For those who are looking for an alternative to Al Franken, Mike Ciresi has officially thrown his hat into the ring.
Minneapolis attorney Mike Ciresi (sir-EE’-see) is expected to announce today whether he will run for U.S. Senate.
Ciresi announced in February that he was looking into the D-F-L nomination for the Senate seat now held by Republican Norm Coleman.
Comedian Al Franken is already in the race for the D-F-L nomination.
Ciresi is best known for winning a 6.1 billion dollar settlement with the tobacco industry on behalf of the state of Minnesota. He made an unsuccessful bid for the D-F-L Senate nomination in 2000.
Personally, I would prefer Betty McCollum. Stay tuned.
Cross-posted from Minnesota Campaign Report – check back for more news on Franken’s kickoff. Robin Marty is liveblogging Franken’s final show on Air America here at Minnesota Monitor – check that out too!
Today, entertainer Al Franken has made official his candidacy for the DFL nomination for U.S. Senate.
In his announcement, Franken discussed his background and focused on what government can do for families: namely education assistance and social security:
Your government should have your back. That should be our mission in Washington, the one FDR gave us during another challenging time: freedom from fear.
Franken’s announcement follows that of fellow DFLer and trial lawyer Mike Ciresi, who announced the formation of an exploratory committee earlier this week. Some twenty months from now, the DFL nominee will face off against incumbent Republican Norm Coleman for the seat once held by Paul Wellstone.
Some other choice quotes:
It’s different for middle-class families, too. These families are being squeezed harder and harder every year. Maybe you know what it’s like to be one health crisis away from bankruptcy. Maybe you, or your parents or grandparents, can’t afford prescriptions. Maybe you have kids, and you’re worried about paying for their college. Maybe someone you love is in Iraq, and you don’t know how long they’ll have to stay there, or what will happen when they come home.
…
President Clinton used to say that there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America, or, as I would add, by what’s right with Minnesota. We can lead the fight against global warming and dependence on foreign oil by developing new sources of renewable energy-and create good Minnesota jobs in the process. We can lead the nation in finding life-saving cures by harnessing the potential of stem-cell research. We can lead the nation by sending someone to the Senate who’ll be a voice for a strong and responsible America, one that uses its relationship with our allies to create a better and more secure world for ourselves and for future generations.
You’ll find the complete text of Franken’s announcement speech in the extended entry.
Hi, I’m Al Franken. I’m running for the United States Senate here in Minnesota.
I’d like to talk to you about why I’m running.
I’m not a typical politician. I’ve spent my career as a comedian. Minnesotans have a right to be skeptical about whether I’m ready for this challenge, and to wonder how seriously I would take the responsibility that I’m asking you to give me.
I want you to know: nothing means more to me than making government work better for the working families of this state, and over the next twenty months I look forward to proving to you that I take these issues seriously.
Today, however, I want to take a few moments to explain to you why I take these issues personally.
My family moved to Albert Lea from New Jersey when I was four years old. My dad never graduated high school and never had a career as such, but my mom’s father, my grandpa, owned a quilting factory out East and gave my dad a chance to start up a new factory in Albert Lea. After about two years, the factory failed, and we moved up to the Twin Cities.
Years later, I asked my dad, “Why Albert Lea?” And he said, “Well, your grandfather wanted to open a factory in the Midwest, and the railroad went through Albert Lea.”
So, I asked him, “Why did the factory fail?”
And he said, “Well, it went through Albert Lea, but it wouldn’t stop.”
That was my dad – great guy, terrible businessman. He got a job as a printing salesman, and my mom worked as a real estate agent. The four of us – I have an older brother, Owen – lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in St. Louis Park.
That was my childhood. I grew up in a hard-working middle class family just like many of yours. And as a middle-class kid growing up in Minnesota back then, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was.
My wife, Franni, whom I met our freshman year of college, wasn’t quite as lucky. When she was seventeen months old, her dad – a decorated veteran of World War II – died in a car accident, leaving her mother, my mother-in-law, widowed with five kids.
My mother-in-law worked in the produce department of a grocery store, but that family made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned off the heat in the winter – this was in Portland, Maine, almost as cold as Minnesota – but they made it.
Every single one of the four girls in Franni’s family went to college, thanks to Pell Grants and other scholarships. My brother-in-law, Neil, went into the Coast Guard, where he became an electrical engineer.
