VP Pawlenty Watch

VP Pawlenty Watch: More likely to get love from McCain than Mrs. Pawlenty

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

Today, the Star Tribune is front-paging a report in Sunday's Washington Post that Pawlenty tops the field of candidates for McCain's running mate:

"The Minnesota governor remains the single possibility in the Republican vice presidential field who best fits what McCain wants and needs in a VP. Pawlenty has been elected twice in a Democratic-leaning state that is almost certain to be a battleground in the fall. He is liked and respected by both conservatives and moderates, and he gets rave reviews for his political instincts. He has also known McCain for nearly three decades and, at 47, could allay some concerns about McCain's age."

MOST LOGICAL VEEP CHOICES?
Here is the Post's list of the "five most logical veeps," assuming McCain and Obama are the candidates, ranked in the order of the likelihood of being chosen.

REPUBLICANS
5. Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts

4. Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida

3. Former Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio

2. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota

1. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News names Pawlenty among three frontrunners, but says McCain is keeping a "cone of silence" on VP selection--which for some reason reminds me of the "Circle of Trust" from Meet the Parents:

Campaign Notebook: McCain Keeping Lid on Running Mate Debate

By Joe Sobczyk and Edwin Chen

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Republican John McCain insists his vice presidential search is ``still in initial stages'' and that he looking at ``a large number'' of potential running mates.

The early betting among Republicans still has Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, former Ohio congressman and Bush administration budget director Rob Portman and onetime rival candidate Mitt Romney near the top of the list.

``There's still no update,'' longtime McCain confidante Mark Salter said when asked this week whether the list has been whittled down. The usually talkative McCain is keeping ``a cone of silence'' on the selection process, Salter said.

Although Pawlenty's chances of scoring a spot on the Republican presidential ticket seem to be good, the likelihood that the governor will get laid tonight looks bleak. Appearing on WCCO radio to celebrate the fishing opener, T-Paw channeled Howard Stern and complained that he's not getting any from his wife Mary Pawlenty:

"I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish. I mean, she will take the lead and ask me to go out fishing, and joyfully comes here. She loves football, she'll go to hockey games, and I jokingly say, 'Now, if I could only get her to have sex with me I'd really have it made.''"

Wonkette is using the gaffe to imply that T-Paw prefers the company of men, which won't go over well with the base:

Hey, maybe the Republican governor of Minnesota is gay enough to run for Vice President after all! It is a scientifically documented fact that many leading lights of the Republican party prefer the company of other gentlemen, and remarks Tim Pawlenty made this weekend suggest he is a member of the Party's elite cabal of well-groomed fellows who happen to know all the words to every ABBA album ever recorded. He told a WCCO radio show host he doesn't have sex with his wife!

This week, the T-Paw VP Meter holds steady at Yellow, but the T-Paw Testicular Meter has been lowered to Blue.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 12, 2008 10:19 AM | Comments (4)

 

VP Klobuchar Watch: Amy makes list of potential Obama running mates

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Senator Amy Klobuchar become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play--OK, it isn't, there's only one factor at play. But the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) gimmick is working well so we decided to franchise it out.

Tim Pawlenty isn't the only Minnesotan with a chance to land on a presidential ticket this year. The influential Democratic site TPM Cafe recently named Senator Klobuchar on a list of potential VP candidates for Obama:

In any case, he should pick a woman and any other woman will raise the question "why not Hillary."

My guess. He goes with Clinton or with Governors Sebelius (KS) or Napolitano (AZ) or Senators McCaskill (MO) or Klobuchar (MN).

We're putting the odds of a VP Klobuchar at 20 to 1 to start, with exacta betting on a Klobuchar/Pawlenty VP ticket starting at 100 to 1.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 8, 2008 2:13 PM | Comments (4)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: insiders picking Romney as Gov. criticizes McCain's bridge blame

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

Last week, we took the unprecedented step of raising the VP Pawlenty Meter to Orange Alert. T-Paw was listed by several pundits among the top tier, with 5-to-1 odds, and had none of the baggage of the other frontrunners.

But like a confident young hare, Pawlenty may have fallen asleep on the side of the road and allowed a turtle to sneak up on his rear. In this case, that turtle is Mitt Romney.

