"We'd been hearing through a number of channels that the governor had changed his mind concerning a meeting, and now for the first time he has made his opinion public," Rich Tafel, the group's executive director, said today.
A spokeswoman for Mrs. Bachmann came back again in another statement: "Governor Pawlenty has changed his positions in recent years, but he can't run from his big government record as governor of Minnesota that left the state's budget in a multibillion dollar mess," said the spokeswoman, Alice Stewart.
Asked why the governor's philosophy has changed, Mark Miner, his spokesman, said Mr. Perry was a leader intent on letting the Legislature do its work.
But that was the case before he became governor, and little has changed.
In New Jersey, Governor Whitman's coming departure has changed all political equations and given a boost to the ambitions of Donald T. DiFrancesco, the Senate president, who will replace her as acting governor.
But that dynamic has changed since Governor Davis took office in 1998 and began appointing Democrats, who have been more inclined to form alliances with the labor-backed trustees.
"The landscape has changed," said the governor, a Democrat.
"Absolutely nothing has changed since the governor's meeting on Wednesday," the statement said.
It is true that much has changed since segregationist governor George Wallace blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama to prevent two black students enrolling in 1963.
Mr. Bush's gaffes on the stump are nothing new, but they are being picked up more by the media because the context of the campaign has changed and the governor is no longer viewed as the towering favorite.
