Photo: MnIndy

Photo: MnIndy

Two outside organizations and Norm Coleman’s re-election campaign illegally coordinated advertising that aided Coleman via a political consultant they all shared, the Minnesota DFL Party charged in a complaint to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

No, they didn’t, the FEC has ruled.

The DFL complaint (pdf) goes back almost a year, to an August 2008 television ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce attacking Franken’s position on the Employee Free Choice Act. A month later, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) SAFE Trust paid for a full-page ad in Twin Cities daily newspapers claiming Franken would raise taxes.

FLS Connect, a political consulting firm owned by Coleman pal Jeff Larson, counted both groups as clients, along with Coleman. The DFL asked the FEC to investigate whether Larson acted as linchpin in a secret scheme that gave Coleman a role in the three Chamber commercials and the NFIB’s ad, in violation of federal law.

Every election season brings a wave of complaints to the FEC, some of which get dismissed without further inquiry, a commission spokesman told the Minnesota Independent today. The FEC investigated the DFL’s suspicions but found nothing to support them, releasing findings to the parties in May (pdf) before commissioners certified the results last month on a 5-0 vote (pdf).

The FEC found that the two groups and Coleman did share Larson as a vendor — but no evidence that Larson worked on the advertisements.

Larson figured in another controversy that dogged Coleman during the campaign, also the subject of a DFL complaint: the low rate at which Larson leased a basement apartment in Washington, D.C. to Coleman.

Here are two of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce TV ads attacking Franken. First, on the Employee Free Choice Act:

On taxes: