Media here, there and everywhere continue to speculate on whom Sen. John McCain will pick to be his running mate, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s name continues to make just about every list. They say he’s young and can win in a blue state, conservative and moderate Republicans love him and he’s known McCain for a long time. But the one thing that speculation misses: Pawlenty is an evangelical Christian and a well-connected one at that. Pawlenty has a direct political pipeline to more than 30 million evangelicals. McCain needs the support of Christians if he’s going to win in November, but as it stands now, he’s far from winning them over.

James Dobson of Focus on the Family has told his followers that he wouldn’t vote for McCain under any circumstances. “I have seen no evidence that Sen. McCain is successfully unifying the Republican Party or drawing conservatives to his fold,” he wrote in April. “To the contrary, he seems intent on driving them away.”

McCain has said numerous times that he will not discuss his faith on the campaign trail. Pastor Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council sees that strategy as a big turnoff with evangelicals. “We live with a mandate to preach the Gospel, to unashamedly testify what Christ has done in our lives, to generously share that information with others,” says Schenck. “And John McCain has yet to give that kind of public testimony, and it’s undermining the confidence of evangelicals in John McCain.”

Indeed, polling indicates that McCain struggles with Christian voters. A late-May poll commissioned by Lombardo Consulting Group found that McCain received the support of only 56 percent of evangelicals, which pales in comparison to the 80 percent and 78 percent of evangelical voters that Bush got in 2000 and 2004. Lombardo Consulting president Steve Lombardo wrote of the poll: “Certainly, a lot will change between now and November, but if this level of evangelical support continues in the summer and fall it will make a McCain victory virtually unattainable.”

As McCain looks to shore up support among Christians, and evangelicals in particular, who’s a better pick than the Catholic-turned -evangelical, Gov. Tim Pawlenty?

Evangelical organizing

Pawlenty became an evangelical Christian in the mid-1980s when he married Mary Anderson, a member of Wooddale Church, an evangelical megachurch in Eden Prairie. The couple were married by the Rev. Leith Anderson, a senior pastor at Wooddale since 1977. Anderson happens to be the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization representing more than 30 million American evangelicals. In fact, Anderson had been the president of NAE from 1999 to 2003, and became the current president after the Rev. Ted Haggard’s troubles involving methamphetamines and gay sex forced him out in 2006.

Despite Anderson’s and the NAE’s promises to keep politics out of the pulpit this year, and despite Pawlenty’s increasingly downplayed evangelism, Pawlenty and Anderson’s close relationship both politically and personally will signal to 30 million evangelicals that Pawlenty is one of them. And the groundwork for that vast network has already been laid. Pawlenty’s already met and spoke with a large number of evangelical leaders.

Pawlenty’s connection to the NAE through his pastor is quite unique for a politician. When Pawlenty goes to church on Sundays, he is also heading to the church that houses a good many of the NAE’s headquarters.

In 2003, Pawlenty and Wooddale hosted about 1,600 evangelical leaders from around the country for a two-day convention of the National Association of Evangelicals. Pawlenty praised the work of President Bush and his faith-based initiatives, a program that funnels federal funds to religious charities. “If you’re going to change destructive behavior, you’ve got to change hearts,” said Pawlenty, according to the Star Tribune. “Governors can’t do that. We hope you can do that in a God-honoring manner that meets the challenges of our day.”

In 2004, the evangelical Twin Cities Festival drew around 80,000 people to the Minnesota Capitol grounds for a two-day faith event. Pawlenty offered a warm reception, and even held event-organizing meetings with Luis Palau, according to the Pioneer Press. Of the festival, Pawlenty said, “I’m proud to be associated with such an important faith event. Faith is an important glue that holds our state together.” He added that he prayed “that God will bless this weekend and continue to bless this great state.” Mary Pawlenty was a featured speaker at the festival.

Pawlenty has quietly but firmly put his evangelical beliefs to work in his political life as governor. In 2003, an inauguration ceremony was held at Wooddale just before his swearing in with Anderson saying a few words: “I believe the God of government has brought Tim Pawlenty to the governor’s office in St. Paul for peace and good in the lives of all Minnesotans.” He had a similar ceremony at Wooddale in January 2007 after winning reelection in 2006.

In 2005, Pawlenty created the Governor’s Council on Faith and Community Service Initiatives, a Minnesota version of Bush’s White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Also in 2005, Pawlenty began National Day of Prayer services at the State Capitol, a move that garnered significant praise from evangelicals and social conservatives. In fact, annual Minnesota’s Day of Prayer activities, at which Pawlenty is a regular speaker, are exclusively evangelical, due to a takeover of such events by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson.

Evangelizing public policy

It’s hard not to see the fingerprints of Pawlenty’s pastor in his public policy initiatives. Much to the chagrin of other members of Minnesota’s Republican Party, Pawlenty has recently had a come-to-Jesus moment on global warming — perhaps literally. Pawlenty has been championing strategies to reduce carbon emissions as chairman of the National Governors Association over the last year and half. Perhaps not coincidentally, Anderson, Pawlenty’s pastor, five years ago began encouraging evangelicals to get involved in global warming mitigation in order to preserve “God’s gift of our earth.” Pawlenty even appointed Anderson to his Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group.

