We won. We won. We won. If Norm Coleman’s campaign repeats this mantra often enough, perhaps it will actually come true. At least that seems to be the reasoning of the Senator’s political camp. “We think we’re three for three right now,” Fritz Knaak, the lead attorney for the Republican, told reporters just moments after a statewide canvassing board officially initiated a recount in the closest U.S. Senate race in Minnesota history. “He’s got more votes than the other side. That’s how it works in our system.”
By Paul Schmelzer 11/18/08
Does the Star Tribune have it in for U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken? A look at the paper’s coverage over the past few weeks might suggest as much — from labeling the campaign’s efforts to delay certification of voting results “eleventh-hour maneuvering” to foregrounding a GOP talking point about today’s trip to Washington, D.C., by Franken. Or am I being “presumptuous”?
By Chris Steller 11/18/08
The Minnesota Independent liveblogged as the state’s Canvassing Board met today to approve a plan for a recount in the U.S. Senate election. After the meeting, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie held a press conference and we liveblogged that too. Find out why someone said the word “Embarass,” what Mark Ritchie had for breakfast, and whether the recount will really take until August.
By Chris Steller 11/17/08
We’re supposed to learn Tuesday whether a final batch of 24,000 absentee and contested ballots will bring U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, back from a 1,000-vote deficit to win re-election, despite his recent felony conviction. Should Stevens win election but then get booted from the Senate, Gov. Sarah Palin will be in a situation very roughly akin to Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson’s in 1976 after former U.S. Sen. Walter Mondale was elected vice president. Anderson quit as governor, having arranged for his replacement, Rudy Perpich, to appoint him in Mondale’s place. Voters punished both Anderson and Perpich two years later, denying them re-election. If Stevens is the winner after the last Alaska vote is counted tomorrow, what advice would Anderson have for Palin?
By Paul Schmelzer 11/17/08
On Saturday, thousands of people across the country — in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and New York — marched in protest of California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that overrode a state Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. Here in Minnesota, rallies were held in Duluth, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Around 1,000 people gathered near the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis (curiously, the Star Tribune’s story estimates the crowd size at 700, while its subhead put the count at 500). Speakers included OutFront Minnesota’s Kelly Lewis; Jeremy Hanson, an aide to Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, and Minneapolis City Council Member Gary Schiff, among others. Photographer Tony Webster was there and gave us permission to publish a slideshow of the rally.
By Chris Steller 11/14/08
A man presented as an “ordinary voter” in a New York Times article today about the impending recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race has strong ties to the Republican Party and conservative causes that the article does not reveal. Noah Rouen says he told writer Christina Capecchi about his background.
By Steve Perry 11/14/08
In this week’s edition of the Schultz Report audiocast, David Schultz examines the looming vote recount in the Minnesota US Senate face-off between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken.
Is the situation here another Florida 2000 cage match, as so many pundits are claiming? In most respects, Schultz thinks the answer is no. But when it comes to the stakes and the political gamesmanship, that’s another matter.
By Chris Steller 11/13/08
The Al Franken for Senate campaign announced today it is suing Ramsey County in hopes that a favorable court ruling will compel all Minnesota counties to release the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in last week’s election. Attorney Marc Elias said the campaign may present cases of wrongly rejected absentee ballots to the newly-formed canvassing board that will oversee the recount in the U.S. Senate race between Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.
Video and more after the jump.
By Paul Demko 11/12/08
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie announced the formation of a five-person statewide canvassing board today that will oversee the mandatory recount in the U. S. Senate race. Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin, along with two other judges, will join Ritchie on the panel.
By Paul Demko 11/12/08
Alliance for a Better Minnesota has sent letters to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation calling for investigations into allegations contained in a recently filed lawsuit involving Sen. Norm Coleman. The lawsuit, filed in a Texas court, alleges that Nasser Kazeminy, a longtime associate of the Senator, funneled $75,000 that was intended to benefit Coleman to a Minneapolis insurance firm.
By Karl Bremer 11/10/08
Less than two months after he was elected in 2002, Norm Coleman used the power of his yet-to-be-assumed U.S. Senate office to try to leverage a presidential pardon for convicted money launderer and Tom Petters associate Frank Vennes Jr. And two years after that, Coleman wrote yet another pardon plea on Vennes’ behalf.