Yesterday brought word that insiders are now picking Mittens as the frontrunner in the veepstakes:

The latest Evans-Novak Political Report says that "a rumor running through the political community" now puts former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in the lead to be Sen. John McCain's vice presidential candidate. "But Romney has many critics in the McCain inner circle, and we don't think the decision has been made."

There is also speculation McCain could name his veep early "to step up fund-raising before the national convention."

Meanwhile, today T-Paw is biting the hand that feeds, gently sidestepping John McCain's recent claim that the 35W bridge collapse could be blamed on pork barrel spending:

In Pennsylvania on Wednesday, McCain told reporters: "The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects."

Asked if McCain's comments were appropriate or should be corrected, Pawlenty said, "I don't know what he's basing that on other than the general premise that projects got misprioritized throughout time."

He said he called the McCain campaign to remind them of the upcoming NTSB report.

But Pawlenty struck a much different tone than he took when reacting to political foes who previously questioned the role of deferred maintenance in the collapse that killed 13 people and injured 145. After the NTSB issued its preliminary findings in January, Pawlenty admonished critics to "quit using the bridge, quit exploiting the bridge tragedy to advance their political agenda."

After a brief and unprecedented raise to Orange Alert, we're dialing down the VP Pawlenty Meter to Yellow this week:

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at May 1, 2008 11:44 AM | Comments (11)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: Using addition by subtraction, T-Paw comes out on top

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

In our last installment, we took note of claims that John McCain had settled on T-Paw as his VP more than a year ago. A report on the website of conservative mouthpiece Fox News over the weekend only adds fuel to that claim.

For one thing, McCain's advisers announced that he had doubled the number of competitive swing states. That makes a moderate Republican like Pawlenty all the more attractive, and indicates Minnesota could potentially be a battleground:

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania, is high on his list of VP bets. So is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Both states went Democratic in the 2004 presidential election, but not by much.

In fact, political oddsmaker Ron Faucheux puts Pawlenty's odds at 5 to 1, giving the same favorable chances to Condoleezza Rice, Mitt Romney, and Tom Ridge. But pollster Scott Rasmussen dismisses several of those potential rivals:

“The three names that McCain should absolutely not pick are (Mike) Huckabee, Romney and Condoleezza Rice,” he said.

Rasmussen has even set up a fake stock market that allows political junkies to bet on who they think will get the nod. So far, T-Paw is barely trailing Romney, who as previously mentioned, may not be a candidate McCain could live with:

From Rasmussen Markets (value reflects percentage chance)

Romney: 16.9%

Pawlenty: 16%

Rice: 7.9%

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison: 5.9%

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: 5%

Huckabee: 5%

T-Paw attracts similar betting action on Intrade Prediction Markets (value reflects percentage chance):

Romney: 16.3%

Pawlenty: 15.6%

Rice: 8%

Huckabee: 7%

Hutchison: 5.9%

Tom Ridge appears on neither of those lists, meaning he may be a nag. Which leaves Pawlenty as the last candidate standing.

Meanwhile, McCain indicated Monday that he's going to pull the trigger sooner rather than later:

“Let me just say that I hope that we could arrive at that decision earlier rather than later, but it is a long process to go through.”

This again works in Pawlenty's favor, since he's a known, vetted commodity whose been on the shortlist for over a year.

In light of this, we're taking the unprecedented step of raising the VP Pawlenty Meter to Orange Alert:

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 22, 2008 1:37 PM | Comments (7)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: McCain "made up his mind a year ago" to pick T-Paw

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

When last we surveyed the crowded field of VP wannabes, the nomination seemed to be slipping away from T-Paw. After all, McCain was saying there were as many as 20 potential running mates on his mind, and Condi Rice was loudly squawking that she wants the job.

But this week brought an interview with Atlantic odds-makers Marc Ambinder, helpfully transcribed by Minnesota Monitor, in which Ambinder suggests the decision to go with T-Paw may have been made a year ago:

I think there's a fair chance that John McCain picks Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, who is a fabulous surrogate for him. Someone that McCain has grown to really like, brings a lot to the ticket in many ways. And someone who people close to McCain say, quite frankly, he had settled on a year ago, and that's one of the main reasons why I bring up the name, not because of any of the tangential or the political factors. It's just that people close to McCain say that McCain had pretty much made up his mind a year ago. And there's nothing so far as I can tell that would have changed McCain's mind.

