ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is a man on the move. Next stop, the Republican National Committee meeting in California. Future stop? Maybe the White House.
The two-term fiscal and social conservative is taking necessary steps toward a possible presidential bid — headlining GOP fundraisers, taking an influential job at the Republican Governors Association, mulling his own political action committee.
But Pawlenty says he's focused on the party, not 2012.
"Anybody who is out focusing on (2012) instead of working toward getting the party moving forward or back in a better position in 2010 is really doing us a disservice," Pawlenty told The Associated Press.
However, his track record of GOP building in Minnesota is less than stellar. Republicans have lost ground in every election since he became governor in 2003. He is the sole statewide GOP officeholder and his party controls its fewest legislative seats since 1992. Pawlenty himself narrowly survived a three-way election contest to win his second term. But the governor said that's not his fault.
Minnesota is "probably one of the most liberal states in the country," he said. "When the pendulum swung back to the left, we were at a tenuous point to begin with."
At age 48, with almost two decades of state government service under his belt, Pawlenty denies looking very far down the national road. But he's getting the early exposure he'll need if he formally joins a GOP field that could include better-known former governors like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee.
He has assumed the No. 2 post at the Republican Governors Association, a perch that will involve steering assistance to GOP candidates in close races. And he's jumped into the national healthcare debate, criticizing President Barack Obama's plan in a way also seen as a veiled swipe at potential rival Romney. (He labeled a Massachusetts overhaul enacted under Romney an "experiment" with a swelling price tag.)
Pawlenty also told the AP he's considering forming a political action committee — a staple that gives potential presidential candidates a way to raise money and organize travel to election battlegrounds.
Pawlenty's recent travel has taken him to Washington, Arkansas, and Colorado. But he hasn't yet ventured to presidential proving grounds Iowa or New Hampshire and wouldn't say when he would. He visited both while campaigning for 2008 nominee John McCain — who considered him for the running mate slot Palin got — but still has plenty of work to do.
Republican John Finnegan, 50, of Concord, said Wednesday he had heard Pawlenty's name but not much else.
"I don't know anything about the guy," he said.
In Iowa, Sioux City businessman and former state GOP chairman Ray Hoffman rated Pawlenty as merely a possibility. "Would I put him at the top of the list? At this point, no," Hoffman said.
At least one Iowa conservative group, the American Future Fund, has invited him to speak. Organizer Tim Albrecht said Iowa Republicans are eager to hear from their neighboring governor firsthand, but understand why he hasn't come yet.
"The biggest risk in coming to Iowa too early is it can seem overeager or ambitious to talk about 2012," Albrecht said. "It is a delicate balance, a tightrope they need to walk in order to be successful."
But Republican strategist Terry Nelson, who managed McCain's early campaign efforts, said potential candidates' groundwork must be laid to move quickly after the 2010 election.
"Really, candidates have to decide that in the next 18 months because it's not the kind of thing anymore you can decide in June or July of 2011," Nelson said.
Republican national committeewoman Phyllis Woods of New Hampshire plans to ask Pawlenty to visit her state when she sees him in California. Woods said she met Pawlenty during last summer's GOP convention in the Twin Cities and considers him a "feet-on-the-ground, good, solid, conservative Republican."
"I would like to learn more about him," she said.
Woods and representatives from all 50 states will get their chance at Pawlenty's speech Thursday.
Pawlenty tends to stick a formula at the podium: He'll begin with a self-deprecating joke — usually about a comment by his wife or two daughters — and connect the punch line to a broader point of his speech.
The son of a truck driver, he's also fond of talking about "Sam's Club Republicans," potential GOP voters with blue-collar backgrounds who want leaders to apply customer values to government. Lately, Pawlenty has shared a tough-love message with Republican audiences, saying his party will keep "losing market share to our competitors" until it finds a better, more inspiring message.
Whether Pawlenty can break through to sustain a 2012 campaign is hard to say.
Drake University politics professor Dennis Goldford said a northern governor must find a way to appeal to an increasingly southern GOP base. He needs to weave a message attractive both to people who want to make the party more pure and to those seeking centrist remodeling.
"At this point you just don't know the political terrain," Goldford said. "All you can do right now is introduce yourself and put yourself in people's vision and mind and then say 'I'll be back.'"
© 2009 Associated Press
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