As Gov. Tim Pawlenty does his radio shtick from the venerable WCCO-AM State Fair booth this morning, see if you catch a faraway look in his eye. He might be recalling this time last year.

That was when Pawlenty, after a frenzy of hush-hush vetting, took a call just hours before he was to go live at the fair, informing him that he had been passed over as a GOP running mate.

Pawlenty and his spokesman Thursday gave a new glimpse of that drama-filled moment -- 12 months ago -- in the governor's political life, a low point from which the governor has rebounded to fresh national aspirations as he explores a potential run for president.

At the McCain campaign's request, Pawlenty was at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on the day before his 2008 State Fair show. It was a plum assignment -- Pawlenty would be McCain's surrogate at the site of the nominating convention for Barack Obama. But the appearance was also the day before McCain was to name his running mate in Ohio.

Pawlenty started the day with radio and television interviews at 5 a.m. Mountain Time and prepared to go nonstop through the day.

Then, without warning, he was told to stop.

"Around 12 noon, staffers for the RNC came in and said 'Don't read into this one way or the other, but we're canceling your schedule for the rest of the day," spokesman Brian McClung remembered Thursday. McClung had traveled to Denver on vacation time to help as a volunteer.

The RNC said it was too difficult for Pawlenty to drive McCain's message home because all reporters wanted to focus on was whether Pawlenty was going to be the nominee.

The cancellations made it seem possible for Pawlenty to travel to Ohio if necessary, and the national media took note. So acute was the attention to McCain's veep pick that Pawlenty's schedule change made the CNN crawl.

The staffers didn't tell Pawlenty exactly what to do next.

"We think you should probably go ahead and go to the airport," McClung said the RNC staffers told them.

Pawlenty and McClung took separate flights, with McClung using his own money to buy a ticket on Frontier Air. Pawlenty hopped a quick flight out on Northwest -- alone.

McClung was left waiting in the Denver airport for hours, taking calls or getting voice mails from reporters across the country, while his boss was in the air and unreachable. A year later, McClung still has a voice mail from CBS anchor Katie Couric saved on his private cell phone.

Dodging reporters

Pawlenty landed in Minneapolis and, privately convinced he would not be McCain's choice, told McClung he was going to his daughter's volleyball game that night.

While reporters waited outside the iron gates of the residence, Pawlenty had two black vehicles purposely driving in odd patterns to throw everyone off.

The next morning, Pawlenty got the expected call from McCain. He had, indeed, been passed over.

Two hours later, Pawlenty headed for the fair and the balm of a massive hometown crowd of friendly supporters who cheered him as he interviewed Martha of Sweet Martha's cookies.

Pawlenty said Thursday he "deduced" days earlier: "I wasn't going to be selected." The closeness of his Denver trip and the Ohio announcement just made it extremely unlikely, he said.

"I didn't know at that time it was going to be Governor Palin. I just knew that they had made a decision and it wasn't me," Pawlenty said. "I wasn't particularly disappointed because I never thought I was going to get it."

Waiting and watching

This year, Pawlenty will again be live at the fair, this time interviewing a championship sheep shearer.

He appears no sadder for having lost out on what turned out to be a whomping defeat for McCain/Palin. He said he gained a level of national exposure that otherwise might have been unattainable for a governor from a small, Upper Midwest state and now is a regular on cable talk shows. His one-liners make the rounds far beyond Minnesota's borders and he has had a taste of what it could be like to run for No. 1. Pawlenty said he doesn't know what he'll do when his term ends.

On Thursday, instead of waiting for a call from the man who wanted to be president, Pawlenty worked a crowd of young conservative professionals at Chambers Hotel in Minneapolis, at their kickoff event of the "Winston Churchill Society."

He closed his day by going to a Bonnie Raitt concert at the State Fair grandstand and planning his trip to the fair today.

"I love the fair. I love the people. I love the atmosphere. I enjoy the whole thing," he said.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger • 651-292-0164