By Andy Birkey 11/10/08
Tuesday’s election brought advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality a few steps closer to making gains in the Minnesota Legislature while Minnesota sent a less supportive delegation to Congress. While there is much for them to celebrate, advocates say the path to equality is still an uphill battle. “Change” is on the lips of everyone post election, but what kind of change can LGBT Minnesotans expect at the local and national level?
By Molly Priesmeyer 11/8/08
Last night Omar Jamal, head of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, told KSTP news that as many as 500 people were either persuaded or misled to vote for Al Franken at the Brian Coyle Center on Tuesday. The report raises serious questions about Jamal’s claims: Only two days ago Jamal told the same news station that complaints were coming from voters who said translators were persuading people to vote for Franken and Norm Coleman. He claimed that Franken and Coleman workers were, according to KSTP, trying to illegally influence a “few dozen” Somali voters. Suddenly that number has leapt to 500, and Jamal now says they were all persuaded to vote for Franken.
What’s more, though a Coleman staffer was on hand all day, Jamal now dismisses complaints that translators were influencing people to vote for Coleman and tells a reporter from M’shale that they “were lying.”
By Paul Schmelzer 11/18/08
Today’s “most misleading headline” about today’s vote certification by the Canvassing Board, in David Brauer’s words, goes to Norm Coleman. He’s claiming victory, while Franken’s press release says something entirely different.
By Chris Steller 11/18/08
Speaking to reporters in the hallway of the State Office Building near the Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., after a meeting at which the state’s canvassing board approved a plan to start a recount Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s attorney, Fritz Knaak, said he foresees the U.S. Senate making the ultimate decision on the winner in the race between Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. Citing actions and potential actions by the Franken campaign, Knaak said, “We’re being set up for a Senate decision in the U.S. Senate. That’s my perception.”
Update: GOP chair Ron Carey made this same argument at a press conference. Watch The UpTake’s videos of Carey’s and Knaak’s comments after the jump.
By Paul Demko 11/17/08
What will happen to absentee ballots that were rejected as invalid by local election officials? That’s the question currently roiling the U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken as a state-mandated manual recount gets underway this week.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/17/08
When I interviewed MNspeak founder Rex Sorgatz in spring 2007, he commented on his 2006 sale of his placeblogging site MNspeak to the Bartel family, owners of The Rake (and, formerly, City Pages): “My lingering concern with the site now is actually that they haven’t changed anything (except adding more ads)… I hoped someone would invest in it, push it in new directions, invent new stuff.” Last night, those long-awaited changes have occurred — and MNspeak is no more.
Here is the video of the Al Franken for Senate campaign presenting the story of the old woman from Beltrami County whose absentee ballot was rejected because her stroke-impaired signature didn’t match the signature on file. That story turns out to be untrue. This is how Franken attorney Marc Elias told the story at a Nov. 13 press conference at Franken headquarters in St. Paul.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/14/08
City Pages’ Ben Palosaari notices the striking similarity between today’s editions of the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers, from identical headlines and photograph on each paper’s lead story to much of the rest of the pages’ offerings: dueling pieces on Denny Hecker’s woes, the new James Bond flick and the latest on the Coleman/Franken recount.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/14/08
Shakopee reporter Ruth Anne Maddox (pictured) was murdered this week, and her paper is flooded with stories and notes by her readers and co-workers. The Mankato Free Press shuts down its online forum as a casualty of Election ‘08. And Media Matters takes issue with a local writer’s New York Times account of the Franken/Coleman recount.
By Steve Perry 11/14/08
As Pat Lopez reports in the Strib, the Al Franken campaign has filed suit against Ramsey County to compel disclosure of the names and addresses of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected.
Legally and politically, it’s a perfectly legitimate move to ensure that every vote is counted, but Team Franken stepped into a PR nightmare by embellishing the news of their lawsuit with the high-pathos anecdotal case of an 84-year-old Beltrami County woman whose ballot was rejected because a stroke had altered her signature.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/14/08
In a fundraising email to supporters today, Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign declared victory — even though the vote tally from the Nov. 4 election won’t be certified by the state Canvassing Board until Tuesday night. The email, signed by Coleman spokesman Cullen Sheehan, says, “We won the closest Senate race in Minnesota history, but the race is far from over. Act right now” — that is, give money or volunteer to help in the upcoming recount — “and help us protect that victory.” Read it after the jump.
