Democrats will attempt to seat Al Franken as a U.S. senator tomorrow with the rest of the freshman class, according to a report in Congressional Quarterly. The State Canvassing Board is expected to name Franken the winner, by just 225 votes, when it convenes this afternoon.
The election will not be certified, however, for at least seven days. During that interim period Coleman will have the opportunity to contest the results in court — a step that his campaign has promised to take because of alleged irregularities in the vote counting.
Update: Late Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Democrats will not try to seat Franken on Tuesday.
Jim Manley, the spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told CQ today that there “likely will be an attempt to seat [Franken] this week.” A senior Democratic aide also confirmed that Senate Democrats hoped to swear Franken in Tuesday, along with the rest of the freshman senators.
Republicans have promised to filibuster any attempt to seat Franken before the election is certified. “I think that is the likelihood here if the Democrats try to ignore the Senate Rule Two and Minnesota law and try to short-circuit this process,” Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, told CNN this morning.













1 Comment »
Comment posted January 5, 2009 @ 3:26 pm
So can we test the Senate republican’s willingness to actually carry thru on a fillibuster now? Make them actually do it. Let ‘em talk until all of Coleman’s options run out. Make ‘em actually go public with their obstructionism instead of having it look like a cooperative effort by both parties (which is exactly how it’s appeared for the last two years). Make ‘em look like the jerks they want to be.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment