Almost two months ago in this space, I wrote a long piece about Tim Pawlenty’s evangelical Christianity and his ties to the 30-million-strong National Association of Evangelicals, which is now chaired by the pastor of Pawlenty’s Eden Prairie church, Leith Anderson. David Brody, a senior correspondent and blogger for Pat Robertson’s CBN, picked up that story and later got a few soundbites from Pawlenty on the subject. Since then, Pawlenty’s evangelicalism has become one of the planks in pundit-class conventional wisdom about his chances of winding up John McCain’s running mate.


Back home in Minnesota, ironically, Pawlenty’s religion is little known and seldom discussed. The governor himself has rarely alluded to it publicly. But its impact on his policies and actions has been far-ranging. During the spring 2008 legislative session, to take a recent example, Pawlenty effectively gave the arch-right Minnesota Family Council a seat at the legislative bargaining table, informing Democratic leaders at the Legislature that they needed to obtain the Family Council’s approval on their comprehensive sex-ed bill if they wanted to avoid a veto. (Democrats subsequently gave up on the bill; details below.)

I thought it would be useful to take a point-by-point look at what Pawlenty has said and done through the years on a number of the evangelical right’s perennial pet issues.


Abortion


Pawlenty pushed for the "Women’s Right to Know" bill as House majority leader and signed it into law as governor. The statute mandates a 24-hour waiting period before an abortion can be performed, and also stipulates that a physician must provide information about the risks of abortion and pregnancy. Pawlenty’s former health commissioner, Dianne Manderbach, came under fire for providing inaccurate information about breast cancer risks supposedly associated with abortion, a frequent talking point of the religious right.


His campaign literature says he opposes late-term abortion and public funding for abortion.


Eric Magnuson, a Pawlenty friend appointed by the governor as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, wrote a friend-of-the-court brief for an anti-abortion group challenging the public financing of abortion services.


Pawlenty has spoken at March for Life rallies. In 2006, he alluded to a desire to have Roe v. Wade overturned, saying: "We have a dream today that someday soon this will not be an anniversary of sadness, but an anniversary of justice restored."


This represents a sea change from Pawlenty’s early political career. "I think we could move beyond the fundamental [abortion] question and start talking about other aspects of family planning," he said in 1992, [Eagan This Week, Nov. 8 1992]. Around the same time, he told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the abortion issue "isn’t a big deal" to him [Oct. 7, 1992].


LGBT Rights


In 1993, Pawlenty was one of 11 House Republicans to vote for the Human Rights Amendment that outlawed discrimination in housing and employment based on sexual orientation. It was the first legislation in the nation to offer protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. While he was running for governor in 2002, he called that vote the only one he regretted from his days in the Legislature.


When labor unions asked for health benefits for same-sex partners in state labor contracts in 2001, he opposed those benefits.


In 2004, he signed a pledge to support a constitutional anti-gay marriage amendment. "Traditional marriage is itself a pledge, and I will take a pledge to defend it," he said. "Some issues are too important to play the field with."


In 2006, he appeared in an anti-same-sex-marriage video produced by the Republican Party of Minnesota.


Despite all this, Pawlenty was criticized for "promotion of homosexual agenda" in 2006 by the religious right group EdWatch. "Homosexual advocacy groups are being funded by grants from the state Department of Health under his authority," wrote EdWatch in a letter about Pawlenty. "Additionally, under Governor Pawlenty’s supervision, his administration is actively promoting the indoctrination of students into a homosexual worldview and value system."


In 2007, Pawlenty vetoed legislation that would give control to local municipalities in deciding who could receive domestic partner benefits. He vetoed a similar bill in 2008.


A bill to allow government employees to use sick time to care for a seriously ill family member came up in 2008. The bill would have expanded current laws that allow for the use of sick time to care for spouses and dependent children. The Minnesota Family Council, a group affiliated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, painted the measure as part of a strategy to facilitate same-sex marriage. "The end game in all of this is a legal imposition of homosexual marriage upon the state of Minnesota," said Tom Prichard, the group’s president. In the end, the bill was changed to exclude domestic partners for fear of a veto. The governor vetoed the measure anyway, saying it would cost too much for employees to use their own earned sick time to care for loved ones.


Stem-cell research


In 2007, Pawlenty seemed supportive of stem-cell research, although he’s walked a fine line on the issue. In a letter to legislators, the governor wrote that stem-cell research "offers tremendous opportunities to improve human health and well-being by addressing serious diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. As a matter of public policy, stem-cell research deserves careful consideration and bipartisan support."


