Tim Pawlenty struggles to step out of Michele Bachmann’s shadow

Then, as now, Pawlenty said he was conservative, yet Bachmann seemed to say it more loudly. He talked about his faith, and she talked about hers more. He said he was a true believer, but Bachmann was somehow more believable.

“Michele is very passionate, very much a go-getter, and Tim in his own way has charisma as well on a personal level,” said Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council. “But I think he just conveys it differently than Michele does in terms of his passion and concern on the issues. It’s just different.”

That dynamic is playing out at a critical moment on the trail, where, despite years of preparation within national GOP circles, Pawlenty is struggling to take hold. Meanwhile, Bachmann in a month of campaigning has rocketed past all her competitors, save front-runner Mitt Romney.

Bachmann and Pawlenty’s trajectories are set to collide during next month’s Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, an early test of strength in a critical state. With Romney sitting out the event, the straw poll is largely turning into a question of which Minnesotan Iowans prefer.

Pawlenty’s challenge is winning the kind of passionate support that comes so naturally to Bachmann, particularly among an electorate more apt to respond to tea party calls to action than establishment support.

It has been difficult for him on the stump, where he continues to lag in all public polls. Back in Minnesota, he won two terms as governor without gaining 50 percent of the vote, and even in his home town, voters struggled to feel a connection.

Republicans are not so easy to find in South St. Paul, the blue-collar town where Pawlenty grew up. But even among a group of beer-sipping conservatives in the basement of the old Croatian Hall, opinion is mixed about the former governor.

“Between Bachmann and Pawlenty, I would definitely take Bachmann,” said retired painter Jim Kammerer, 64. “I think he’s gone more to the right since he’s been on the presidential campaign, but he’s not convincing to me.”

Part-time cook Brian Williams, 49, saw more of what the Pawlenty campaign hopes voters will see. “People have said, ‘You know, he’s weak.’ What is he weak on? He held the state together, didn’t raise any taxes. I like him.”

The tiff between Pawlenty and Bachmann began over the weekend, when Pawlenty — gently — criticized Bachmann.

“These are really serious times, and there hasn’t been somebody who went from the U.S. House of Representatives to the presidency, I think, in over 100 years, and there’s a reason for that,” Pawlenty told CNN’s Candy Crowley.