Blue Spot

Minn. Senate Race Tightens In Recount, With 60% Of Ballots Re-Examined GOP Incumbent Leads By 115 Votes, But Challenges Remain - CBS News

(AP) The weekend isn't bringing any respite in the Minnesota Senate recount.

Ballots in the ultra-close race between Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken are being counted in at least three counties Saturday.

Fifty-three counties have reported complete results to the secretary of state, meaning fewer than three dozen remain. As of Friday night, at least 60 percent of the estimated 2.9 million ballots had gotten a second look.

Coleman entered the recount with a 215-vote edge over Franken. That lead has dropped to 115 votes when comparing totals in precincts where the new count is complete. But the figure doesn't include ballot challenges, which have caused vote tallies for both men to drop.

There have been 1,525 challenges between the campaigns, although some could be withdrawn before the Canvassing Board's Dec. 16 meeting.

Officials for Coleman and Franken said Friday they'll review the hundreds of challenges they've made so far in their Senate race recount - and withdraw some - before the state Canvassing Board meets next month to consider them.

Minnesota's Senate battle is one of two that are unresolved, with Georgia's headed for a Dec. 2 run-off. If Democrats win both, they would have a 60 seat majority in the Senate.

Labels: Al Franken, Senate

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Coleman says he welcomes investigation into his finances « - Blogs from CNN.com

Minneapolis, Minnesota (CNN) – Just hours after a liberal-leaning Minnesota group called for an investigation into allegations that Sen. Norm Coleman accepted $75,000 worth of gifts, the incumbent Republican himself said he is eager for any probe to move forward "immediately."

Court documents allege that Texas businessman Nasser Kazeminy fraudulently ordered corporate funds be funneled to Coleman — a potential violation of Senate ethics rules.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a self-described progressive organization, sent letters to both the Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the Minneapolis branch of the FBI calling for a full investigation.

Al Franken’s campaign and the state Democratic Farmer Labor Party also continue to bring up the allegations repeatedly to reporters.

Coleman said the accusations were influenced by partisanship. “As another Democratic group that spent millions of dollars attempting to defeat me calls for a politically motivated investigation, I want to be clear that I not only welcome such an investigation, but I am eager to have it move forward immediately." Coleman said in a Wednesday statement. "The fact that a United States Senator is being used as a tool of extortion by private parties should be of concern to all Minnesotans. I reiterate that none of the allegations which attempt to besmirch my family’s good name and reputation are true.

"This investigation should move forward, and it is my hope that those who were behind this matter, their motives and what their connections may be to my political opponents be reviewed aggressively by the appropriate authorities and the media. This matter, which has emerged again as a result of the tactics of my political opponents, during a recount, ought to raise even further suspicions in the minds of Minnesotans as to its motives and purposes.”

Franken and Coleman remain locked in an unresolved Senate race, separated by just a few hundred votes. A state law-mandated recount is set to begin November 19.

Labels: Al Franken, Investigations, Senate

ABC News: Dems Getting Closer to Sixty?

The record 2.9 million ballots cast in Minnesota's Senate race will get an automatic recount after incumbent Republican Norm Coleman's apparent narrow victory over Democratic challenger Al Franken.

Now, fewer than 500 votes stand between the candidates.

On Tuesday night, Coleman declared himself the victor of one of the most hotly contested and expensive races of the election season. Franken, who had the option of waiving the recount by conceding the race, pledged to follow the process through till the end.

According to Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the process will begin in mid-November with no set end date while the ballots are recounted by hand at the county level. The recount will involve hundreds and cost the state almost $90,000, Ritchie estimated during a news conference Wednesday.

"I recognize that because of my margin of victory, Mr. Franken has a right to pursue an official review of the election results. It is up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct," Coleman said in his Tuesday night victory speech.

During a Wednesday news conference, Franken deemed the race "too close to call."

"Let me be clear," Franken said. "Our goal is to ensure that every vote is properly counted. The process dictated by our laws will be orderly, fair and will begin within a matter of days. We won't know for a little while who won the race, but at the end of the day, we will know that the voice of the electorate was clearly heard."

Labels: Al Franken, Senate

Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman declared himself the winner the state's tight Senate race on Wednesday, despite rival Al Franken's choice to go forward with an automatic statewide recount.

Labels: Al Franken, General Election 2008, Senate

Clinton pushes for Franken, Obama

Former President Bill Clinton brought his full-throated praise of Barack Obama to Minnesota on Thursday night, urging the crowd of 4,000 to keep working hard for Obama and DFL Senate candidate Al Franken.

"It's never too late to get more votes for Al Franken and Barack Obama," Clinton said. "You should not give up on that."

