Tim Pawlenty to announce presidential run Monday

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty plans to formally announce his 2012 presidential campaign at an event in Iowa on Monday, an aide to Pawlenty tells CBS News.

Pawlenty will appear at a town hall event in Des Moines at 11:30 am local time, where he will make the announcement after an introduction from his wife Mary.

Pawlenty announced a presidential exploratory committee in March. He has spent much of the past year working feverishly behind the scenes to lay the groundwork for a candidacy.

The 50-year-old conservative Republican has tried to position himself as a consensus candidate, someone around whom both fiscal and social conservatives can rally. Despite his lack of national name recognition, Pawlenty is seen as one of the stronger candidates in the wide-open GOP field.

At the first GOP presidential debate earlier this month, Pawlenty retreated from his past support for cap-and-trade energy policyand attacked President Obama on foreign policy, saying, "the issues that have come up while he's been president, he's gotten them wrong strategically every single time."

A victory in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation voting state, would provide a significant boost to Pawlenty's presidential campaign. The decision by Mike Huckabee to forgo a presidential run has improved Pawlenty's chances in the state, but other potential candidates - including Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich - also plan to make a strong push there.

Pawlenty has been getting about four percent support in early polls of the GOP field.