Chris Steller

Palin does Pawlenty one better: She’ll quit now

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s stamp is all over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s announcement today that she will leave office at the end of the month. Media reports (video) aren’t failing to note the parallel to Pawlenty’s decision last month not to seek re-election. Palin and Pawlenty were reportedly the two finalists for the Republican vice-presidential [...]

Franken: My Tuesday swearing-in will feature Biden, Mondale, Klobuchar

Vice President Joe Biden has been booked for Al Franken’s swearing-in as a U.S. Senator, and Franken says he will be accompanied at the ceremony by former Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. It “looks like” it will happen next Tuesday, he said — a date that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office [...]

Dem oppo-research firm fills in Bachmann’s U.S. Census form for her

A Democratic opposition-research firm has taken up the challenge of answering the 2010 U.S. Census questions that Rep. Michele Bachmann has vowed to leave blank: everything except the number of people living at her house. Third Coast Research tapped public sources to find most of the info, but the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire points [...]

A chapter closes for the Coleman-Franken chattering classes

What was that all about? We shook two 24-hour news cycles’ worth of media mumbo-jumbo on the Coleman-Franken fracas, and this is what fell out.

National poll numbers suggest Franken won’t follow in Obama’s footsteps

A new poll suggests Sen.-elect Al Franken would have trouble following President Barack Obama’s vault from a single Senate-election victory to the White House. Beyond that, it’s not clear why it matters that 44 percent of voters across the country have an unfavorable view of the Democrat or that 34 percent like him at least “somewhat.” [...]

AM.MN: Duluth-based firm won’t keep on truckin’

Monson Trucking lasted through the Great Depression, but not this one. The business that started when horses’ hooves still trod the highways announced its end Wednesday via teleconference to 100 workers in Virginia and Red Wing, as well as Mauston, Wis. (Another 100 at the firm’s Duluth headquarters got the news in person.) The economy, [...]

Expert: Calling Senate race ‘stolen’ robs the word ‘stolen’ of its meaning

“Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election,” pronounced the Wall Street Journal’s editorialists today. Election-law expert Edward Foley was quick to respond: “[T]his election was about as far from ‘stolen’ as any extraordinarily close and intensely disputed election could be — and to use that term in this context is [...]

Franken, Coleman sing in tune on ‘Magic Number 60′

It wasn’t quite “Love Potion No. 9,” but Norm Coleman and Al Franken were singing in unison on the “Magic Number 60″ during their press events yesterday.

Franken: ‘I get to be the senator’

At a rally at the State Capitol today, Sen.-elect Al Franken saluted his wife, Franni — without whom, he said, “I would have lost … by kind of a lot.” Franken said once he decided to run, he told friends, “Franni and I are running for the senate. And if we win, I get to be [...]

Coleman/Franken-type saga wouldn’t rob state of rep under temp-certificate plan

She wants to make it so a drawn-out election dispute like the one between Al Franken and Norm Coleman never robs Minnesota of congressional representation again. So state Rep. Phyllis Kahn is vowing to revive a bill to require provisional election certificates be issued to candidates who hold the lead in votes while courts hear [...]