And my mother-in-law got herself a $300 GI loan to fix her roof, and used the money instead to go to the University of Maine. She became a grade school teacher, teaching Title One kids – poor kids – and so her loan was forgiven.
My mother-in-law and every single one of those five kids became a productive member of society. Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – and that’s a great idea. But first, you’ve got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife’s family the boots.
That’s what progressives like me believe the government is there for. To provide security for middle-class families like the one I grew up in, and opportunity for working poor families like the one Franni grew up in.
By the way, I stole that boots line from Tim Walz, our great new congressman from Southern Minnesota. Tim’s father died when he was a kid, and he and his brother and his mom made it because of Social Security.
Last year I traveled all over the state of Minnesota on behalf of Tim and other Democrats: from Waseca and Wabasha up to Fergus Falls and Detroit Lakes, over to Bemidji and the Iron Range, from Duluth down to Albert Lea, I was in Hastings and all over the metro, up in St. Cloud a few times, eating a lot of beans and buns and burgers and maybe a few too many Dairy Queens along the way. But most importantly, I talked to Minnesotans and listened.
They told me that they’re sick of politics as usual-and they’re sick of the usual politicians.
And I’ll tell you what else they told me. It’s different now than it was for me and Franni. When Franni’s sisters were using them to go to college, Pell Grants paid for 90% of a college education. Today, they pay for 40%. And President Bush, with the help of his Republican allies in Congress, have even tried to privatize Social Security. You should have heard Franni when they tried to do that.
It’s different for middle-class families, too. These families are being squeezed harder and harder every year. Maybe you know what it’s like to be one health crisis away from bankruptcy. Maybe you, or your parents or grandparents, can’t afford prescriptions. Maybe you have kids, and you’re worried about paying for their college. Maybe someone you love is in Iraq, and you don’t know how long they’ll have to stay there, or what will happen when they come home.
Middle-class families today struggle with that feeling of insecurity-the sense that things can fall apart without notice, outside of your control.
Your government should have your back. That should be our mission in Washington, the one FDR gave us during another challenging time: freedom from fear.
Americans have never backed away from challenges. And Minnesotans have always led the way. Our state has sent strong, progressive leaders to Washington-from Hubert Humphrey to Walter Mondale to Paul Wellstone, and now to Amy Klobuchar. Minnesota’s public servants might not always look and sound like typical politicians, but they stand by their principles and lead by their values.
That’s the kind of leader I think we need more of these days, and that’s the kind of Senator I’ll be.
President Clinton used to say that there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America, or, as I would add, by what’s right with Minnesota. We can lead the fight against global warming and dependence on foreign oil by developing new sources of renewable energy-and create good Minnesota jobs in the process. We can lead the nation in finding life-saving cures by harnessing the potential of stem-cell research. We can lead the nation by sending someone to the Senate who’ll be a voice for a strong and responsible America, one that uses its relationship with our allies to create a better and more secure world for ourselves and for future generations.
My political hero is Paul Wellstone. He used to say, “The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.” I may be a comedian by trade, but I’m passionate about the issues that matter to your family because they mattered to mine, too. And I’m ready to work as hard as I can to help us build a better future together.
Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you on the trail.
The National Journal (subscription req’d) recently dug into disbursement records for Congressional and Senate candidates in the 2006 election to answer an interesting question: How much did a given candidate spend on each vote he or she eventually received? Alternately, how efficiently did candidates spend their hard-earned warchests?
As noted, this is an interesting question, especially when it comes to Minnesota. The 2006 U.S. Senate race between Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar and Sixth District Congressman Mark Kennedy saw nearly $20 million in candidate committee disbursements, and the race between Michele Bachmann and Patty Wetterling to succeed Kennedy in his Congressional seat was quite expensive as well.
But there’s something missing from the National Journal’s analysis. Even in an underfunded position, a certain number of voters are always going to vote a certain way – what’s usually known as “the base”. The Republican base was never going to vote for Amy Klobuchar in statistically significant numbers, nor was the DFL base going to defect in droves to the Kennedy banner. It’s the votes beyond the base – the marginal votes earned – that might yield more insightful data.
Likewise, there’s a margin in terms of dollars spent. Even marginally competitive candidates are going to raise and spend at least a certain level of money – it’s what they raise and spend beyond that level that we can focus on as a measure of their effectiveness.
This Marginal Dollars per Marginal Positive Outcome has been used by Baseball Prospectus in analyzing clubs’ efficiency in spending – high-revenue teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, and Dodgers pay dearly for each win above what a team of rookies, each paid the league minimum, would achieve.
