Tim Pawlenty Begins Presidential Race

By Ronald Torres, iPoster Sunday, May 22, 2011

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was scheduled to announce his presidential candidacy on Monday. But he made his bid for the White House official Sunday night with a YouTube video in which he says, “I’m Tim Pawlenty, and I’m running for the President of the United States.”

“I could promise that we can eliminate a $14-trillion debt, create jobs for 10 million people, restructure Social Security and healthcare all without making any tough decisions,” Pawlenty says in the video. “Or, I could try something different: I could just tell you the truth.

“You won’t hear empty promises. You’ll hear solutions. Together, we’ll change our country. And this time, it’ll be for the better.”

Pawlenty, in a Q&A with Christianity Today in January, acknowledge that name recognition is an obstacle in his run for president. He registered low name recognition in most state and national polls.

Fellow former Minnesota politician John Vincent Weber commented of Pawlenty's popularity, “I think the fact that he has lesser name recognition than some of the front runners … is both a challenge and an opportunity because he can define himself and introduce himself to people without having a lot of pre-conceived notions about who he is.”

Pawlenty is an evangelical Christian who attends Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minn., where the pastor is Leith Anderson, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

In February at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said, “We as a nation need to turn towards God, not away from God."