The 10 most powerful Minnesota Republicans

In a party sometimes split between social and economic conservatives, Meeks is both. Last year he signed a two-page letter shipped to state delegates urging them to turn their backs on McCain and Giuliani: "Between them, they have supported tax hikes, free speech restrictions, amnesty of illegal immigrants, gay marriage, and abortion."

Not a man to waste an opportunity, last year Meeks joined forces again with his wife, Annette, and their old comrade Weber to launch Twin Cities Strategies, a public relations firm that woos clients looking to get a message out in the blur of the Republican National Convention. He's also president and CEO of the Walker Group, a consulting firm he founded in 1992.

Meeks was a Romney man until the bitter end—he served as Minnesota co-chair to the Romney campaign. He's had his differences with Governor Pawlenty—most notably over the expansion of gambling in Minnesota, which Meeks opposes. All the same, he told the Star Tribune in 2005 that Pawlenty is "the best governor in my lifetime."

THE TRUE BELIEVER

Annette Meeks

President, Freedom Foundation of Minnesota

Vin Weber calls Annette Meeks "one of the most dynamic conservatives in the party." Tony Sutton calls her "a party thought leader." Her conservative credentials are impeccable. During the fabled Republican Revolution in 1994, she was deputy chief of staff to none other than Newt Gingrich.

Meeks is a conservative to the marrow. She sees "soul-searching" and "depth" in George W. Bush. She decries liberal dominion of our universities and she initiated a short-lived project when she was CEO of the Center of the American Experiment called Foundations for Active Conservative Thinking (FACT)—which meant she had opened up a Minnesota front in a nationwide conservative uproar over a perceived far-left-lean in American academia.

She was voted out of her leadership role at CAE in 2006 and started her own conservative think tank: Freedom Foundation of Minnesota.

A Minnesota delegate to every Republican National Convention since 1988, Meeks is now a partner—with her husband, Jack—in the RNC-focused public relations firm Twin Cities Strategies. She hosts a weekly radio show called The Polichicks, and she's a Pawlenty appointee to the Metropolitan Council. Friends say she's backed off party activity since the appointment. Still, says Weber, an old friend, "she's constantly in motion. Lots of people want her to run for office."

THE INTELLECTUAL

Mitch Pearlstein

President and Founder, Center of the American Experiment

It was almost 1990 when Mitch Pearlstein announced to friends and colleagues that he was going to open a conservative think tank in Minnesota—a state that hadn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972.

"Conservative ideas are not terribly well attended to in this state," Pearlstein told a reporter at the time, "in part because they're not terribly well articulated."

Nearly 20 years later, the center is still with us. It has survived internal rifts and financial scares, and through its studies, books, lectures, and conferences it is endlessly feeding a pipeline of intellectual and analytical ammunition for conservative crusaders—from activists to elected officials—statewide. Center fundraisers have drawn the likes of Bush Sr., Margaret Thatcher, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Henry Kissinger. The center is something of a trailblazer in the vast universe of conservative think tanks. Before Pearlstein came along, no such undertaking had adopted, as he describes it, the "most difficult, nastiest issues" of a single state as its focus. Today there are many.

Pearlstein is a prolific author of books on school choice, the family, and other conservative touchstones. Larry Jacobs calls Pearlstein Minnesota's George Will, "but nicer."

From CAE's inception, Pearlstein has emphasized that the organization is nonpartisan. Conservative, yes. Republican, no. Not surprisingly, the center draws Republicans by the bushel—many of the state's most influential Republicans have served as CAE advisors or directors. The traffic from CAE board or staff positions to public or party office and vice versa (U.S. Rep. John Kline was an executive vice president, Carol Molnau headed a task force) has drawn challenges over the integrity of the center's nonprofit, nonpartisan status, which the think tank has enjoyed without any federal-level objections for nearly 20 years.

Pearlstein spreads his influence widely, with positions at the Commission on Parenthood's Future, the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Advisory Council, the Public Policy Advisory Committee of the School of Education at the University of St. Thomas, the Hiawatha Leadership Academy's Board of Advisors, and the Partnership for Choice in Education.

THE CRUSADER

William Cooper

Former Chairman, Republican Party of Minnesota

TIhere he sat, in a Hennepin County courtroom in 2003, the CEO of TCF Financial Corp. and former head of the state Republican Party. It was nothing sinister that got him there. He had been ticketed for speeding on his snowmobile not far from his $15 million home on Lake Minnetonka. One regulatory agency, the Department of Natural Resources, had set a speed limit for snowmobiling, and another, the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District, had set their own, lower limit. Too much regulation? This was Cooper's life's work. He filed a 21-page brief to quash the ticket. The effort failed. He appealed and failed again. Never mind, he told reporters at the time: It's the principle of the thing.