A lot has happened in that year, and unlike Ambinder, I'm not so sure it isn't enough to change McCain's mind. I'm less thinking of the 35W bridge collapse here and more thinking of the emergence of the "change" narrative and the historical nature of the Democratic ticket. I think this weighs strongly against going with a "traditional" VP candidate like Pawlenty. That said, Ambinder seems to have better sources than us, so we're officially raising the Pawlenty VP Meter to "Yellow," meaning an "elevated" risk of a Pawlenty vice presidency.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 11, 2008 3:06 PM | Comments (0)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: Condoleeza Rice says she wants the job

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

Recently, T-Paw's frontrunner status seems to be slipping away. There was McCain's recent off-hand mention that he had at least 20 names on his not-so-short list. There's also been rumblings of making a devil's bargain with Mitt Romney, enough so that conservative Christians have come out against it.

Now comes the most devestating blow of all to T-Paw's chances: A top Drudge Report headline suggesting that Condoleeza Rice is interested in the job.

ABCNews’ Mary Bruce Reports: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is actively courting the vice presidential nomination, Republican strategist Dan Senor said.

“Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this,” Senor said this morning on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

Rice could make a potent and tempting ticketmate, not least because she simultaneously neutralizes the "historic" nature of the Democratic ticket regardless of whether its Obama or Hillary--indeed, she trumps both!

All things considered, Pawlenty is looking dead in the water. VP Pawlenty Meter puts his current odds of winning the job at 1/60.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at April 6, 2008 9:43 PM | Comments (0)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: Is Charles in Charge?

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

When last we left T-Paw, he had suffered a series of setbacks: He'd been dissed in the Wall Street Journal as "too liberal," his transportation commissioner had become a very husky albatross around his neck, and conservative columnist Bob Novak had stuck a fork in him.

Well, what a difference several weeks make (sorry about that)! According to the Washington Post, T-Paw weathered to storm and is still clinging to frontrunner status:

Pawlenty still remains the most likely choice for McCain. The two have known each other since the 1980s, Pawlenty is significantly younger than McCain (he's 47), and he makes Minnesota instantly competitive. Pawlenty is also playing the politics of the veepstakes perfectly -- denying any interest in the job while not making any Sherman-esque pronouncements.

But T-Paw shouldn't get too comfortable, because there's a gay Republican governor creeping up on his rear. According to the Post:

Charlie Crist: The Florida governor has a strong case to make that his endorsement of McCain in the waning days of the Sunshine State primary cinched the nomination for the Arizona Senator. Crist's popularity among Florida voters could well strengthen McCain's hand in a swing state in the fall. (It also doesn't hurt that McCain praised Crist as a "great governor" during a campaign swing through the state earlier this month.) The biggest problem for Crist? He's not beloved among conservatives many of whom feel McCain has to pick one of them to get their votes.

There's even been rumors that McCain promised Crist the VP slot in exchange for his endorsement. Via our old friend Robert Novak:

"Close supporters of Mitt Romney have been injecting into the political rumor stream an unsubstantiated report that Sen. John McCain obtained the vital endorsement of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist by promising him the vice presidential nomination," Robert Novak reports. "Spreading that rumor reflects the anger in the Romney camp over the late endorsements of McCain by Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida. Until then, the Romney insiders claim, their private polls showed a lead in the Jan. 29 Florida primary that in fact delivered a crushing victory for McCain."

Personally, I don't think T-Paw is enough to help McCain swing Minnesota, but Florida is very much in play and Crist could make the difference there.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 28, 2008 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

 

Novak sticks a fork in Pawlenty's VP chances

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Republican commentator and exposer of undercover CIA agents Robert Novak is saying that Governor Pawlenty may have frittered away any chance he had of a VP nod:

Pawlenty's position as chairman of the National Governors Association may prove his undoing. While party insiders sing his praises as ideal to be McCain's running mate, leading conservative Republican governors have been less than pleased with him. Pawlenty has collaborated with the NGA vice chairman, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, in a fat economic stimulus package, as well as the energy proposal.

