91 Facts About Tim Pawlenty

Timothy James Pawlenty is an American attorney, businessman, and politician who served from 2003 to 2011 as the 39th governor of Minnesota.

Tim Pawlenty unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2012 presidential election.

Tim Pawlenty graduated from the University of Minnesota, becoming a labor law attorney and the vice president of a software company.

Tim Pawlenty was reelected four times and was elected majority leader in 1998.

Tim Pawlenty campaigned on a conservative platform with a pledge not to raise taxes.

Tim Pawlenty worked to lower the state's deficit by cutting funds from state programs and instituting "user fees".

Tim Pawlenty was reelected in 2006 by a margin of less than one percent.

Tim Pawlenty's administration advocated for numerous notable public works projects, including the construction of the Northstar Commuter Rail Line and Target Field.

From 2007 to 2008, Tim Pawlenty chaired the National Governors Association.

Tim Pawlenty was rumored to be a contender for both the Republican presidential and vice-presidential nominations in the 2008 presidential election.

Tim Pawlenty went on to co-chair John McCain's unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

Tim Pawlenty ran for president in the 2012 Republican presidential primary.

Tim Pawlenty's campaign fell short of expectations by failing to gain traction.

Tim Pawlenty was not selected, but he served as co-chair of Romney's campaign until his departure two months before the election.

Tim Pawlenty sought a third term as governor of Minnesota in the 2018 election with Michelle Fischbach as his running mate.

Tim Pawlenty was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Eugene Joseph Tim Pawlenty, and his wife, Virginia Frances.

Tim Pawlenty grew up in South St Paul, where he played ice hockey on his high school's junior varsity squad.

Tim Pawlenty received a Juris Doctor from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1986.

Tim Pawlenty first worked as a labor law attorney at the firm Rider Bennett, where he had interned while a law student.

Tim Pawlenty later became vice president of a software as a service company, Wizmo Inc.

Tim Pawlenty entered state politics in 1990 as a campaign advisor for Jon Grunseth's campaign for governor.

Tim Pawlenty was reelected four times and was chosen House Majority Leader when Republicans gained the majority in the State Legislature in 1998.

In 2002, Tim Pawlenty wanted to run for governor, but party leaders made it clear they favored businessman Brian Sullivan.

Tim Pawlenty returned to his original ambition and won a hard-fought and narrow race against Sullivan in the Republican primary.

Former Democratic Congressman Tim Pawlenty Penny ran on the Independence Party ticket.

Tim Pawlenty won, defeating Hatch by less than one percent, though both the state House and Senate gained DFL majorities.

Tim Pawlenty was elected in 2002 on a platform of balancing the state's budget without raising taxes.

Tim Pawlenty emphasized his campaign and first term with the Taxpayers League of Minnesota slogan "no new taxes".

Tim Pawlenty's governorship was characterized by a historically low rate of spending growth.

Tim Pawlenty agreed to several compromises, abandoning a public employee wage freeze and property tax restrictions.

Some criticized Tim Pawlenty for providing a short-term budget solution but coming up short in his long-term strategy as governor.

Tim Pawlenty's budget had been the subject of a lawsuit in Ramsey County District Court, which was decided against him.

Judge Kathleen Gearin ruled that Tim Pawlenty had exceeded his constitutional authority in making unilateral spending cuts to a $5.3-million special dietary program that he had unalloted.

Since the Minnesota Constitution prohibits state-run gambling outside of Native territory, Tim Pawlenty proposed negotiating with Minnesota's 11 tribes over profit-sharing of their casinos.

Tim Pawlenty worked throughout 2006 to fund a Minnesota Twins baseball stadium in Minneapolis.

In June 2006, Tim Pawlenty signed a $999.9-million public works bill that included funding for additional work on the Northstar Commuter rail line, an expanded Faribault prison, a bioscience building at the University of Minnesota, and science facilities at Minnesota State University in Mankato.

In 2011, Tim Pawlenty shut down an Islamic finance program that was part of a larger program to increase home ownership in Minnesota.

Tim Pawlenty's spokesperson said the program accommodated the Muslim ban on interest.

Tim Pawlenty was an advocate of charter schools and was praised by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools for his education policies.

Tim Pawlenty oversaw the repeal of the Profile of Learning kindergarten through 12th grade graduation requirements and sought to reinstate them.

Tim Pawlenty was seen as an outsider coming from Virginia and became unpopular for having pushed the academic reforms during a tight budget session as well as her critical view of Minnesota public schools.

Tim Pawlenty used an accounting change called a tax shift to balance the state deficit without raising taxes.

Tim Pawlenty found it "unnecessary" because MnSCU was fixing its system already "through internal actions and policy changes".

Tim Pawlenty appointed his lieutenant governor, Carol Molnau, as transportation commissioner, and the legislature approved the appointment in May 2004.

Legislators criticized her performance as transportation commissioner, citing ineffective leadership and management, and removed her from that role in February 2008, a decision Tim Pawlenty said was motivated by partisanship.

Tim Pawlenty favored raising fees and imposing toll lanes on roads as the primary means of discouraging excessive traffic.

Tim Pawlenty used or threatened vetoes in 2005,2007 and 2008 on legislation funding proposed highway expansion, infrastructure repairs, road maintenance, and mass transit.

Tim Pawlenty in turn criticized the city for poorly allocating its funding.

