Video: Tim Pawlenty — AFP Florida Summit speech | Interview

ONE name has risen to the top of John McCain’s shortlist for vice-presidential running mate. Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota, a trucker’s son and advocate of Republicanism for the masses, is the favourite to join his ticket, according to sources close to the McCain camp.

They believe that Pawlenty, 47, has the youth, working-class credentials and executive experience to attract independent voters and disaffected Democrats who find Barack Obama, 46, the Democratic party nominee, too exotic and untested and McCain, 71, too old and too focused on national security.

It is a case of “Tim Who?” outside his home state for now, but Pawlenty is the thinking man’s blue-collar conservative, a political moderate and environmentalist who possesses “proletarian chic”, according to The New Republic, a centre-left magazine.

In a clue to his possible intentions, McCain said on a visit to Minnesota last week that Pawlenty “has a place in the future of this country as well as our Republican party”.

Pawlenty has already pioneered the concept of “Sam’s Club conservatism”, named after the popular discount stores founded by Sam Walton of the giant Wal-Mart retail chain, which holds out the promise of good value, small government catering to working people.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Pawlenty said he was “honoured to have his name mentioned” as a possible vice-president, while adding that he was delighted with his “day job”. It is bad form to lobby openly for a place on the ticket - “I’m going to be very demure about it,” he said - but a combination of geography, temperament and ideology has lifted him to the top tier of candidates.

“I believe the Republican brand needs refreshment,” he said. “Our principles haven’t changed but the country is changing in terms of demographics, culture and technology and we need to make sure the Republican messenger has a modern message.”

It is no accident that the Republicans have picked Pawlenty’s state for their national convention in September. Minnesota, which narrowly voted Democrat in 2004, is one of many upper Midwestern swing states that they hope to carry.

The governor, who will host the convention, could help McCain to win farming and industrial heartlands from Iowa to Ohio. Recent polls show Obama leading McCain in Minnesota by 50% to 41%.

One confidant of the governor put his chance of being selected vice-president at 50-50; but some Republican insiders place them higher. Pawlenty has been co-chairman of McCain’s presidential campaign since its inception and stuck by the Arizona senator when his White House bid imploded last summer.

For McCain, scarred by his imprisonment as a naval pilot in Vietnam, fidelity in adversity is highly prized. Pawlenty, an evangelical Christian who backed George W Bush in 2000, said his loyalty to McCain was never in doubt. “I endorsed him early because he has the character traits, values and ideas to be president, commander-in-chief and leader of the free world,” he said.

Pawlenty is a firm believer in the heroic age of Republicanism, but his role models are presidents who brought their party into the modern era. “I consider myself a common sense, main-stream conservative in the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln,” he said.

In one off-colour moment last month, he joked that his wife Mary, a former judge, shared all his passions - except one. “I have a wife who genuinely loves to fish,” he told a local radio station. “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’.”

However, Pawlenty has sound relations with the conservative wing of the Republican party without being a perfect fit. He admires Ronald Reagan more for his flexibility than his ideological certitude. “He had an independent, pragmatic streak and I believe I have some of those characteristics as well,” he said.

McCain joked last week that the job of the vice-president was “to inquire daily as to the health of the president”. Pawlenty has little national security experience but fills the gaps in McCain’s domestic qualifications.

“He would be a very good, safe choice,” said Todd Harris, a former spokesman for McCain. “He’s been an extremely effective governor and he’s able to articulate conservative principles in a way that is not scary to moderates and independents.”

Pawlenty’s working-class background helps: “My father was a truck driver, my mother was a home maker, one brother worked in a grocery store, another in an oil refinery, my sister is a special education aide and my other sister has been a secretary for her whole career.”

The young Pawlenty had bigger ambitions. His mother died of cancer when he was 16 and it was her wish that he should go to university. “She was very education-oriented and she was hoping somebody would go to college and Tim was her last hope - because it wasn’t going to happen with us,” said Rosie Atkinson, his sister.

He dreamt of becoming a dentist so he could have a Buick Riviera car like one in his home town: “I went to college thinking it would be a wonderful career but I developed a strong interest in history and public service was a way of pursuing it.”

He put himself through university and law school. “I worked my tail off,” he said. “I have kind of this attitude that if you are able-bodied and able-minded, you should get some fair shakes in life.”

During his campaign for governor in 2001, Pawlenty coined the phrase “Sam’s Club conservatism”, urging conservatives to resist “the stereotype of the Republican party . . . that we’re all a bunch of wealthy snobs” and to appeal to members of “Sam’s Club, not just the country club”.

The idea was taken up by conservative intellectuals in The Weekly Standard magazine, who argued that it could rescue a tired and discredited party “from the wreckage of Bush-style, big government conservatism”.

“Sam’s Club is a metaphor for hard-working, middle-class people who want government to be effective and to deliver value,” Pawlenty said. He is nearly a quarter of a century younger than McCain, but cites the Republican nominee’s popularity in an MTV poll as proof that he can attract young voters.

“He has boundless energy,” Pawlenty said. “I’ve travelled to Iraq with him and he has tremendous leadership skills and is a forward thinker. He has proposed the most daring, cutting-edge initiatives coming from the Republicans.”

Obama will enjoy a huge financial advantage over the cash-strapped McCain, potentially outspending him by five to one. The Arizona senator, who is accepting public financing, will be able to spend $84m in the two months between the Republican convention and election day on November 4, while Obama will have up to $500m at his disposal by remaining outside the system.

Pawlenty believes McCain has “many advantages” over Obama: If you look at the way Senator McCain has lived his life, it’s an incredible expression of commitment, duty, valour and patriotism. He’s forged compromises and achieved great accomplishments in a way that Senator Obama has only talked about.”

If Pawlenty sounds star-struck, it is no bad thing for a running mate whose job is to make the presidential candidate look better than he is.

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