Pawlenty kept his tax promise, built national presence

PIM’s 2009 Politician of the Year

The 2009 PIM Politician of the Year becomes the fourth person to win twice: GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The award—a Politics in Minnesota tradition that dates to 1982 and the inception of the old snail-mail PIM newsletter, written at the time by DFL veterans D.J. Leary and Wy Spano—has gone to 21 different individuals to date. Of those, three were previously named twice: Norm Coleman, when he was the DFL mayor of St. Paul in 1995, and again in 1997 when he won reelection after switching to the GOP; former DFL Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe, in 1992 and 1996; and Independent Gov. Jesse Ventura, in 1998 and 1999.

PIM first gave Pawlenty the award in 2003, the opening year of his first term. After solving the state’s then-record budget deficit of $4.3 billion with one-time money, shifts and fee increases—but no new taxes—Pawlenty ended his first year with a 58 percent approval rating in a Star Tribune Minnesota poll.

At the time, Democrats (and most Republicans) assumed that any future deficits would have to be solved with tax increases.

Wrong. In 2004, the deficit was $700 million, most of which was attributable to health care cost increases. In 2005, the state faced a $466 million deficit, which resulted in a partial state shutdown as Pawlenty and legislators argued over cuts. In 2006, the state enjoyed a $181 million surplus, much of which went to paying back schools for accounting shifts. 2007 brought a state surplus of $2.16 billion.

In 2009, the state set another budget deficit record at $6.4 billion, which was reduced to $4.6 billion by federal stimulus money. The stalemate between the DFL Legislature and Pawlenty over tax increases ended abruptly when the Legislature sent him all the spending bills: In an extraordinary move, Pawlenty made unprecedented use of his office’s executive powers to cut or delay $2.7 billion in state spending, temporarily solving the problem.

In sum, the state has suffered budget shortfalls in six of the eight years of Pawlenty’s tenure, and he has essentially prevailed on his no-new-taxes credo in those deficit years.

In 2005, Pawlenty did propose increasing fees on cigarette distributors through what he termed a “health impact fee.” That measure became law, but Pawlenty maintained that he wasn’t increasing taxes—and correctly so, because the money for cigarettes was statutorily a fee. But those semantics, though codified in state law, were lost on much of the public, and Democrats stirred the pot by chiding Pawlenty for the tax-versus-fee distinction. The grief Pawlenty took over that episode played no small role in hardening his commitment to avoid new revenue-raising schemes by any name.

Love it or hate it, holding the line on tax hikes for eight years constitutes a remarkable record. This was especially true in a decade that has spawned a vigorous debate about the size and role of government at home and in Washington.

What’s always been appealing about Pawlenty is the means by which he came to be a Minnesota statewide office holder—climbing the political ladder on his own sheer chutzpah and hard work, unlike many other statewide pols of the last dozen years or so who enjoyed advantages that Pawlenty did not. Like a deep checkbook (Mark Dayton). A well-known last name (Dayton and Amy Klobuchar, whose father was the best-known newspaper columnist in town for many years). Or a prior career as an entertainer (Al Franken and Jesse Ventura).

While Pawlenty deserves the Pol of the Year award for his state record alone, he’s also achieved a status never attained by any past winner of PIM politician of the year: bona fide player on the national stage. He’s the first Minnesota Republican of the modern era to build such a presence, and in the past six months he has made himself a fixture of 2012 presidential chatter. His ideas and his red-meat attacks on Obama administration policies are featured regularly on the cable news circuit and at Drudge. Chris Cillizza, the influential author of the Washington Post blog The Fix, has put Pawlenty as high as number two on his periodic list of the most important national Republican figures. And along the way, Pawlenty and his Freedom First PAC have assembled the core of what many deem a budding, and formidable, presidential campaign team.

Some Pawlenty detractors have consistently maintained that he has no shot at winning the Republican nomination for president. One of their arguments is that Pawlenty was elected governor by mere pluralities in both elections. True, but in 2002 Pawlenty got 999,473 votes and in 2006, 1,208,568. Minnesota’s population roughly averaged five million both years). Then consider Bill Clinton. In 1978 Clinton became governor of Arkansas with 335,101 votes, lost in 1980, and won, again, in 1982 with 431,855 votes. The population of Arkansas in those years was roughly 2 million, so the relative population share won by each man was not very different.

Tim Pawlenty, the 2009 PIM Politician of the Year, was first elected to the Eagan City Council, then the Minnesota House and then the governor’s office. What an amazing  story: From Eagan City Council to a viable candidate for president of the United States.

4 Responses to “Pawlenty kept his tax promise, built national presence”

1. Hannah Montana Says:
   December 30th, 2009 at 10:29 am

   If you want to award Tim Pawlenty for making himself a national figure, that’s fine. But you cannot honestly claim, as he tries to do here and will try to do nationally, that he hasn’t raised taxes on people. The “health impact fee” was actually a cigarette tax that paid for education, his other cuts have resulted in huge property tax increases all over the place, and overall people are paying more now than they were when he started as Gov. His claims of “no tax increases” are disingenuous at best. Call a spade a spade.

   He’s great at self-promotion and has a significant “teflon” quality in terms of evading problems and not having anything particularly bad stick to him. And he has indeed made himself a national presence. If that merits an award, well, then we in MN are in more of a sad state than we probably realize.

2. Jim Bendtsen Says:
   December 30th, 2009 at 10:59 am

   I consider Pawlenty a political opportunist and at best a moderate Republican, but certainly not a conservative. Pawlenty DID RAISE TAXES. He forced a small portion of the state’s taxpayers to pay a huge portion of the budget increase, far out of proportion to their percentage of population. It’s called a “sin tax”. After dramatically raising the price of all tobacco products, he signed a bill which took away the rights of those same tobacco users and business owners to allow smoking in their businesses, which is none of his or the state’s business. Pawlenty supports a worthless ethanol policy that damages the environment more than it helps. He voted to take away the rights of everyone to drive with or without a seatbelt as they choose and empowered cops in another way to raise revenue and intrude into every citizen’s driving. Pawlenty supported a MN cap and trade, which is one of the centerpieces of the marxist’s/socialist’s agenda and he also supports the taking and storing of baby dna at birth without the parents’ consent. Pawlenty’s record on personal liberty and government intrusion into our private lives is laughable and needs exposure. There are much better conservative candidates out there. We don’t need another McCain type presidential candidate masquerading as a conservative, which what the leftist media so desperately wants.

3. Rebecca Sunnybrook Says:
   January 8th, 2010 at 10:10 pm

   I think I should have won this award. I haven’t noticed that any of our politicians have done much good for the state. Also, I’m better looking that they are.

4. Rebecca Sunnybrook Says:
   January 8th, 2010 at 10:12 pm

   One more comment. Pawlenty gets uglier by the day. What’s wrong with you guys? Are you shallow or what? Don’t looks count for anything anymore?