Tim Pawlenty expressed disapproval of the courts' reluctance to use this option: only seven people received such a sentence in its first two years of implementation.

Tim Pawlenty said that the economic benefits of illegal immigration did not justify the illegal behavior.

Tim Pawlenty rounded out his proposal with tougher penalties for false identification and instituting a fine of up to $5,000 for employers of illegal immigrants.

Tim Pawlenty's proposal was challenged by DFL senators who preferred increased legal immigration to punitive action.

Tim Pawlenty has lobbied the Governors' Ethanol Coalition to mandate higher ethanol use nationwide.

In 2007, Governor Tim Pawlenty signed the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007 into law and, along with six other Midwestern governors, the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Accord.

However, by 2009 Tim Pawlenty had reversed his position and called cap-and-trade "overly bureaucratic" and a potential "disaster".

Tim Pawlenty angered many when it was learned she had delayed releasing government research on cancer in miners.

In 2005, Tim Pawlenty asked a US Senate subcommittee to allow his MinnesotaCare health plan to expand and continue allowing state residents and employees to import cheaper Canadian prescription drugs.

In 2007, Tim Pawlenty signed into law the 2007 Omnibus Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill, which provided funding for the Health Care Transformation Task Force, a panel of health care experts charged with exploring ways to reduce health care spending, improve quality, and ensure that Minnesota develops a universal health care plan by 2011.

Tim Pawlenty used a line-item veto to remove $381 million from health and human services funding, a removal which could lead to 35,000 Minnesotans' losing their General Assistance Medical Care health insurance in 2011.

Tim Pawlenty was visited in 2004 by Mexican President Vicente Fox in talks to strengthen trade.

Tim Pawlenty took a delegation of nearly 200 Minnesotan business, government, academic and civic leaders on a weeklong trip to China in mid-November 2005.

Tim Pawlenty led Minnesota trade delegations to Canada in 2003, Poland and the Czech Republic in 2004, India in 2007, and Israel in 2008.

Tim Pawlenty served as Chair of the Midwestern Governors Association in 2006.

In 2007, it was announced that Tim Pawlenty would be serving in a lead role for McCain as a national co-chair of his presidential exploratory committee which led to Tim Pawlenty's becoming co-chairman of McCain's campaign.

In January 2008, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune suggested Tim Pawlenty's renewed focus on his proposed immigration reform plans might be politically motivated as counterbalance to McCain's less favorable guest worker program.

For many weeks, Tim Pawlenty was widely considered to be a leading candidate for the vice-presidential nomination on the Republican ticket with John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 2008, Tim Pawlenty expressed support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Tim Pawlenty decided not to seek a third consecutive term as governor, and so was not a candidate in the November 2010 gubernatorial election.

In October 2009, a CNN article suggested that Tim Pawlenty was contemplating a 2012 White House bid.

In late 2009, Tim Pawlenty began taking steps that many saw as leading to a 2012 presidential bid.

Tim Pawlenty visited Iowa in November 2009 and April 2010, making political speeches.

Tim Pawlenty thinks the United States Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade wrongly, abortion being a state, not a federal, matter.

In December 2010, Tim Pawlenty was one of three US governors who publicly declared solidarity with the Christian-right group Family Research Council.

Tim Pawlenty's tour was in Minneapolis, San Francisco and Dallas, and it ended January in Iowa where the Iowa Caucuses were scheduled for February 6,2012.

On March 21,2011, Tim Pawlenty announced via Facebook that he had formed an exploratory committee in preparation for a potential run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Tim Pawlenty finished third in the Ames Straw Poll on August 13,2011, behind the winner Michele Bachmann and the runner-up Ron Paul.

On September 12,2011, Tim Pawlenty announced his endorsement of former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as well as his position as national co-chair for Romney's campaign.

Tim Pawlenty was to head the Financial Services Roundtable, a financial service industry lobby group in Washington, DC Tim Pawlenty would not be running in the 2014 gubernatorial election in Minnesota nor in the state's 2014 senatorial election.

Tim Pawlenty replaced Steve Bartlett, a former US Representative from Texas who had held the positions since 1999.

In November 2012, Tim Pawlenty said that "Republicans and Democrats will have to reconcile their differences on spending and taxes because the 'walls of reality are closing in on them'" relative to the federal government's looming "fiscal cliff".

Tim Pawlenty "refuted assertions that implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, legislation enacted roughly 27 months [earlier] in response to the financial crisis, ha[d] been delayed because of lobbying".

In February 2018, Tim Pawlenty began considering running for a third term as governor of Minnesota and started meeting with Republican donors and advisors.

Tim Pawlenty lost the Republican primary to Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson.

Tim Pawlenty's campaign was affected by disparaging statements he made about then presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Tim Pawlenty said he was ending his career in politics.

Tim Pawlenty stayed only briefly before departing for another dispute-resolution company, the Gilbert Mediation Center.

Tim Pawlenty's conversion to Evangelical Protestantism has been attributed to Mary, who is a member of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a member congregation of the Minnesota Baptist Conference.

Tim Pawlenty frequently uses the mononym "TPaw" or "T-Paw".

Tim Pawlenty was the first sitting governor to run the race.

Tim Pawlenty is generally considered a conservative on the American political spectrum.

In February 2008, Washington Post columnist Robert Novak wrote that Tim Pawlenty was the most conservative Minnesota governor since Governor Theodore Christianson in the 1920s.