By Chris Steller 11/14/08
The parallels between the plan for President-elect Obama to post YouTube videos of his Saturday presidential radio addresses and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famed fireside chats aren’t lost on anyone this morning. Obama will roll out the practice tomorrow when he gives the Democratic response to President George W. Bush’s radio address.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s got his own regular radio gig, but his absence from it today meant a missed opportunity to set the record straight on his opinion of Minnesota’s electoral process.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/13/08
Via tweets by MinnPost’s David Brauer and KARE-11’s Scott Goldberg, we learn that today Sen. Norm Coleman’s lawsuit against Al Franken’s campaign was dismissed by Administrative Law Judge Barbara Neilson. The complaint, the fourth filed on Coleman’s behalf within days of an election, concerned a campaign ad that said Coleman was “[r]anked the 4th most corrupt senator in Washington,” according to the watchdog group CREW. Neilson wrote that Coleman has “failed to demonstrate probable cause” that Franken’s campaign was in violation of Minnesota statues. Neilson leaves the door open that just maybe Coleman is among the Senate’s most corrupt members.
The Pi Press’s veteran political reporter and analyst Jim Ragsdale has a must-read column on the pending Minnesota US Senate recount.
The Coleman campaign, while promising to “work together to get things done,” has dished most of the dirt, suggesting that normal bounces in the unofficial results are evidence of vote-tampering or worse. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty jumped in this week, saying that the question is whether “ballots from outside the process are going to be allowed in.”
I understand the freak-out factor for the Republican team when the net result of the “unofficial” changes has benefitted Franken, the Democrat. That will be sorted out in the recount. But having our top Republican officials suggest that state and local election officials are crooked is irresponsible and reminiscent of the battle in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Tallahassee in November and December 2000.
Ragsdale then goes on to compare Florida 2000 to Minnesota 2008.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/13/08
“The recount has not even started in Minnesota and somehow Al Franken has already shaved nearly 500 votes off the incumbent lead.” So said Sean Hannity on Fox’s Hannity & Holmes yesterday, in a segment featuring Gov. Tim Pawlenty. While Pawlenty pointed out concerns about “statistical irregularities” in the changing vote tally in the race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, he repeatedly said there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, Hannity continued questioning that: “Is the fix in? … Do you suspect cheating is going on?”
What Hannity — and to a lesser degree, Pawlenty — fail to acknowledge is the history of vote tallies changing pre-certification. And both pass on the lie that Minneapolis’ election director found, as Hannity erroneously puts it, “32 absentee ballots hiding in the trunk of her car — all of them conveniently going to Al Franken.”
By Chris Steller 11/12/08
The campaign to trash Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie — and to malign the state’s canvassing process in the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate election — successfully breached the liberal ramparts at National Public Radio today. NPR’s political editor, Ken Rudin, made comments remarkably in line with GOP talking points during his appearance on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” program.
By Chris Steller 11/12/08
The story has itself gone viral: A new Google tool tracks the spread of actual influenza by monitoring Web searches for terms like “flu.” By aggregating such virtual searches, Google can also anticipate flu outbreaks in the real world by a week to 10 days. Even if Google were to amend its motto to “First, do no evil,” can we trust national health policy to the same search engine trend-spotting tool that puts a wrinkled comedian and a airbrushed model at an equal level of “Hotness”?
By Paul Schmelzer 11/12/08
This morning, Minnesota Independent political reporter Paul Demko appeared via Skype on Amy Goodman’s radio and TV show Democracy Now to discuss the recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race.The independent news site is closely watching the battle between Al Franken and Norm Coleman as one of three still-up-in-the-air races that, if won, could garner the Democratic party a filibuster-proof, 60-seat “super-majority” in the Senate.
Watch or listen to it. (Fastforward to 38:35)
By Chris Steller 11/12/08
Already by Tuesday, two men had tiptoed onto Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak’s turf this week. The city’s revitalization chief, Bob Miller, says he’ll run for the mayor’s job next year, the Southwest Journal reports. And on Monday Gov. Tim Pawlenty made a move on the green-jobs territory that Rybak — joined by another guv-wanna-be, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman — has spent years staking out. Meanwhile, as Pawlenty gears up for a potential presidential bid in 2012, a different Minneapolis official threw his hat in the ring for governor: State Rep. Paul Thissen (DFL).
