ben ginsberg

The Iowa-based American Future Fund –  a conservative, free market group that ran ads here last year on behalf of Norm Coleman’s senate candidacy and against that of eventual winner Al Franken — is again running ads in Minnesota. This time the aim is to solidify Rep. Collin Peterson’s opposition to his party’s health care [...]

Photo: WDCpix

U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), using what former Sen. Norm Coleman calls “grass e-roots,” has sent out an e-mail appeal for donations to Al Franken’s legal effort to take his place in Coleman’s former Senate seat.

Republican attorney Ben Ginsberg is helping usher Norm Coleman’s equal-protection claims to a high court (Minnesota’s), just as he did with another client, George W. Bush, and another high court (the United States’) eight years ago. Indeed, Coleman’s yet-to-be submitted brief is expected to cite Bush vs. Gore, as have his earlier briefs presented (unsuccessfully) to the state Supreme Court and the election-contest court. Maybe there’s a reason for that. In 2006, Ginsberg admitted to a law school audience:

Just like, really, with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.

“We will never know who won,” Norm Coleman said Wednesday. That’s after seven Minnesota judges — three on Monday and four in January — concluded that Al Franken won Minnesota’s 2008 election for U.S. Senate. His was a “close victory,” the Democrat conceded on Monday. But Coleman — now down by 312 votes — isn’t buying it. “Our system isn’t geared for this kind of closeness.” Still, some precision is possible in politics, as Gawker.com suggested Wednesday with its two-word description of Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Al Franken will be the next senator from Minnesota. That’s the message conveyed by Marc Elias, the Franken campaign’s lead recount attorney, on a conference call Tuesday afternoon. Not surprisingly, Elias praised yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel that declared Franken the winner in the U.S. Senate contest.

Norm Coleman is not giving up. Despite calls from political observers of all ideological stripes for the Republican to concede defeat in the U.S. Senate contest, Coleman plans to appeal yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel certifying Al Franken as the winner to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

As both sides in the Norm Coleman-Al Franken U.S. Senate dispute await the election-contest court’s climactic ruling that could come at any time (like maybe today … please?), here’s a quick review of what else has been going on: partisan sideshows, another newspaper editorial, and a call for the media to call it like it is — Coleman lost.

The danger of paper cuts was greater than the chance that Al Franken would lose his 225-vote lead to Norm Coleman today as Minnesota officials ripped open 351 more ballots from last year’s U.S. senate race in front of the state’s election-contest court. Franken increased his lead by 87 votes. “I think we are done,” said Franken attorney Marc Elias afterward.

“Should Norm Coleman Concede?” asks the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza today in his blog, The Fix. Cillizza recommends the former senator look to Florida for a lesson, and he doesn’t mean Bush vs. Gore. Instead, Cillizza says, Democrat Christine Jennings’ declining political fortunes after a drawn-out dispute over a close congressional election suggests that quitting [...]

The end is near in the U.S. Senate contest. Or maybe it’s not. Roll Call reports today (subscription only) that Norm Coleman scheduled a pep rally for this afternoon with supporters in Washington to reassure them that he’s still on strong legal ground despite numerous indications that he will lose the ongoing contest in state [...]