Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty likes to call himself a fiscal conservative. But Scott Conroy at RealClearPolitics thinks he's found something that could muddy that reputation: the role Pawlenty played as Minnesota's governor in moving the Minnesota Twins from the Metrodome to Target Field in 2010. Conroy explains that Pawlenty and the state legislature allowed officials in Hennepin County (where the stadium is located) to raise the sales tax on its residents without a voter referendum to pay for two-thirds of the new stadium's $522 million construction cost. The move, as a Minnesota political analyst tells Conroy, may smack of "unfunded mandates" and tax hikes, but it's unclear how much it will really come back to haunt Pawlenty, since the tax increase was small and the decision ultimately delegated to Hennepin officials. Either way, it's an interesting argument.  

In unrelated but no less interesting Pawlenty news, Politico is reporting that the governor became the second Republican candidate, after Newt Gingrich, to be "glittered" on the campaign trail. Two women in San Francisco dumped pink glitter and confetti on Pawlenty in San Francisco to send a message about defending reproductive and gay rights. "Pawlenty apparently did not get as much glitter on him as Newt and the protesters were immediately removed," Politico reports.

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Uri Friedman