By Chris Steller 11/11/08
As wild as it seemed, the fluctuation of the tally last week in the Franken-Coleman U.S. Senate contest wasn’t your father’s vote roller coaster. Comparing hour-by-hour graphs from the early hours of two tight Minnesota election battles shows how in 1962 the gubernatorial election results toyed with an even tie, while 2008’s senatorial showdown was more a steady descent to a 200-vote gap.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/11/08
This afternoon, videographer Chuck Olsen of The UpTake held a “press event” (pictured above) in response to another refusal by Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign to allow an UpTake reporter into a public campaign event. This is the third time this fall Coleman’s campaign has barred entry to an official event without explanation.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/18/08 5:04 PM
Highlights of a Daily Show segment on still-undecided Senate races: Young Al Franken in a Speedo, Jesse Ventura hollerin’ at Mean Gene, the reappearance of the Minnesota-is-not-Florida meme, and a new motto: “Minnesota: Crazier than you think!” (Hat tip, Political Animal.)
Watch it after the jump. more »
By Paul Schmelzer 11/18/08 1:03 PM
The UpTake is live at the Minnesota State Canvassing Board’s meeting in which they’re expected to certify the Nov. 4 vote. Watch after the jump or follow MnIndy staffers Chris Steller and Paul Demko as they liveblog the event. more »
By Chris Steller 11/18/08 12:37 PM
Al Franken is in Washington, D.C., today. Why? To meet with Democratic Party leaders, goes the official explanation. But why now, just as the U.S. Senate recount on which his political fate rests is getting under way?
Granted, Franken’s presence now in Minnesota might not be necessary or even helpful. But his absence uncomfortably recalls Al Gore’s fiddling while George W. Bush’s forces burned through Florida during the 2000 presidential recount. Shouldn’t Al be here, if for no other reason than to make use of his USO chops to rally the troops from behind the front lines? But perhaps Franken went to D.C. for another reason altogether.
By Chris Steller 11/18/08 10:46 AM
more »
It takes a mighty force to dislodge the New York Times’ grip on the facts, especially on its front page. Sure, the nation’s newspaper of record may occasionally let right-wing quote machines dominate what’s supposed to be a range of opinion or pass off a GOP activist’s views as those of an ordinary voter. But to force a simple date error on the NYT’s front cover, apparently immobilizing the Gray Lady’s legions of fact-checkers, a terrible power would have to be loose upon the land. And therein lies a tale.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/18/08 10:16 AM
Last week, I spotted a blog post showing a pair of maps: one represented cotton production in the deep south in 1860 and another had Election 2008 results. Today, Strange Maps offers a composite of the two, pairing color-coded vote results by county with dots representing cotton yield (one dot equals 2,000 bales). The conclusion is unsurprising:
The link between these two maps is not causal, but correlational, and the correlation is African-Americans. Once they were the slaves on whom the cotton economy had to rely for harvesting. Despite an outward migration towards the Northern cities, their settlement pattern now still closely corresponds to that of those days. … And while their votes did not swing their states towards ‘their’ candidate, the measure in which black residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina voted for Obama is remarkable in that this particular voting pattern still corresponds with settlement patterns of almost a century and a half ago.
More maps: The Special Topics Cafe notes a nearly opposite trend in The Upland South, which was settled by Scots-Irish farmers and had fewer plantations.
By Chris Steller 11/17/08 1:34 PM
Braublog notes that the purgers at President Bush’s U.S. Department of Justice may have been onto something when they targeted former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger for working to advance voting rights for Native Americans; turnout continues to climb to new heights at the Red Lake Indian Reservation, running 95 percent in favor of Democrat Al Franken on Election Day, the Bemidji Pioneer reports today.
There’s nothing new about the northern Minnesota reservation getting attention during tight election contests. As reported here last month, the director of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, Ed Rollins, is fond of recalling how he had to talk down hard-charging colleagues who wanted to recount what they thought were suspicious votes there (by “dead Indians”) in hopes of netting the Gipper a full 50-state sweep. And Red Lake has had experience with close races and calls for recounts in tribal government elections as recently as 2006.
The area has even found a way to play a leading role in the preliminaries to the historic recount that begins this week in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election. Last week the Franken campaign put forward what turned out to be mostly a rural legend about an elderly woman whose absentee ballot was rejected because after she had a stroke, her signature no longer matched the one on file. Even as it emerged that this wasn’t the case, the woman was never identified publicly — except that she lives in Beltrami County, where most of the Red Lake reservation lies.
