Coleman’s old Ag Committee seat goes to Cornyn

“We’ll support Norm to the bitter end,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn last March. This month, Norm Coleman’s end as a U.S. Senator became a bit less bitter for Cornyn when the Texas Republican took Coleman’s old spot on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, regularly sounded the rallying cry of Coleman’s cause, threatening “World War III” when appropriate and calling for Coleman’s return to the Senate, or at least for his seat to remain empty a good long time — like, “years.”

It took only days after Coleman conceded defeat to Democrat Al Franken for Cornyn to take the Ag committee seat that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had kept empty, in case Coleman came back. It’s Cornyn’s fourth committee assignment — evidence, says the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, of how thinly-spread the 40-Republican Senate minority is.

Franken got four committee assignments too, but not Agriculture, where Minnesota’s other senator, Amy Klobuchar, holds a seat (as did her predecessor, Mark Dayton). That makes 2009 the first year since the late Sen. Paul Wellstone joined in 2001 that Minnesota hasn’t had both its senators assigned to what’s officially called the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.