But at the same time, he was telling the Minnesota Family Council that he supported restrictions on the research. And he told Minnesota Public Radio that the federal government should go further than the Bush executive order allowing government-sponsored research only on existing lines.


There was no mixed message in 2008 when a bill to loosen restrictions on stem-cell research landed on the governor’s desk. The bill was fiercely opposed by Catholic groups and the Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL). Pawlenty vetoed the bill. In February, he sent a letter to all of Minnesota’s legislators stating his opposition in terms that echoed MCCL’s public position that the destruction of embryos is morally unacceptable.


Surrogate mothers


A bill to formalize the processes involved in surrogate motherhood passed the Legislature in 2008. The James Dobson/FOTF-affiliated Minnesota Family Council railed against it as "baby-selling" and promoting "designer babies." Another concern? "Nowhere in the legislation are the rights and interests of the born or unborn child mentioned in regard to anything," the group wrote in a policy briefing.


In vetoing the bill, Pawlenty parroted the Family Council’s main talking point: "The bill also fails in any manner to recognize or protect the life and rights of the unborn child."


Sex education


Comprehensive sexual health and family education has been perhaps the closest point of collaboration between Pawlenty and the religious right in 2008. As a condition of Pawlenty’s signing any sex-ed legislation, he forced lawmakers to meet with representatives of the Minnesota Family Council, a group that advocates for an abstinence-only curriculum. "We were told by the governor’s staff that the Minnesota Family Council would have had to sign off on whatever negotiated agreement we have," Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, said at the end of the session. "I was unaware that the Family Council had an election certificate." Because legislators couldn’t reach a deal with the Family Council, Pawlenty said he would veto the measure. DFL leaders dropped the bill shortly thereafter.


Creationism/"Intelligent design"


Pawlenty has not articulated a position on the teaching of creationism in public schools, but he did appoint someone who was quite vocal on the issue. Cheri Pierson Yecke, his first commissioner of education, became controversial when she expressed public support for what advocates call "intelligent design." She attempted to put forward the Teach the Controversy curriculum, a curriculum that opponents say is dishonest.


Pawlenty ultimately signed into law science standards that did not contain intelligent design mandates, even though his fellow Republicans pushed the idea.


Immigration


In 2005, Pawlenty commissioned a report on the costs of illegal immigration to Minnesota, a report that was criticized by Catholic leaders and members of the media who found the economic model used to calculate the costs lacking.


In 2006, Pawlenty hit hard on the issue of illegal immigration, a hot topic for a contentious election year. The Star Tribune outlined his seven-point plan:

• Establish a 10-member Minnesota Illegal Immigration Enforcement Team that would be federally trained and authorized to question, detain and arrest suspected illegal immigrants.

• Override city ordinances in Minneapolis and St. Paul that prohibit police officers from taking action against illegal immigrants unless they are arrested for a separate crime.

• Put into law a 2002 state administrative rule that prominently marks driver’s licenses of legal foreign visitors with their visa expiration dates.

• Toughen and add penalties for possession, creation and sale of false IDs.

• Require officers to note the citizenship and immigration status of all arrestees at booking.

• Increase felony penalties for human trafficking when minors are exploited to up to 20 years in prison. In addition, a task force would be set up to seek ways to combat human trafficking.

• Add a state fine of as much as $5,000 to a current federal penalty of $11,000 for employers who knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants. In addition, state contracts would prohibit the use of illegal immigrants to perform contracted services.

• Pawlenty unsuccessfully offered a similar proposal in 2008. That proposal also directed Minnesota law enforcement to work closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

He has also railed against in-state tuition for children of undocumented immigrants. And he authorized the Minnesota National Guard to assist the Department of Homeland Security in patrolling the United States-Mexico border.


Global Warming


Pawlenty believes that human are, in part, responsible for global warming. "Our global climate is warming, at least in part due to the energy sources we use," he said in 2007.


Also in 2007, Pawlenty signed a number DFL proposals to reduce carbon emissions. He signed a bill requiring electrical utilities to obtain 25 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. He also signed the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, which requires utilities to increase energy efficiency to 1.5 percent per year and reduce global warming emissions 80 percent by 2050/


He’s also a proponent of expanding nuclear energy and using clean coal technology.


His break from the GOP on the issue of global warming is influenced by his evangelical faith. "I am a person of faith. I believe in the Bible, God instructs us to take good care and be good stewards of what He has given us, and that certainly includes our environment and natural resources, he told Human Events. "And he expects us to act measured and responsible in that regard."


That shouldn’t be too surprising. Pawlenty’s pastor and head of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev. Leith Anderson, has written and spoken adding global warming to the agenda of America’s evangelical Christians.