Recount Will Force Pawlenty To Hang Around Minnesota Being Governor Forever
Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota has been gearing up for a bid for the Republican presidential nomination for months. He chose not to run for re-election as governor. He has hit the early-state circuit. Everything is ready once he leaves office on Jan. 3.
Except for this: He may not be able to leave.
Under Minnesota law, the governor’s term extends as long as it takes to swear in a successor, even if a recount takes months. And that could just happen.
But basically there is no chance this could happen to Pawlenty, because the recount is almost certain not to make the vote count close enough to turn into a long process like the Franken/Coleman race. But The New York Times pressed on anyway for some reason. As for Pawlenty, he's going to launch a book tour in January either way, no matter if his dumb old state needs him to do this "not president of the United States" job or not. [ NYT ]
Garrison Keillor is going to be so upset that he may use some intensifying adverbs.
Pawlenty has been so busy not running for president that he hasn’t been in Minnesota much. I suppose now that he can cause lots of damage being a interim governor he’ll start hanging around the state. This sucks.