Enough baseball – more political statistics!
Some definitions:
—Net Disb: Net Disbursements from the candidate’s primary campaign committee, courtesy of FEC.gov
—dBP: District Base Percentage. This is a somewhat fudged figure, based on convention wisdom about the political dynamics in each district and statewide. It accounts for a slight DFL tilt statewide, conservative tilts in the Second and Sixth Congressional Districts, a heavy tilt toward the DFL in the Fifth, and a generally even balance in the First.
—dTV: District Total Votes. Total number of votes cast in this race for competitive major-party candidates. Fifth District candidate Tammy Lee counted in this analysis, as did John Binkowski in the Sixth, but Robert Fitzgerald and others did not.
—Bvotes: Base votes. Candidate’s vote total times their base percentage – again somewhat fudged due to conventional wisdom.
—Mvotes: Marginal votes. Total votes minus base votes – this is an attempt to represent votes the candidate earned over the course of the campaign beyond those that would vote for a carrot with the right letter after its name.
—Mdisb: Marginal Disbursements. This is another somewhat fudged figure. In the several competitive congressional races in Minnesota, I defined the minimum spending level as that of Alan Fine, Republican candidate in the Fifth District, who raised and spent a shade under $200,000. For the Senate race, I defined “competitive funding” as a cool $3,000,000 – in an inexpensive media market, three million should provide at least a modicum of competitiveness in a statewide federal race. If anyone has a better figure for this, I’m all ears.
—mD/mV:Marginal Dollars Spent per Marginal Vote Earned – the mother lode.
Caveats: There are several fudge points in this analysis, including the base percentages and disbursement levels. I hope they’re generally accurate. This analysis also does not account for larger political events and trends, including hurricanes, wars, and ineptitude leading to popular dissatisfaction. Nor does it account for independent expenditures by political parties and outside organizations, the effects of which are difficult to quantify.
Nevertheless, in the aftermath of 2006, this analysis may further clarify who spent money well and who did not.
The chart above reveals some interesting trends. Many of the mD/mV numbers make sense – Mark Kennedy spent a lot of money on each vote he earned, because he didn’t get many beyond his base. Tim Walz, in defeating entrenched incumbent Gil Gutknecht, spent his smaller warchest efficiently. Although Keith Ellison had a natural advantage in a DFL-friendly district, it turns out that he spent a fairly high dollar amount for each vote beyond the hardcore DFL vote, and Tammy Lee spent efficiently, if only to achieve a 25% finish. And fittingly, the Sixth District race saw two candidates spending massive amounts of money for each vote beyond their bases.
Given the final outcome, it appears that this was an extremely inefficient race on which to spend money.
Dailykos diarist Elruin has picked up a scoop from the Huffington Post regarding comedian and Air America host Al Franken’s future plans:
Al Franken, the best-known host of the liberal network, will announce his expected departure on his show later today, to explore a run for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota.
I’ve met Al Franken. I like Al Franken. But is he the right guy to beat Norm Coleman in 2008? I’m not so sure about that.
Who do you want to see run for Senate in 2008? That’s what we’re talking about in this post.
This is the second Senate recruitment open thread here on Swing State Project (the first one was here, and we saw all kinds of great suggestions). We’re going in alphabetical order, five GOP-held seats at a time. Links are to the Race Tracker wiki, and incumbents are in parens:
Don’t limit yourself to politicians. Businesspeople, community leaders, activists – even athletes or celebrities (think Heath Shuler or Al Franken) – are all fair game. Even seemingly outlandish suggestions are welcome. Would you have ever predicted that the guitarist from Orleans would now be a Congressman-elect?
However, please do limit yourself to the five races listed in this post. I know everyone is eager to talk about the whole slate of races we’ve got lined up, but I promise that we’ll get to each batch separately. I think we can have a more productive discussion, though, if we stay focused and only deal with a chunk of races at time.
(A very thorough–and very good–post-mortem from a longtime SSPer. – promoted by James L.)
I wrote this diary on Daily Kos a couple of days ago and that it would be equally appropriate here. I realize it comes nearly three weeks later than most election post-mortems, but nearly all of my free time in the past 20 days has been dedicated to the digestion of as many election returns as possible, particularly in my home state of Minnesota where my knowledge is most prolific. It was a very good year for Democrats in the state of Minnesota and I will document all the statewide and Congressional races of note, beginning with the two hotly-contested House races and then moving the statewide races.
