GRINNELL, Iowa – Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was still introducing himself and trying to win over voters one handshake at a time as he readies himself for a debate and straw poll that could make or break his nascent campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Wearing blue jeans and a checkered button-down shirt, Pawlenty strode into a newly opened Republican party headquarters in the tiny farming town of Grinnell Saturday and spent an hour talking about his record as governor and trying to persuade voters that he could win a General Election.
“The main way we’re going to goof this up as Republicans is to nominate the wrong candidate,” Pawlenty said. All Republican candidates will talk about the need to cut spending and change Washington, but “we need to make sure we’ve got a candidate who has the experience, the record and the sturdiness” to beat President Obama, he said.
Roughly three dozen gray-haired voters questioned Pawlenty about his background, his loyalty to the Republican Party, his views on gay marriage and, most importantly, how he would turn around the sputtering economy.
Pawlenty pledged to pare back government regulations on business, saying he doesn’t want to “change” Washington but “defeat” it.
“I told people ‘no’ more than anybody in our state,” Pawlenty said, highlighting his veto record as governor. “I had the first government shutdown in 150 years over tax and spending issues.”
Facing a Republican debate on Thursday and a straw poll on Saturday, Pawlenty is selling himself as a tough-love governor willing to take unpopular but necessary stands as he struggles to catch two candidates — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann — who have spent much less time in Iowa, but consistently rank higher in polls.
“People are going to value steady, seasoned leadership,” Pawlenty told The Washington Examiner. “Everyone’s going to say [Bachmann and Romney] are the ones who are going to go out and grow the conservative movement and win in swing areas. … Well I actually got elected and reelected in one of the toughest political environments in the country as a conservative.”
He advised voters not to support candidates with no executive experience — an indirect swipe at Bachmann — and emphasized that, unlike Romney, he enacted health care reform “the right way.”
At a Christian Music festival in West Des Moines, though, it was clear Pawlenty still has work to do when he was introduced as someone who “most of you, I would think, have at least heard of.” Unfazed, Pawlenty encouraged the two dozen or so spectators to attend the straw poll before reciting a short Bible passage.
Bachmann had appeared on the same stage the night before, but to a crowd five times the size of Pawlenty’s.
“We want a sustainable star, not a shooting star,” Pawlenty said of Bachmann. “People who are usually the loudest or the most entertaining, and are the most outrageous, are interesting for a month or two, and then they usually fade.”
As Pawlenty was leaving the festival, however, a young blonde woman bounded up to him and enthusiastically pledged her support.
“We have the same values,” 45-year-old Dia Robbins of Pella, Iowa, said. “Because of his strong faith, his views of politics and people are based upon what he believes the Lord wants him to do.”
