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New Romney veepstakes frontrunner Pawlenty left Minnesota with record budget deficit

Tim Pawlenty is said to be the Romney campaign's latest flavor of the month for its vice presidential selection.

Tim Pawlenty is said to be the Romney campaign's latest flavor of the month for its vice presidential selection. And Wednesday on The Ed Show, Ed explained why Romney and the former Minnesota governor might indeed be a dream ticket—for the Obama campaign.

Schultz took us back to 2007, when the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed thanks to structural problems, killing 13. The accident came after Pawlenty, then the governor, had gutted transportation funding, and had refused to fund inspections which could have prevented accidents like the collapse.

That's not all. By the end of his term, Pawlenty had left 9 percent of Minnesotans without health insurance, and had added just 6,200 jobs in eight years, despite a booming national economy. And he stuck the state with a record $5 billion budget deficit.

Mike Hatch, a Democratic former Minnesota Attorney General joined Ed to talk about Pawlenty's lackluster record. 

"If fiscal repsonsibilty is a key component of the selection, the governor fails in that regard," said Hatch. "I don't think leaving the state with a $5 billion deficit is fiscally responsible."