Tim Pawlenty Launches ‘Freedom First’ PAC, Sets Stage for 2012
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty launched a political action committee, Freedom First, and website Thursday as he continues to lay the groundwork for a potential presidential bid in 2012.
According to the PAC’s mission statement, “This organization is dedicated to putting freedom first again in America. By helping candidates and translating our ideas into policies that everyone can relate to and support …”
The committee’s strategic and political planning team includes consultant Terry Nelson, who was involved in the presidential campaigns of Republicans George W. Bush and John McCain. Also on board is former Bush White House political director Sara Taylor, former Federal Election Commission chairman Michael Toner and former Republican Governors Association executive director Phil Musser.
Mr. Pawlenty, 48 years old, was on Sen. John McCain’s vice-presidential short list in 2008. Since then, he has taken the No. 2 spot at the Republican Governors Association, announced he won’t be running for a third term in his left-leaning state, and started to crisscross the country speaking to Republican organizations in swing states such as Ohio and Florida.
Last weekend, Mr. Pawlenty spoke at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference attended by about 2,000 party leaders in the state. The conference, held on a resort island where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron, is a traditional stop for presidential candidates. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney also spoke.
Freedom First reflects the theme that Pawlenty believes Republicans should seize on to win the midterms. “What worries me a lot is the never-ending pressure by some on the other side of the aisle to have an encroachment on our liberties and freedoms in the form of a sometimes well-meaning, sometimes well-intentioned bureaucracy,” Mr. Pawlenty told the Michigan crowd to sustained applause. “But little by little it suffocates the space that was individual freedom, that was the free market, that was individual responsibility.”
View Pawlenty’s introduction video:
