Pat accepts nomination for State Auditor.

Pat Anderson is a fourth generation Minnesotan. She grew up in Forest Lake, MN and is the oldest of five children. She lived a typically Minnesotan middle-class childhood in a “typically unique” Minnesota family. Pat attended public schools and graduated from Forest Lake High School in 1984, but her political education she learned around the kitchen table from her parents and about life she learned from the great outdoors.

Anderson family camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, 1977.

Her parents inspired Pat and her siblings with the ideals of individual liberty – that their lives belonged to them, and they have the unalienable right to pursue happiness each in her or his own way, perhaps making mistakes along the way, but also experiencing the joys only self-reliant, productive individuals can know. They challenged their children’s minds and bodies – nothing like winter camping in the Boundary Waters to build mental and physical toughness. The lessons took.

Pat has a brother in Alaska who pursued his dream and is now a champion professional sled dog musher living with his wife and family and about 90 sled dogs in the hills above Fairbanks. Another brother is a commercial pilot who, when not flying planes, likes to jump out of them “for fun” in skydiving competitions. Her youngest brother is an avid expert snow, water skier and wake boarder. And Pat has a younger sister who met the greatest challenge of all by overcoming a tragic childhood injury (brain aneurysm) leaving her with physical and emotional handicaps; she earned her AA degree and lives a self-reliant life with help from her family.

Pat is sworn in as a member of the Eagan City Council.

Pat has a long and varied career in both the public and private sector. She served as Eagan city council member from 1991-1998 and was mayor of Eagan from 1998-2002, when she first caught the public eye for her running battles with Chairman Ted Mondale over who ran the City of Eagan – the people of Eagan or Mondale’s Met Council. She built out the city’s infrastructure as only a fiscal conservative would do – by keeping taxes low and not letting the city’s growth get ahead of its revenues. City Pages named her the “Best Mayor in the Twin Cities” in 2002.

Pat campaigned, and governed, as a ‘Watchdog for the Taxpayer.’ Photo by Chad Doughty.

From 2003-2007 Pat served as State Auditor where, consistent with her philosophy as Mayor of Eagan, she popularized the term “essential services” to define where local governments should focus spending. A “Watchdog for the Taxpayers,” Pat went after excessive school superintendent pay packages and local government lobbying expenses.

Pat also served as Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employee Relations in the Pawlenty Administration, where she eliminated duplicate and unnecessary functions and merged what remained with the Minnesota Departments of Finance, Administration and Health. She is perhaps the first Commissioner in Minnesota history to intentionally work herself out of a job in order to promote greater efficiency in government. Pat served as president of the Minnesota Free Market Institute from November of 2008 to October of 2009 when she resigned to seek state office.

Pat is an entrepreneur who built a business from scratch that employed over 70 people.

A successful entrepreneur, Pat founded and ran two innovative service businesses that she grew to 75 employees with combined sales of several million dollars. She managed both businesses until her election as State Auditor. The companies were sold in 2003. The Business Journal named her one of the state’s “Most Influential Women to Watch,” as well as one of Minnesota’s “Top 40 Business and Community Leaders under 40.”

Pat earned her master’s degree from Hamline University.

Pat earned a Bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of Minnesota and a Master’s degree in public administration from Hamline University in St. Paul, but it is her executive experience in the private and the public sector that forged her leadership qualities. The “school of hard knocks” also provided her with a degree in resilience, a prerequisite to conquer personal trials faced by many Minnesotans.

Pat and her girls, Alexandra and Katie.

Like all of us, Pat’s personal life has been full of both tremendous joy and a few disappointments. Married in 1990 to Mike Awada, a commercial banker, Pat gave birth to Alexandra in 1993 and Katie in 1997. In 1999 she and her husband adopted two boys from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, George, age 10, and Michael, age 11 at the time. Both had lived in orphanages all their lives; both had been emotionally and physically abused. The boys sometimes proved difficult to manage, and Pat and Mike had to make some “tough love” decisions as parents.

Pat meets her boys, George and Michael, for the first time.

“Raising kids is tough, and older adopted kids are even tougher,” says Pat, “but I don’t for an instant regret becoming their mother even though it gave me quite a few grey hairs and subjected our family to public scrutiny. I love them both very much and am proud of what they have overcome in their lives and what they have accomplished. They are both in college and my oldest son is in the National Guard and is scheduled to be deployed in Iraq next year.”
After 13 years of marriage, Pat and her husband divorced in January 2004. They remain good friends.

Pat with husband Doug Gallwas.

Two years ago, Pat remarried. Her husband, Doug Gallwas, is a financial adviser whom she met through e-harmony. (Yes, it does happen!) Doug has two children from a previous marriage, Jackie, now age 15 and Alexander, age 14. Pat and Doug’s blended family of four teenage and two adult children (Pat and Doug are full-time parents for all six children) lives in Dellwood, just north of St. Paul.

Mother, wife, business owner, office holder, free market activist, and a candidate for State Auditor, Pat Anderson lives a complete life, but a life far from finished.

The Anderson-Gallwas Bunch.

“Serving in state government is exciting for me because it gives me a chance to put into practice the ideas of individual liberty and limited government I learned as a child at my father’s knee,” says Pat. “Mine is a typical American story – whatever our personal joys, our personal sorrows, it is the values we pass to the next generation that is the measure of our lives.”