Such appointments of evangelicals have been one way Pawlenty has put his faith to the test during his administration. After he appointed Cheri Pierson Yecke as education commissioner, she told Minnesota Public Radio, “Every local district should have the freedom to teach creationism, if that is what they choose.” She also moved to beef up social studies and history curriculum with quotes from figures in American history about God and Christians. Yecke was ousted by the Minnesota Senate in 2004.

Yecke’s replacement is Commissioner Alice Seagren, who is an evangelical Baptist. Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, an evangelical Lutheran, has been Pawlenty’s running mate in both 2002 and 2006. Former House Speaker Steve Sviggum is an evangelical Christian. He has been a Sunday school teacher at an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America member church in his hometown of Kenyon. He was appointed as commissioner of the Department of Labor and Industry by Pawlenty in 2007. Department of Corrections Commissioner Joan Fabian came under fire in early 2007 when an evangelical prison ministry caused a stir among DFL legislators.

Pawlenty’s political career before becoming governor included eight years in the Minnesota House. During that time, he championed the Women’s Right to Know Act, which mandated a 24-hour waiting period before undergoing an abortion. His advocacy on anti-abortion initiatives garnered him a 100 percent rating from the anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizen Concerned for Marriage.

And while Pawlenty voted for the Minnesota Human Rights Act of 1993 that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while running for his first term as governor he said it was the one vote he would take back. “There’s a whole series of behaviors protected in that bill that have nothing to do with biological makeup. They have to do with, just, simple preferences, for example, of wearing women’s clothing,” Pawlenty told Minnesota Public Radio as he geared up for his first run for governor. “I don’t know that we need to … use our antidiscrimination laws in Minnesota and nationally to protect that kind of behavior.”

Pawlenty has worked closely with local religious right groups when implementing public policy. In the 2008 legislative session, he forced lawmakers to meet with representatives of the Minnesota Family Council, a group that advocates for an abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum, while they were considering a comprehensive sex education program for Minnesota’s public schools.

“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 said at the end of the session. “I was unaware that the Family Council had an election certificate.”

Pawlenty toed the line for the Family Council and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life in the 2008 session when he vetoed legislation to fund stem cell research and legislation to allow cities to implement domestic partner benefits. He even vetoed a bill authored by a fellow Republican, Rep. Kathy Tinglestad. Her bill would formalize the processes involved in surrogate motherhood, but because anti-choice groups said it didn’t ban abortion, Pawlenty vetoed the bill.

Pawlenty courts the religious right in Minnesota albeit on the down-low. He’s made appearances at anti-abortion rallies, and was a featured speaker at the Minnesota Family Council’s Legislative Insights Luncheon in early 2007. A member of that group asked him, “Do you think you would have won without the faith-based vote?” Pawlenty quickly responded “No,” and was greeted with laughter and applause.

The Evangelical First Lady

Mary Pawlenty’s evangelism was the subject of much attention during her husband’s first term, and she is responsible for his conversion from Catholicism to evangelical Christianity. Mary’s a Sunday school teacher at Wooddale. A Dakota County District Court judge until 2007, Mary was frequently asked about her faith.

“It is deeply instrumental in my life. I cannot get through a day without prayer. I cannot emphasize that enough,” she told the Star Tribune in 2002.

Of her faith, her husband and politics, “We pray together,” she said. “We don’t tend to talk about substantive policy issues.”

She raised some eyebrows in 2000 when she spoke with a Bethel University magazine about a family she helped in court. She told the magazine that she came off the bench and tried to comfort the family. “I believe God used me that day. I tried to give them words of hope, words of comfort. I was the voice of the community.”

In a later interview with the Star Tribune, she offered clarification that she would never compromise her role as a judge by evangelizing in court. “I don’t find myself having that kind of dialogue or public setting. But if someone asks me, ‘Do you have a faith relationship with Jesus Christ?’ The answer is ‘Yes.’ It’s impossible to have a relationship with Jesus Christ and not have it impact how you make decisions. Sometimes during a very difficult case I’ll go into my office and close the door and just pray. I’ll say, ‘God, I need your wisdom and judgment on this.’ But it’s important to say that it’s not something that happens in the public eye.”

Pawlenty as vice president

The Republicans face a tough year in 2008. Public approval of Bush is at an all-time low, and evangelicals look at McCain with distrust. That distrust was exemplified when McCain rejected the endorsement of the Rev. John Hagee after numerous incendiary statements by the pastor threatened to embarrass McCain. Hagee didn’t take the rejection well. McCain “threw me under the bus,” said Hagee.

Shortly after, McCain rejected the endorsement of another evangelical leader, the Rev. Rod Parsley, whose statements about Islam were too much for McCain to stomach. McCain is no stranger to making enemies among evangelical leaders. In the 2000 Republican primaries, McCain called the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.”

McCain has found some way to estrange himself from just about every name in religious right leadership: Hagee, Parsely, Dobson, Robertson, Falwell. How can McCain shore up that key constituency after having alienated so many of its leaders? By appointing Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a young, blue state Republican, and longtime friend — who just happens to have a pastor with connections to 30 million evangelicals.