(Another excellent "Democratic Visions" segment produced by DFL Volunteers in SD42! - promoted by TwoPuttTommy)
The Nation Magazine named Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie America's most valuable state official and Politics in Minnesota honored Mark as politician of the year.
Leah Solo, Mark's campaign manager sent out an email alert today which in part says:
"Mark Ritchie is a great leader and a great Secretary of State. But we cannot take this race for granted. We're in a race against big money and opponents willing to make baseless accusations. Some of the biggest GOP donors in the state have maxed out to our opponent, and with the new laws, we're up against corporate money.
We expect the attacks against Mark to be frequent. We expect them to be fabrications of reality. We expect them to be largely fact-free." - Leah Solo
Readers should refer their Republican friends to Mark's conversation with Tim O'Brien on the current edition of Democratic Visions. We've posted it on YouTube:
How bad does Al Franken's 312 vote victory over Norm Coleman in 2008 burn in conservative craws? Pretty bad. Some of them just can't seem to let it go. Since they can't do anything to Franken until 2014, the only other target is MN Sec. of State Mark Ritchie who is up for reelection this year.
Minnesota Majority, a right wing group with white supremacist flavorings, got the Republican's communications department, Fox News, to report on a "study" they concocted:
The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities.
That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The funny thing is, convicted felons did vote in the 2008 election. He voted for Norm.
I suppose it is a waste of my breathe to remind everyone that three MN courts all ruled unanimously that Franken got the most votes and that the election and recount were fair and square. Even Republicans like Tim Pawlenty and Norm's legal team stated that there was no vote fraud in the election.
Later, Justice Paul Anderson asked [Norm's attorney Joe] Friedberg bluntly whether he was alleging outright criminality by election officials: "Is there any evidence of any fraud, any favoritism, or anything other than the election officials in Minnesota tried to do the best job possible to apply the law?"
"Absolutely not," said Friedberg. "And there's no voter fraud, there's no election fraud."
According to MPR, the Ramsey County Attorney will prosecute 28 cases as a result of this "study." A far cry from the amount needed to invalidate Franken's victory.
Republicans will by trying to use this "study" as a cudgel with which to pummel Ritchie. Therefore, I suggest we all drop a few coins in Ritchie's campaign fund:
It's been a busy week, and I wanted to touch back on the Bachmann MotorMouth Overdrive FEC problems reported by Karl Bremer over at Dump Bachmann. It seems Bachmann has some serious paperwork problems with the FEC, and that's FEC problems from BEFORE she hired republiCon Ron.
The Minnesota GOPers have a longstanding tradition of running a completely FUBAR paperwork operation; for example, here's the infamous "Tostenson Memo".
And I wanted to share one FEC Filing from the MN GOP that just warms my heart:
GOPers simply have to wonder where their "donations" to the GOP go. We know at the national level, donations fund stuff like "meals" at bondage clubs. And I'm sure it warms local GOPer's hearts, too, knowing that their donations went to pay for Senator Franken's legal fees....
As the recount between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in the MN-SEN race moved along, Franken's lead attorney Marc Elias claimed that his candidate was winning and that the numbers would eventually prove him right. The pundits and talking heads laughed at him initially; I hoped that he wasn't just bluffing and they really had gotten as organized as I'd heard. As the numbers began to swing towards Franken taking the lead, it became apparent that the Franken campaign had done a brilliant job preparing for the recount.
This weekend, Netroots MN had a panel entitled Clicks to Votes: Integration on the Franken for Senate Campaign. I attended to learn anything more I could about what I think was an extraordinarily tech-savvy campaign. I wasn't disappointed because in addition I learned more details about how well-organized the campaign was.
The panelists were Dan Cramer of Grassroots Solutions and JD Schlough. JD was in charge of all online activities (he's now a principal at Well & Lighthouse LLC). Dan came on board the campaign as a consultant in September.
Fresh soup tonight. I won't forget to serve it to you hot. Woo.
Dave Mindeman reads Miss Hairdo so you don't have to.