I had a feeling in the closing weeks of the campaign that Democrat Tim Walz would pull off a victory in what only a few months earlier seemed like a kamikaze run against six-term Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht, but I didn’t think he’d win by a solid six-point margin. Considering Gutknecht’s mid-summer radio ad buys, I don’t necessarily think that Gutknecht was unable to see this challenge coming. Nonetheless, his response to the challenge was absolutely abysmal, with boilerplate TV ads where the incumbent couldn’t even be bothered to make an appearance in his own commercials and a series of mismatched debate performances where Gutknecht was very clearly on defense at all times and losing badly to the charismatic Walz.
I wrote a diary in September on how Tim Walz could eke out a victory in MN-01 with huge margins in his native Mankato and the college town of Winona, along with fighting Gutknecht to a draw in his native Rochester. In the end, Walz won by huger margins that I would have deemed possible in Mankato and Winona, but also managed to win Rochester by an astounding eight percentage points. Walz outperformed my expectations pretty much everywhere, padding his margin with wins in a few of the more conservative southwestern farm counties. It’ll be interesting to see how Walz holds up in 2008 and (hopefully) subsequent election cycles. The one thing that concerns me is that Walz’s presence on the campaign trail is his chief asset….and that presence will not be as abundant if he’s stuck legislating in DC rather than travelling the district full-time as he did in 2005 and 2006. Nonetheless, an excellent win for Walz, who I saw speak on two occasions and evoked a level of passion that I haven’t seen since Paul Wellstone. Keep an eye on this guy. Big things could be coming from him.
As for MN-06, a number of things went wrong and helped voters in this conservative district fall into the arms of wingnut Republican Michelle Bachmann even though I predicted last summer that Bachmann was too conservative even for MN-06. Since Bachmann got 50%, it’s not fair to say that center-left Independence Party candidate John Binkowski cost Wetterling the election, but it would have probably at least been close without him in the race. Nonetheless, far too many things went wrong in this race for Binkowski to shoulder the blame.
Wetterling hemmed and hawed for months, stating at one point that she couldn’t win in this district and then pursued a Senate run. When it was clear she wouldn’t get the nomination against Amy Klobuchar, Wetterling made an eleventh hour leap into this House race, breaking her word against a moderate Democrat El Tinklenberg who, in hind sight, would have probably been a much better candidate against Bachmann. Bachmann’s reputation as the Legislature’s wingnut-in-chief helped Wetterling pull off a small lead in September polls, but that’s when the bottom fell out of her campaign.
The polished Bachmann always mopped the floor up with the political novice Wetterling in debates and public forums and managed to mask her nutball tendencies to the voting public, all while the Wetterling campaign failed to effectively define her opponent. In the end, some controversial ads by the Wetterling campaign (which I never saw) were heavily scrutinized by the local media and by the final week of the campaign, my dad was hearing from campaign insiders that Wetterling was toast.
In retrospect, Wetterling’s respectable performance in 2004 was the product of running against Mark Kennedy and having him step into the trap of swiftboating a figure as sympathetic as Wetterling. Without Kennedy making her look good by comparison this time around, Wetterling’s flaws were more easily apparent. I’m expecting that Bachmann will make a regular habit of embarrassing Minnesota on the national stage, and could find herself perennially vulnerable in her district. Here’s hoping the Dems give El Tinklenberg another shot in 2008.
(Click Read More for additional commentary.)
Regarding the statewide races, I start out with egg on my face over my early predictions of a close Senate race. As recently as six months ago, I ascribed to the conventional wisdom that Mark Kennedy would be a formidable Republican candidate and that the Minnesota Senate race would be close. Considering Klobuchar’s home base of Hennepin County and familial ties to the Iron Range was being pitted up against Kennedy, the golden boy of outer suburbia, I spun this as a classic Old Minnesota vs. New Minnesota grudge match (which we ended up getting in the state’s gubernatorial election which I’ll get to later) that really excited me as an aficianado of Minnesota politics.