By Paul Schmelzer 11/17/08 11:56 AM
The day before protests nationally and locally against Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment that bans gay marriage, right-wing radio host Chris Baker took to the airwaves to call a transgender man a “mutilated lesbian.” KTLK’s Baker called Thomas Beattie, a trangendered man who’s pregnant, “a freak” on Nov. 14 as well. Baker’s contributions to public discourse include calling Barack Obama a “little bitch,” musing about Sarah Palin’s “panty line,” suggesting police use machine guns on RNC protesters and asserting, most bizarrely, that former LA Laker Magic Johnson “faked AIDS.”
By Paul Demko 11/17/08 9:07 AM
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave his usual spiel about Sam’s Club Republicans and widening the GOP base. But T-Paw also touched on the looming U.S. Senate recount in Minnesota. Despite widespread frothing in conservative circles over the last two weeks, Pawlenty acknowledged that there’s zero evidence of ballot shenanigans.
“We have to be clear on this: as of this moment, there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud in the process,” he told host Chris Wallace. “If there is, it will get rooted out and identified aggressively.”
Pawlenty also admitted that widespread reports of joy-riding ballots — which the governor helped to legitimize — were a myth. “There was a news report in Minnesota that the ballot- in-the-trunk story has now been retracted, that it wasn’t accurate,” he said.
By Chris Steller 11/17/08 8:24 AM
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried a quizzical interview by Deborah Solomon with President George W. Bush’s former senior adviser, Karl Rove. Across 21 questions, Rove and Solomon covered a lot of political and even emotional territory, with an often-combative Rove laying claim to having had his feelings hurt by Solomon on an earlier occasion.
The highlight, though, was this cryptic exchange about President-elect Barack Obama:
NYT: Are you going to send him a little note congratulating him?
Rove: I already have. I sent it to his office. I sent him a handwritten note with funny stamps on the outside.
NYT: What kind of funny stamps?
Rove: Stamps.
That called to mind one of the more cryptic MnIndy interviews of the campaign season. It took place last month, outside a Todd Palin rally in Moorhead, Minn. Prompted by the Minnesota Independent’s Paul Demko, Moorhead resident Greg Rhodes, a McCain-Palin supporter, revealed that he’d just handed Alaska’s “first dude” some photographs. What kind of photographs? Watch a less-than-a-minute MnIndy video clip after the jump to find out.
By Steve Perry 11/14/08 3:41 PM
The following report was filed earlier this week on CBS affiliate KIDK-TV. In the town of Rexburg, Idaho — home to a campus of Brigham Young University — one family reported to school officials that children on a school bus were chanting “Assassinate Obama” on the ride home from school last Friday.
The most chilling part of the report: The family that reported the incident say they don’t blame the school district, but, in the words of reporter Nate Eaton, “They just want all parents to be careful what they say to, and teach, their children.”
By Steve Perry 11/14/08 3:18 PM
The third degree: Barack Obama has a few questions for his future employees.
The New York Times has posted a PDF copy of the job application questions facing anyone in line for top posts in the Barack Obama administration. Stretching on for a staggering seven pages, it features 63 questions sorted into eight categories: professional background; publications, writings and speeches; relationships and affiliations; financial information; tax information; legal and administrative proceedings; domestic help; and miscellaneous.
You get the impression they’re erring on the side of caution. Sample question: “Do you know anyone or any organization, either in the private sector or government service, that might take steps, overtly or covertly, to criticize your nomination, including any news organization? If so, please identify and explain the potential basis for criticism.”
By Paul Demko 11/14/08 10:29 AM
The Republican Party of Iowa is helping recruit volunteers to monitor Minnesota’s looming senate recount on behalf of Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign. “Vounteers urgently needed!” reads the heading on an email sent out by the state party yesterday. The Iowa GOP is seeking two-week commitments from individuals beginning on Monday.
The recount is slated to start on Wednesday. There are expected to be roughly 120 locations across the state where ballots will be manually inspected by local election officials to determine which candidate voters intended to support. Authorized representatives from the campaigns of Coleman and Al Franken will have the ability to challenge any decisions that they deem questionable.
The Franken campaign is assembling its own team of recount observers. According to spokeswoman Colleen Murray, they have lined up more than 1,000 volunteers to help monitor the process, including 250 attorneys.
