Candidates tangle in first Senate debate

With recent polls offering starkly different assessments of the the U.S. Senate race, the three major party candidates squared off at University Center Rochester last night in the first of five debates. Democrat Al Franken and incumbent Republican Norm Coleman frequently sparred, while Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley took shots at both opponents and portrayed himself as an effective alternative to the broken two-party system.

After months of trading barbs through a seemingly constant barrage of television commercials in the most expensive Senate campaign in Minnesota history, Coleman and Franken sat side-by-side while fielding questions on energy policies, the economy and foreign affairs. The incumbent painted Franken as an angry interloper who doesn’t understand how to get things done in Washington. “Yes, I’m angry, but being angry doesn’t solve problems,” Coleman said in his opening statement. “As angry as I am, I am an optimist who believes in change by focusing on what unites not what divides us as Americans. And I think that’s the true difference in this race for Senate. Anger for anger’s sake doesn’t solve anything.”

Franken countered by portraying Coleman as a puppet of the unpopular Bush administration. “Elections are a chance for the people to hold their elected officials accountable,” he said. “If you like the way things have been going in Washington for the last six years, and you believe that George Bush has been right 90 percent of the time, then I’m not your guy.”

Barkley, who served briefly in the Senate after the death of Paul Wellstone, argued that he can get things done on Capitol Hill by challenging partisan gridlock. “I simply want to go back to Washington and roll up my sleeves,” he said. “I want to start solving our nation’s problems and not participating in the food fight that we see going on there right now.”

A pair of polls released in the last week paint diametrically opposite pictures of the race with less than a month to go before election day. A SurveyUSA poll showed the incumbent with a solid 43-33 lead over Franken, while a Star Tribune survey found the Democratic challenger with a 43-34 edge.

Both polls, however, indicated that Barkley is going to be a formidable factor in the race, with his support reaching the high teens. The Star Tribune survey offered a possible explanation for this rise: 56 percent of poll respondents considered ads criticizing Franken to be “mostly unfair personal attacks,” while 42 percent said the same about ads criticizing Coleman.

The current economic crisis, and the $700 billion bailout package passed by Congress last week, was the focus of the first portion of the debate. Franken criticized Coleman for supporting the legislation, stating that he would have voted against it. “This whole thing reminded me of the rush to war in Iraq,” he said. “It was give us $700 billion right now and Sec. Paulson will just take care of it. That’s not how this thing should work.”

Barkley stated that he would have reluctantly backed the measure owing to fears of a systemic economic collapse. “We could not let that happen and I hope to God that this works,” he said. “If we did not do this Main St. could have been devastated and we could not let that happen.”

All three candidates expressed support for tax credits and research to expand renewable fuels, as well as working towards independence from foreign oil. But Coleman criticized Franken for failing to back the bailout package, noting that it contained tax incentives for wind energy production. “It’s a spike through the heart,” he said. “He would have voted against it. He would have killed wind-energy development in this state.”

Turning to foreign affairs, Barkley characterized the Iraq war as a trillion-dollar mistake. “My question is how many more trillion-dollar mistakes do we have to put up with?” he asked. The Independence Party candidate subsequently received the loudest cheers of the night (despite pleas from the moderators to hold all applause until the end of the debate) by calling for an end to the U. S. invasion. “The best thing we can do for the troops is bring them home,” he said.

Franken enjoyed probably his strongest moment of the debate in criticizing Coleman for continuing to argue that invading Iraq was the correct decision. “All the reasons to go to war turned out to be false,” he said, noting that claims by the Bush administration about Iraq’s weapons capabilities and ties to al Qaeda proved wildly inaccurate. “This was a tragic blunder of epic proportions and Norm Coleman still thinks it was a good idea.”

The incumbent offered little in rebuttal, seeming to argue that questioning the premise of the war might hurt American soldiers stationed in Iraq. “I have been very, very cautious about saying anything that ever undermines their sacrifices,” Coleman said. “It is too bad that we politicize these kinds of issues.”

Barkley then turned his fire on Franken, criticizing the Democrat’s proposal for a new $5,000 tax credit to help cover college tuition costs. Noting that the budget deficit has now passed $11-trillion, Barkley promised to push for a four-year cap on new spending. “We can’t afford to be making promises that we can’t pay for,” he said. “That’s the biggest difference between Al Franken and myself. I’m not going to pander to you.”

Near the close of the debate, the focus turned to a topic that Coleman and Franken have undoubtedly developed expertise in over the last year: the level of civility (or lack thereof) in the current campaign. Both candidates defended their negative ads. “We’ve been running ads on Norm Coleman’s record — and so they’re negative,” Franken said, drawing laughter from the crowd, “because his record hasn’t been very good.”

Coleman argued that Franken’s career as a comedian and satirist is fair game because he doesn’t have a legislative history to parse. “Mr. Franken’s record is his career,” he said. “He doesn’t have a record of service in Minnesota.”

The candidates will meet roughly once a week during the run-up to election day. The next debate is slated for Saturday at Breck High School in Minneapolis.