But what we ended up with excited me oh so much more. How could I have possibly predicted that Mark Kennedy would put forth the lamest Minnesota Senate campaign since Democrat Ann Wynia in 1994? Even in my wildest dreams, I could not have envisioned Amy Klobuchar riding out a 21-point landslide. Her success touched nearly every nook and cranny of the state. She won 79 of Minnesota’s 87 counties, as opposed to John Kerry who won 24 in 2004, and even Bill Clinton who scored what seemed like an insurmountable Democratic record of 76 counties back in 1996. Klobuchar eked out narrow wins in some stalwart GOP counties such as the German-American settled Republican bastions of McLeod County (Hutchinson) and Brown County (New Ulm), counties that I never expected would be won by a Democrat in a statewide election in my lifetime.
Kennedy even performed miserably in outer suburbia, winning only two of the six counties in his Congressional district, and by paltry margins of less than three points each at that. In the end, the combination of the anti-Republican tide and Kennedy’s astounding weakness make me think even the hapless incumbent Senator Mark Dayton could have beaten Kennedy, but I’m thankful to Amy Klobuchar for not making me sweat out that prophesy.
It’s hard to say whether Klobuchar had coattails or whether the DFL mood of the electorate transcended her, but either way, Democratic candidates vastly exceeded expectations across the ballot in Minnesota. In the back of my mind, I considered incumbent Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer to be beatable, but I also believed that the inclination of center-left voters in Minnesota to cast their ballot third-party in low-profile races would likely drag Kiffmeyer across the finish line once again.
If DFL candidate Mark Ritchie was going to take out Kiffmeyer, with her built-in advantages in the St. Cloud area where she always scores huge margins, I figured it would be by the skin of his teeth. Once again, I was wrong. Ritchie beat Kiffmeyer by a convincing five points, winning big in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, where third-party candidate strength derailed Buck Humphrey’s chances in 2002, but also fighting Kiffmeyer to a near tie in the three main suburban counties (Anoka, Dakota, and Washington). If you’re a Republican winning Dakota County by less than one percentage point, you will not win statewide. Such was the case with Kiffmeyer. And good riddance!
A Minnesota Poll from September showing DFL Attorney General candidate Lori Swanson with a nearly 20-point lead should have clued me in to how powerful not being a Republican was going to be in Minnesota this election cycle. In some sense it did, as even though the Minnesota Poll always oversamples Democrats, the margin Swanson was polling against Republican challenger Jeff Johnson helped me breathe a sigh of relief that we would hold that office. Nonetheless, I was surprised by the blistering margin of 13 points that Swanson won by, scoring victories throughout the state and winning 65 Minnesota counties compared to Johnson’s 22.
A much bigger shocker was the State Auditor race where I found it hard to believe an incumbent with the surname Anderson in Scandinavian-heavy Minnesota could lose to a challenger named Otto in a low-profile down-ballot race. But much to my surprise, Democrat Otto smashed Anderson almost as strongly as Swanson did Johnson in the Attorney General’s race, winning by 11 points and winning 56 out of the 87 counties. Anderson even got trounced in her home county (Dakota), which is a suburban enclave where she won by 16 points in 2002.
Just as stunning were the tremendous gains the DFL made in the Legislature, notwithstanding the sad defeat of Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson in his increasingly conservative central Minnesota district (unfortunately, I could see Johnson’s defeat coming more than a year ago). Nonetheless, the breadth of DFL gains throughout the state was breathtaking and the list of Republican casualties jaw-dropping. Phil Krinkie in Lino Lakes. Gone! Brian LeClair in Woodbury. Outta there! Carrie Ruud in Bemidji. Good to know ya! The DFL picked up even more legislative seats in Rochester and somehow managed to pick up a Senate seat in freakin’ Fergus Falls, perhaps the deepest red redoubt of outstate conservatism. The DFL now has nearly 2-1 supermajorities in both Houses, and we will definitely need them given that the DFL once again failed to pick up the statehouse.
And with that segue, I’ll now focus on the one disappointment for Minnesota Democrats on election night, and that of course is the gubernatorial election where incumbent Republican Tim Pawlenty held on by a one-point margin. I’m of the mind that DFLer Mike Hatch’s eleventh-hour implosion cost him the election, although there are plenty who disagree with that consensus. Judi Dutcher’s “What’s E-85?” gaffe probably didn’t do it alone, but it probably cost Hatch votes in the corn belt as Hatch’s numbers were softer than expected in the lower reaches of the proverbial “L”. There’s no other explanation for me why ethanol-heavy Swift County, a western Minnesota DFL stronghold and birthplace of the Farmer-Labor Party went for Hatch by only 7 points, and why the swing county of Renville (even more ethanol-heavy) a few miles down the road went for Pawlenty by nearly eight points.