Liberal in the Land of Conservative: Marty Seifert answers questions about the Laura Brod smears.
Aaron Brown has some news about the company trying to build the biggest boondoggle on the Iron Range. They're changing their name. Aaron also has some not helpful news about Tom Bakk helping promote this boondoggle.
As of 11:15 AM CDT, Minnesota will have two U.S. Senators and America will have a hundred. C-SPAN2 will have video after the fact; The Uptake will have live coverage -- we're working on collecting the embed code so you can watch the proceedings.
Al Franken stood in front of his house in Minneapolis alongside his wife Franni and declared victory for a second time.
"I'm thrilled and honored and humbled by the enormity of this responsibility," said Senator-Elect Franken. "Earlier today I received a very gracious call from former Senator Norm Coleman. We talked about how it's been a very hard fought race. I said that it couldn't have been closer. He told me this will be the best job that I've ever had."
Al speculated that he'd be flying to Washington, DC early next week to be sworn in. This will probably actually happen as MN Governor Tim Pawlenty stated between the Norm and Al press conferences that he will sign the election certificate later tonight.
Almost eight months after election day, the U.S. Senate race is finally coming to a close. Saying that the Minnesota Supreme Court was "the only court who fully considered" his case, Norm Coleman has conceded and is recognizing his Democratic opponent, Al Franken, as the winner and Senator-elect.
Norm met the press with his daughter at his side. No signs of Laurie or his son.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled: DFLer Al Franken beat Norm Coleman last year fair and square, and is eligible for an election certificate that will allow him to be seated in the United States Senate.
Unfortunately, the decision does not explicitly order Gov. Tim Pawlenty to issue that certificate, so here's to hoping he won't see fit to play more dirty partisan games with Minnesota's second Senate seat.
A09-697
In the Matter of the Contest of the General Election held on November 4, 2008, for the purpose of electing a United States Senator from the State of Minnesota, Cullen Sheehan and Norm Coleman, contestants, Appellants vs. Al Franken, contestee, Respondent. Ramsey County.
1. Appellants did not establish that, by requiring proof that statutory absentee voting standards were satisfied before counting a rejected absentee ballot, the trial court's decision constituted a post-election change in standards that violates substantive due process.
2. Appellants did not prove that either the trial court or local election officials violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection.
3. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded additional evidence.
4. Inspection of ballots under Minn. Stat. ยง 209.06 (2008) is available only on a showing that the requesting party cannot properly be prepared for trial without an inspection. Because appellants made no such showing here, the trial court did not err in denying inspection.
5. The trial court did not err when it included in the final election tally the election day returns of a precinct in which some ballots were lost before the manual recount.
Affirmed. Per Curiam.
Took no part, Chief Justice Eric J. Magnuson and Justice G. Barry Anderson.
Update: Norm Coleman is scheduled to speak at his home in St. Paul at 3 PM. Al Franken is scheduled to speak at his home in Minneapolis at 3:30 PM. Does this mean a concession is coming from Coleman?
Does it also mean reporters are going to be driving at extremely dangerous speeds on I-94 westbound at 3:25?
Update 2: Franken has moved his appearance to 4:15. Rumors that it was to prevent multiple fatalities on 94 westbound could not be confirmed or refuted.
Update 3: According to a legal eagle of a reader, "per curiam" is a political move on the court's part. It is designed to shield the court, but does not necessarily mean that the decision was unanimous. It does, however, mean that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court will be extremely difficult for Team Coleman, since there are no dissenting opinions to use.
Minnesota's lame-duck Governor and 2012 Presidential candidate wannabe Tim Pawlenty had a big weekend. He spent the weekend making appearances to further his presidential ambitions. First up was a fundraiser in Little Rock, Arkansas. Next was a CNN interview.
We can pull two important points from the interview. First he claims he'll sign the election certificate if the MN Supreme Court issues it. Second, he criticized the climate change bill that just passed the House. This criticism is a bit of a flip-flop.
