Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has lost the mullet, which may be a sign of something.

Meanwhile, I just heard one name that hasn’t been taken too seriously in a while or examined too closely: Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R). Young (he just turned 48), conservative. Mormon (with all of the potential political assets and liabilities that brings), but without the baggage that Mitt Romney brings from the primary. Of course, he has no geographic value at all, but neither do most of the viable choices — perhaps including Pawlenty.

Jim Geraghty mentioned Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri (R) yesterday, one of my “after too many beers” veep choices from earlier in the week. He’s a real conservative, believe it or not, and very popular in the Ocean State. (He can only do so much, of course, with a legislature that is something like 9/10ths Democratic.)

Based on some quick research at PoliticalGraveyard.com (which, I’m sad to say, has not been updated in a while, so someone tell me if I’m wrong), it appears that no major party Italian candidate for Senate or governor has ever lost in Rhode Island. (Perhaps Buddy Cianci would even endorse McCain?) But Carcieri would be 66 years old at the inauguration, which is probably well above McCain’s target age.

UPDATE: A reader sets me straight on Rhode Island:

You’re correct that Italians do fare well in elective politics in RI, but they don’t always win. Buddy actually ran for Governor in 1980 against Joe Garrahy. (At the time we had 2yr terms for Governor so Buddy could run mid-term and still keep his job. In fact, he did keep his job as mayor until a little misunderstanding messed things up). The other Italian to lose a race for Governor was Ed DiPrete, but that was after three successful runs. DiPrete was first elected in 1984 (still two year terms), won re-election in 1986 and 1988 (razor thin margin that year because of the Cranston land deal), and eventually lost in 1990 to Bruce Sundlun.
In both loses — Buddy and DiPrete — corruption was an issue. In Buddy’s case, most people outside of Providence believe the city is some sort of corrupt oligarchy and prefer to see its leaders in places other than the State House. When DiPrete lost it was widely speculated that he was going to be indicted (which in fact did happen, but because the AG messed things up he only served one year in prison).
If you want to go back even further Chris DelSesto “lost” two elections for Governor, though he served one term from 1958-1960. I’m sure he won the race in 1956, but the Democrats stole it. It took an awful long time for the count to come in, and the case eventually went to the RI Supreme Court where some 5,000 ballots were thrown out for some trumped up reason, giving the race to the incumbent, Denny Roberts. I think Governor Robert’s brother was on the Supreme Court at the time and actually participated in making the decision (it is RI, after all).

The reader is correct about everything except that Thomas H. Roberts did recuse himself from the decision. Yet it was certainly not one the up-and-up — in fact, it was far dirtier than the reader suggests:

Two of the four judges hearing the case, Chief Justice Edmund W. Flynn and Justice Francis B. Condon, both Democrats, were elected to the Supreme Court during Rhode Island’s infamous “Bloodless Revolution of 1935.” That year, when Republican candidates narrowly won two disputed senate seats to give the G.O.P. a 22-to-20 control of the state senate, Democratic Lieutenant Governor Robert E. Quinn refused to administer oaths to the two close Republican victors. This left the senate in a 20-to-20 tie, which Quinn broke with his own vote, to order a closed, Democratic-controlled recount of the contested districts. When the ballots were recounted, the general assembly declared that both Democratic contenders had won. Then with both houses under Democratic control, the assembly declared all five Supreme Court seats—all then held by Republicans—vacant, replaced the justices with three Democrats, two other Republicans.

The Democrats, having stolen the court twenty years earlier, invalidated the absentees on very suspect grounds, and you can read all about it here.