But Hatch pointed the shotgun barrel at his other foot and squeezed the trigger with the “Republican whore” brouhaha. When the first 10 minutes of a televised debate the Friday before the election is dedicated to the “frontrunner” defending his potty mouth, it’s unlikely he’ll be a frontrunner much longer. I’m kind of surprised that didn’t hurt Hatch even more than it did, and probably would have if it had gotten more media coverage outside of the Minneapolis-St. Paul media market. Visiting my parents in southeastern Minnesota the Friday before the election, the story was barely a blip on the local news, and Hatch’s numbers did not seem to be as suppressed in that region as they were in the metro area. Similarly, Hatch’s numbers did not seem to take a beating in the state’s southwestern corner as much as they did in west-central Minnesota, which is in the Twin Cities media market. Voters in the Worthington area are largely beholden to the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, media market, where Minnesota politics merits hardly a word, and where Dutcher’s gaffe probably never passed their ears.
And, of course, Independence Party candidate Peter Hutchinson, can conclusively be branded a spoiler this cycle, with the DFL stronghold of Ramsey County giving Hutchinson nearly 10% of the vote (with most of it coming from the bluest districts in the city of St. Paul) and almost accounting for the difference between Hatch and Pawlenty by itself. I’m not one to blame third-party candidates for DFL defeats, but if there was ever a clearcut example of that phenomenon in play it was this gubernatorial election. Ultimately, it might be a blessing to have Pawlenty around heading in the 2008 Senate election, as DFL fatigue would be more likely to set in had Hatch been victorious amidst DFL supermajorities in the Legislature, and with Norm Coleman poised to be the beneficiary of that fatigue. On the other hand, Pawlenty’s veep stock went up significantly with his victory, and he would now make a very attractive running mate for somebody like John McCain, increasing the likelihood of a Republican upset in Minnesota in the 2008 Presidential election.
As stated earlier, the Old Minnesota vs. New Minnesota dynamic that I predicted would be in play in the Klobuchar-Kennedy race actually did take hold in the gubernatorial election, with Pawlenty winning in much the way he did in 2002, scoring supersized margins in the suburbs and benefitting from a third-party spoiler. This warrants mentioning for 2008 because the Senate race is likely to follow the same trajectory. It’s too soon to comment much on this matter without a DFL challenger selected, but Norm Coleman’s 2002 victory is likely to follow the exact same formula as Pawlenty’s this year. Finding a challenger that can peel off more of those second-ring suburban voters than Mike Hatch or Walter Mondale (circa 2002) were able to is imperative in beating Coleman, because we’re at the point now where we can’t win statewide if we’re not victorious in the second-ring suburbs…and they will likely be just as difficult to take away from Coleman as they were from Pawlenty.
Then again, I totally underestimated Minnesota’s DFL tide in 2006. I’ll remain optimistic for now that we can keep the ball rolling heading into the next cycle.
Cross-posted from MN Campaign Report – now with even more snarky wonkishness!
U.S. Senator Norm Coleman has made it clear that his vote is available to prevent deadlock in the Senate once Democrats take control in January. The writing is on the wall – Coleman is vulnerable in 2008, representing a state that kicked out Republican officials up and down the ticket and didn’t give him 50% of the vote against a dead incumbent and a former VP thrown into the race at the last moment. In light of these factors, Coleman has flip-flopped on his party – all too happy to go with the flow when the Republicans have a majority, his vote is available to the Democrats when it’s their turn in charge.
I’ve written before about some of the factors affecting this race before it begins – the 2008 Republican National Convention will be held in the Twin Cities, perhaps seeking to bolster Coleman’s vulnerable profile. 2002 was an up year for the Republican Party in general, and if the 2006 winds stay at the Democrats’ backs, 2008 promises to be a dangerous year indeed for Coleman.
Coleman has called the new Democratic majority an “opportunity” for him to extract gains for Minnesota. An “opportunity” indeed. Much like the “opportunity” that presented itself in the late 1990s to switch his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican for a gubernatorial run, and the “opportunity” to play the blame game with Michael Brown over the FEMA/Katrina debacle, Coleman’s career is full of opportunistic moves that betray a lack of conviction on important issues facing our nation today.
Having betrayed the DFL once before, and now betraying the Senate Republican caucus for political gain, Coleman’s latest move begs us to ask, “who’s expected to vote for you in 2008?”
