Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced his fundraising team for the 2012 presidential race on Monday, as potential Republican rivals similarly laid out plans for a campaign.
Brian Haley, who was deputy finance chief for the 2008 McCain campaign, will serve as Pawlenty’s national finance director. The 16-person team includes consultants from key states such as California, Florida and Texas.
Pawlenty ended his second term as governor in January. He remains at bottom of polls on Republican contenders for the White House, receiving only 3 percent in a Gallup survey last week.
The poll has former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at the top with 19 percent, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 15 percent.
Last month, Pawlenty also fared badly in the Conservative Political Action Conference’s presidential straw poll. He tied at 4 percent with Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, the gaffe-prone chair of the House Tea Party Caucus who successfully rallied supporters in Iowa over the weekend.
Pawlenty, 50, is said to have been vetted as a running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008. A prominent social conservative who pundits said could have given McCain the support of Evangelicals, he served in the state House for six terms before winning the gubernatorial race in 2002.
Pawlenty unveiled his fundraising team the same day a Republican with a potentially huge war chest issued a bold, albeit inaccurate, challenge to President Barack Obama.
Real estate mogul Donal Trump, who early this month said he is willing to spend $600 million of his own wealth for a White House bid, released his birth certificate on Monday.
“It took me one hour to get my birth certificate,” Trump told Newsmax. “It’s inconceivable that, after four years of questioning, the president still hasn’t produced his birth certificate. I’m just asking President Obama to show the public his birth certificate.”
Obama, who was born in Hawaii, posted a copy of his birth certificate online during his 2008 campaign for president. The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health verified the validity of the legal document the same year.
Trump, who also hosts and produces a reality show, polled only 1 percent in the Gallup survey. He was not part of CPAC’s straw poll but he delivered a high-profile speech at the conference bashing Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a Libertarian who ran in the 1988 and 2008 White House races and who topped the CPAC poll for a second year in a row.
Paul rounds out the top five in the Gallup survey, with 6 percent. Only two other Republicans, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, receive double-digit support in the poll, and 16 percent of Republican voters said they had no preference.
Gingrich will be running for president “within a month,” he said on Fox News Sunday. He also continued to address his marital history, defending his leading role in the impeachment effort against former President Bill Clinton while he was himself engaged in an extramarital affair by saying the impeachment proceedings were “not about personal behavior.”
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