Commentary; Posted: 8/1/07
Where will Pawlenty find his legacy?
T.W. Budig
ECM Capitol Reporter
Gov. Tim Pawlenty seemed pleased recently to present his proposal for a new state park along the shoreline of Lake Vermilion in northern Minnesota.
And why not?
What could be more satisfying to a public official than the image of hikers, eighty years from now, brushing pine needles off a greenish plaque in Lake Vermilion State Park and reading the names “Pawlenty,” “Holsten,” and other names from long ago.
Maybe there’ll even be a quote, “Parks are good,” or some other high-minded sentiment to consider beneath sighing pines.
And the hikers will scratch their mosquito bites and nod their heads — visionaries.
That’s legacy. And legacy can be an elusive thing.
Candidate Pawlenty once humbly opined that people don’t remember governors very long — there are the portraits in the Capitol, sure. But life moves on. Governors fade. Pawlenty himself, now well into his fifth year as governor, may still be searching for legacy.
His recent ascent in the National Governors Association may be seen as a personal and political triumph, but it’s hardly something to spark conversation over a backyard fence.
Arguably Pawlenty’s greatest legacy item to date, dealing with a big state budget deficit without raising taxes — the latter an assertion open to debate — has more a negative flavor than a positive.
That is, he didn’t do something rather than he did. Even the recent volley of vetoes at end of session has that negative flavor.
Such is often the lot of conservatives. One local conservative, Sen. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, once said it’s hard being a conservative Republican because it often requires saying “No.”
Politically it’s often much easier to say “Yes,” he explained. At any rate, Pawlenty is saying “Yes” to an attempt to purchase 2500-acres of land from U.S. Steel on Lake Vermilion currently planned for development.
If a deal can be struck over the next year, it could mean the new state park — the first in almost three decades — could open within a few years.
Personally, Pawlenty will be astonished if the park proposal isn’t warmly embraced by lawmakers, he explained recently.
It may be utterly coincidental, but the park proposal may not come at a bad time politically. Lawmakers sooner or later are going to have to address the lingering issue of a Minnesota Vikings stadium.
The team’s lease on the Metrodome expires in a few years and the proposal to build in a new stadium complex in Anoka County has come to nothing. If something is not done this coming session on a Vikings stadium, when?
A slice of the Legislature, a slice of the public, finds the idea of state government striking deals with wealthy professional sports team owners morally repugnant.
Nothing will likely change their minds, but pursuing a new state park could serve as something of a politically counterbalance — a buffer — to going after a Vikings stadium.
Arguably, both contribute to Minnesota’s quality of life, though their appeal is different.
Politically they could be packaged together. This suggests the question: which of the two, a stadium or park, would be a greater legacy item for Pawlenty?
If those hikers do pause one day to brush away the pine needles on the greenish plaque in Lake Vermilion State Park, they may find the name “Pawlenty” and perhaps “Holsten,” but they will not spot the name Zygi Wilf.
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