Arms on each other's shoulders, Clinton and Franken hit the stage at the Minneapolis Convention Center together, the very picture of party unity.

Franken took the stage after a string of DFL luminaries praised him, telling the crowd that a Franken triumph over GOP Sen. Norm Coleman is crucial to electing a Senate with 60 Democrats, enough for an Obama administration to effectively overcome Republican opposition.

Clinton agreed, praising Obama's performance during the nation's financial crisis but asking "If he's all that great, why does he need Franken?"

The answer, he said, is to turn back "a radical right-wing philosophy ... You've got to send him [Franken] to the Senate to make sure America doesn't blow this chance" to repudiate the Republicans' governing philosophy.

Labels: Al Franken, Bill Clinton

Minnesotans abuzz over Senate race - USATODAY.com

ANOKA, Minn. — The hottest campaign here this year pits a veteran Republican politician against a Democratic newcomer and has people debating the need for change and which candidate can help fix the economy.
It's not the presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama that has people in this Minneapolis suburb buzzing. It's the close, costly and contentious U.S. Senate contest between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, a comedian, writer and first-time candidate.

A poll Oct. 22 by Rasmussen Reports found Franken leading Coleman, 41%-37%, with Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley at 17%. A few months ago, Franken faced questions about his entertainment company's unpaid taxes and a 2000 Playboy humor column, in which he described visiting a fictional sex institute, and his campaign seemed stalled, says Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. Growing economic worries changed that, Jacobs says. "Franken has been surfing the bad news in America, and his campaign has really got that anti-Republican wind in its sails."

Topic A: the economy

Over lunch at Legal Grounds, a downtown coffee shop, Jeff Christopher, 66, a retired carpenter, and his daughter Aleesha Ackerman, 32, a secretary, say they usually disagree on politics. He's inclined to support Republicans, and she leans to Democrats. Concern about the economy, though, has both of them planning to vote for Franken.

"Everybody's talking about the economy because it's right in their living room," Ackerman says. Salaries at the RV dealership where her mother-in-law works were just cut in half, and Ackerman worries about her own job. Franken, she says, "seems more in touch with people who are struggling." Her dad adds, "He's going to listen to the people."

At a nearby table, sheriff's detectives Edward Egly, 53, and Larry Johnson, 44, say they will vote for Coleman. "I'm not going to throw a senior senator out because a guy moves here from New York and decides to run," Egly says. The economy is important, he says, but so is national security, and he agrees with Coleman's tough stance on terrorism. Franken's family moved to Minnesota when he was 4, and he returned to the state in 2005.

A Franken win could help the Democrats fulfill their goal of reaching 60 Senate votes. With two independents, Democrats hold a 51-49 voting majority but need 60 to end filibusters.

Labels: Al Franken, Senate

(Minneapolis, MN) Al Franken, Norm Coleman and Dean Barkley debated Thursday night, Bill Hudson reports.

Labels: Al Franken, Debates, Senate

Franken pulls ahead in new Minn. poll - Harry Siegel - Politico.com A new Star Tribune Minnesota poll released yesterday shows a 13-point jump in support in the last month for Democratic comedian-turned-politician Al Franken, who now has his first clear lead, 43 percent to 34 percent, in the much-watched race against Minnesota incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

The Star Tribune poll also shows support for the relatively low-profile campaign of Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley at a high watermark of 18 percent, with most of his support drawn from Coleman, in what may be an indication of local unhappiness with Washington in general and Republicans in particular. Franken continues to lead Coleman, though, in a hypothetical two-candidate matchup.

Two trends seem to be contributing Franken's lead in the Star Tribune poll, which also showed Coleman's job-approval rating at a new low of 38 percent. In what's been a fiercely contested campaign, Coleman has taken heat for the tenor of his advertising, with 56 percent of respondents seeing the ads aimed at Franken as “mostly unfair personal attacks,” while just 42 percent said the same about those aimed at Coleman.

The poll also found Democrats have opened a substantial lead in party identification, with 42 percent of likely voters self-identifying as Democrats, compared with just 26 percent identifying as Republicans.

The poll's results contrast starkly with the SurveyUSA poll conducted for local station KSTP-TV last week, which shows Coleman up 43 percent to 33 percent, a 10-point improvement for the Republican since their last poll three weeks ago.

A separate new SurveyUSA poll shows McCain with a 1-point edge in Minnesota, while the RealClearPolitics polling average shows Obama with a 5-point advantage.

Labels: Al Franken, polls

Here's a clip of U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken being interviewed by Jack Rice about his race against Senator Norm Coleman.

Labels: Al Franken, Senate