon Jovi, grew up near the slaughterhouses in working-class South St. Paul, one of five children born to a truck driver and a homemaker. He put himself through college and law school at the University of Minnesota; he is the only one of the children to graduate from college.

He became an attorney, a prosecutor and then went into the technology business. At age 31, he was elected to the state House, where he would go on to become majority leader and begin molding the conservative agenda he’s now putting in place. He is married and the father of two young girls.

“He’s awesome,” Jeremy Miller, 18, said recently as he stood with friends in downtown Minneapolis. “Totally better than Ventura.”

“He’s an absolute nightmare,” said Duluth graduate student Cindy Hale. “The epitome of heartless Republicanism.”

The Bush campaign is once again calling Pawlenty, this time asking his advice on how it might win Minnesota in 2004. The state has voted for a Republican in the presidential contest just three times since 1940 -- the last being Richard Nixon in 1972. But Al Gore’s narrow win in Minnesota in 2000 -- 60,000 votes out of 2 million cast -- gives the GOP hope.

“We are now a true battleground state,” Pawlenty said.

Before turning up a Springsteen tune one recent day and wandering about his office in a white shirt and red tie, Pawlenty spoke about the war in Iraq, the budget deficit, “trying times.” And he did indeed sound a bit like a Boy Scout.

“Sacrifices have to be made. People are accepting that,” he said. “Governing and leading in these times is an extraordinary challenge and extraordinary privilege.”