Hours after Pawlenty's energy plan was derailed, McCain himself was urged in private by GOP governors not to appear to be anti-coal or anti-oil. The upshot of a busy recent Saturday at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in downtown Washington was that Pawlenty came over as somebody considerably different from what McCain needs to calm conservatives. He left the nation's capital as a less attractive vice presidential possibility than he was when he arrived.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 7, 2008 12:02 PM | Comments (2)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: Trouble on the homefront

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet. We use a 20 point scoring range, with +10 being T-Paw sworn in, and -10 being T-Paw found with a dead girl or a live boy.

Last week, T-Paw was large and in charge, having been crowned a potential VP by the politically influential site, "The Fix," while McCain managed to weather the New York Times' poorly-sourced mistress allegations to emerge stronger (and more virile!) than ever. Carrying a +3 into this week, the Gov couldn't help but be confident ... but will that be his undoing?

-- Dissed in Wall Street Journal as "too liberal" to be McCain's VP (-3)
-- Pawlenty appears on "Fox News Sunday" and "Late Edition" to give McCain props (+1)
-- T-Paw denies he's interested in being VP ... while grinning like a schoolboy. (0)
-- Vetoes $6.6 billion transportation bill, burnishing image as a fiscal conservative (+2)
-- But House and Senate vote to override veto, handing him a stinging defeat (-2)
-- Molnau ousted (-2)

Current score: -1

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 29, 2008 7:00 AM | Comments (3)

 

Wall Street Journal disses Tim Pawlenty

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

The Wall Street Journal's editorial page is among the most influential media outlets on the right. So it can't help Governor Tim Pawlenty's VP chances that the paper just printed this column by 100.3 KTLK-FM yakker Jason Lewis. Lewis comes not to praise Pawlenty as a conservative, but to bury him as a liberal, which should be obvious from the quote that leads the piece:

"The era of small government is over . . . government has to be more proactive, more aggressive."
-- Tim Pawlenty, 2006.

Lewis goes on to point out the many ways in which Pawlenty is to conservatives as Joe Lieberman is to Democrats. Among T-Paw's sins:
-- Supported a 75 cents per pack cigarette tax
-- Expanded Minnesota Care to provide healthcare to more children
-- Advocated a temporary ban on pharmaceutical ads
-- Back-to-back biennial budget increases of 12.4% and 9.8%
-- Cozied up to the teachers' union
-- And perhaps worst of all ...

In April, Mr. Pawlenty delivered the remarks that probably best reveal his views on the environment. "It looks like we should have listened to President Carter," he told the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group.

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 25, 2008 9:55 AM | Comments (1)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter: T-Paw is large and in charge

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

When last we left our hero, he was carrying a +2 rating into the vice presidential sweepstakes, having correctly chosen the right horse to ride--and stayed on even when it looked like a broken-down nag.

This Week:
-- McCain hit with allegations involving a mistress, a lobbyist, and the New York Times. (-3)
-- T-Paw named "frontrunner" by influential political site, "The Fix" (+4)

Current odds T-Paw will become our vice president: +3

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 22, 2008 12:13 PM | Comments (6)

 

VP Pawlenty Meter

Filed under: VP Pawlenty Watch

The Star Tribune today revives speculation that Gov. Tim Pawlenty may be on the shortlist of candidates for Vice President. Because it's hard to keep track of all the factors at play in this complex calculation, we're creating the VP Pawlenty Meter to provide a weekly round-up of the news. We start at zero, with 10 being the announcement that T-Paw is VP and -10 representing a snowball's chance in hell.

-- To foil Romney, McCain cuts sweetheart deal with (future VP?) Huckabee: -3

-- With Romney out, McCain becomes defacto Republican nominee: +5

-- Dems see record turnout Super Tuesday, boding ill for GOP in general election: -1

-- DFL delays vote on Monlau that could have put T-Paw in negative spotlight: +1

The week that was: (+2)
Odds of VP Pawlenty: 2 in 10

Posted by Kevin Hoffman at February 8, 2008 1:50 PM | Comments (4)