I'll begin with Arkansas. If only he would work this hard to accomplish anything for MN ... it all began during the flight down:
I know that we've all been throwing the bones, checking the tea leaves and consulting fortune tellers to try and figure out when the Minnesota Supreme Court will get around to ruling on Norm Coleman's appeal of Al Franken's victory in the MN-SEN recount. We've had enough of the waiting already.
But here's something interesting.
An attorney I know told me that the MNSC isn't supposed to consider any other cases except the MN-SEN case. This attorney suggested I check out the MNSC website. Look at what I found.
OPINIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT
FILED THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
NOTICE - MEDIA RELEASE TIME IS 10:00 A.M.
They released rulings on Bahr v. Boise Cascade and Oganov v. American Family Insurance as well as a dozen or so orders.
If they're ruling on other things, is this because they're done with the MN-SEN ruling? Is this because they're going to issue something today, Friday the 26th? Gosh I hope so. Then TwoPuttTommy and I will have an supercalifragilisticexpialidocious time guest hosting the Mark Heaney Show on AM950 later today (6-7pm ... nudge nudge, wink wink).
If not ... them Justices got some explainin' to do. I'm seriously going out of my mind waiting. Already.
I went to the Al Franken fundraiser tonight at Solera. It was special because a friend of mine, Carla, organized this fundraiser. Her first for Al. I'm proud to say I helped get her involved in politics. Congrats, Carla.
Anyhoo, that's not why I'm writing this post. I didn't notice something about a certain press release about Norm Coleman. No, not that. I did notice that Norm got $1 million from the NRSC in May. It's this bit:
The DSCC hasn't handled Minnesota Senate funds in the same way, so its report shows only about $5,000 in payments for the race.
(St. Paul Pioneer Press)
Whoa! $5K!?! I thought getting a 60th Senator in the Democratic caucus was important. WTF?
Just to be fair, they did send some cash Al's way.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $282,500 in May for the Minnesota fight.The DSCC doesn't have as many big-dollar donations earmarked for Minnesota - the largest single contribution is $15,000 from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political action committee - but they include contributions from some bold-faced Hollywood names.
C'mon, DSCC. Howz bout sending a wee bit more scratch Al's way?
While we all waited in breatheless anticipation last Thursday ... or at least with as much breathless anticipation as we could muster, the Minnesota Supreme Court failed to issue a ruling in the MN Senate race.
But something more telling may have happened. Did the rats abandon the sinking ship?
LeRoy Coleman (no relation), who served as Coleman's Senate communications director, has now joined the Republican National Committee as director of media affairs. And two weeks ago another top Coleman staffer, campaign manager Cullen Sheehan, became an RNC regional director.
The fact that Sheehan signed up for a new job is pretty telling, even though he'll still be helping out with the Coleman camp. The reason is that Sheehan is the official co-plaintiff, along with Coleman, in the actual ongoing election lawsuit.
(Talking Points Memo)
PIM has now heard from two sources on different sides of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race recount scene that the final Minnesota Supreme Court ruling is expected to arrive tomorrow, Thursday, June 18th.
...
At this point we now believe it is "highly likely" to happen; in fact, based on our sources we'd be surprised if it doesn't. While earlier estimates of 30 days of deliberation got floated, we also heard from someone close to the justices that they would like to move things along quickly, so it's more plausible that things are getting tied up today.
We also heard there's some confidence that the three-judge panel ruling was pretty solid and won't get eviscerated by the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Emphasis added on that last part. Norm Coleman's only real hope was that the Supremes would find something hopelessly wrong with the three-judge panel's ruling and toss it, turning the case on its head. If that doesn't happen, this thing actually could be over in the next 24 hours.
I have been trying to find a definitive statement of Tim Pawlenty talking about what he is going to do when the MN Supreme Court rules on the Franken Coleman recount. In a recent interview, Governor Pawlenty seems to have made a commitment.
When the Minnesota Supreme Court finally rules and if they direct me to sign that certificate. I am going to follow the direction of the court.
(CBS Washington Unplugged)
Note that there is a direction step involved, which means an extra legal step.
