recount-phyllisGov. Tim Pawlenty’s pen might imperil him if he uses it to veto a bill to give Al Franken a provisional election certificate to the U.S. Senate. Pawlenty would risk appearing to put partisanship ahead of the state’s best interests if Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election contest trial drags on, says the bill’s author, state Rep. Phyllis Kahn. And the toll on T-Paw could be even higher if Franken eventually emerged the winner.

The bill’s language doesn’t name Franken; rather it requires a provisional election certificate be issued to any candidate with the most votes after a recount, pending the results of an election contest. If Kahn’s bill were to become law, former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s DFL party challenger would immediately become the first beneficiary, even before the courts resolve Coleman’s election contest.

Eric Black at MinnPost is skeptical that Pawlenty would ever sign it. But Kahn told the Minnesota Independent that it wouldn’t look good for Pawlenty to have delayed seating a Sen. Franken “for no good reason.” Essentially, the governor would be taking what now seem long odds that his Republican colleague Coleman will win in state court.

Kahn also took issue with two Republican responses to her bill in the Star Tribune. The governor was wrong to call the bill flawed because of purported retroactivity, Kahn says. Indeed, it would not be retroactive but would apply to any election contest in process at the time it becomes law.

To the Coleman campaign’s assertion that her bill is a “cheap public relations gimmick” meant to do an end-run around the ongoing election contest trial, Kahn responds that seating a senator provisionally would take pressure off the court, allowing the three-judge panel more time to deliberate more carefully.

The idea for the bill came to Kahn, she says, while she was reading the Legislative Reference Library’s copy of “Recount,” the authoritative book about the statewide recount in Minnesota’s 1962 election for governor.  Back then, the incumbent governor, Elmer Anderson, was ahead when his term expired and stayed in office until he decided not to challenge the recount lead of his rival, then-Lt. Gov. Karl Rolvaag.

That was a convenient chain of events then, Kahn says. But what if Anderson, the incumbent, had been behind? What if an incumbent isn’t seeking re-election or runs for a different office? A recount/election contest scenario in the future could leave the state with another extended vacancy in high office — unless her bill passes, Kahn says, and the governor signs it.

“Two senators are clearly better than one senator,” Kahn says.

As for Franken’s bid to have the state Supreme Court order an election certificate be issued to him: “My prediction is he loses on Thursday.”

Related: Unless Franken gets temporary certificate, Senate seat could stay empty 5 months