Pawlenty unveiled the proposal at a state Capitol press conference Thursday morning.

Under his plan, the state’s general fund budget would be limited to the amount of revenue collected in the previous two-year cycle. The two-term Republican governor argued that such a stringent cap on spending is necessary because legislators have proven unable to contain spending. Since 1960, he pointed out, general fund budgets have increased by an average of 21 percent every two years.

“That is an amazing, startling, frightening number,” Pawlenty said. “It is unsustainable going forward.”

Such an amendment would need to be passed by the legislature and then approved by voters. Pawlenty wants the proposal to be on the ballot next year.

But it is unlikely to get a favorable reception from Democrats, who control both legislative bodies with substantial majorities. Pawlenty acknowledged that.

“I suspect they won’t like it,” he said of his DFL counterparts. “Anything that limits spending growth they won’t like.”

Democratic leaders insisted that they will give the proposal serious consideration. “I’m intrigued at learning more about it,” said Tom Bakk, chair of the Senate Taxes Committee and a candidate to take over Pawlenty’s job in 2011. “This will require some very thoughtful consideration.”

But Democrats also pointed out that Pawlenty has never proposed a budget that would have fit within the fiscal strictures he hopes to set for future administrations. In the current biennium, for instance, Pawlenty initially proposed a $34.4 billion general fund budget — more than $2 billion over revenue collections for the prior two years. In addition, the state is currently facing a $5–7 billion budget deficit.

“We’ve got a $5–7 billion iceberg in front of us and I think it would have been better if he would have proposed something of this significance earlier in his term,” said Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller. “But let’s give it some thought now, on his way out the door.”

Indeed, Pawlenty is not running for re-election next year and is clearly eyeing a 2012 presidential bid. Burnishing his credentials as a fiscal conservative could help with that cause — even if it does nothing to solve Minnesota’s budget problems.

Many conservative commentators, from the Wall Street Journal editorial board to Americans for Tax Reform, hailed Pawlenty in June for unilaterally slashing $2.7 billion from Minnesota’s budget over Democratic protests.

The DFL party was quick to characterize Pawlenty’s proposed amendment as another ploy to bolster his political ambitions.

“If a budget cap is such a good idea, why did Gov. Pawlenty wait until he was nearly out the door before proposing it?” asked Brian Melendez, chairman of the DFL party, in a press release. “The answer is simple: so that he wouldn’t actually have to govern under it, because he has no plans to follow through with what is really just a political stunt aimed at boosting his national notoriety.”

Who is Floyd Brown? He’s best known for creating the infamous, race-baiting Willie Horton television ad targeting Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign.

But the Republican political operative has a long, sordid history of engaging in political dirty tricks to slime Democratic candidates. During the 1992 presidential campaign, he headed up an organization called the Presidential Victory Committee. The group’s relentless hounding of the family of Susan Coleman — a former law student of Bill Clinton who committed suicide — was the subject of an exposé by CBS News. Coleman was seven months pregnant at the time of her death and had been rumored to have had an affair with Clinton. The Bush campaign denounced Brown and his associates at the time as “the lowest forms of life.”

During the 2008 presidential primary contest, Brown released an ad targeting North Carolina voters that blamed Barack Obama for gang murders in Chicago. Salon columnist Joe Conason noted at the time that the political operative “has given conservatism a rank smell for two decades.” Brown created another ad suggesting that Obama was a Muslim.

Since then Brown has gone on to run a web site called ExposeObama.com. The site is currently promoting a campaign to impeach Obama for purported “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Brian Melendez, chairman of the DFL Party, issued a statement today attacking Pawlenty for associating with Brown. “Governor Pawlenty has aligned himself with the dirtiest parts of the Republican political machine as he campaigns around the country,” Melendez said. “And meanwhile, who is in charge at the statehouse?”

He was joined by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison and DFL Party chair Brian Melendez, among others.

Ellison hobnobbed with fellow Democrats after the rally.

Photographers swarmed his vehicle as Franken left the event.

Related: Franken: ‘I get to be senator’

Norm and Laurie Coleman (Paul Demko/Minnesota Independent)

Norm Coleman may be violating federal campaign finance laws by paying his personal legal bills with campaign funds, according to charges in a complaint filed today by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party with the Federal Elections Commission. The controversy stems from a pair of lawsuits alleging that longtime Coleman associate Nasser Kazeminy attempted to funnel $75,000 to the Republican politician while he was serving in the U.S. Senate.

A Coleman spokesman told the Star Tribune in December that the then-senator would seek a ruling from the FEC on whether it was appropriate to use campaign funds to cover his legal bills stemming from the suits. But the federal agency has no records of any such request from the Republican. Although Coleman is not a party to either of the lawsuits, he has hired attorney Doug Kelley to represent his interests.

“Mr. Coleman owes Minnesotans an explanation,” said DFL chair Brian Melendez in a statement, “both for why he is paying for his own legal problems with money that he received for entirely different purposes, and for why he hasn’t taken any steps to ensure that he is acting within the law, after promising months ago that he would seek a formal opinion.”

This is the second complaint filed with the FEC over the matter. In January, Alliance for a Better Minnesota raised similar questions about the Coleman campaign’s finances in a letter to the federal agency. The nonprofit group is yet to receive a response on the matter from the FEC.

Video after the jump.

DFL chair Brian Melendez’s assessment of Coleman’s chances on appeal before the Minnesota Supreme Court came after he critiqued the arguments in a preliminary filing yesterday.

Repeating a line of a attack made by Franken attorney Marc Elias, Melendez pointed out that only one of five Coleman claims would add rather than remove votes from last fall’s election — hardly the enfranchisement Coleman’s camp is espousing.

Melendez disputed the notion that the post-election drama has become a “debacle.” The system is working well, he said — it’s just that people in “the Coleman campaign are exercising bad judgment in how far to push their rights.”

Still, Coleman can litigate “to his heart’s content,” said Melendez — as long as Minnesota’s second U.S. Senator gets seated in the meantime.

The DFL is hoping to stir such sentiments with its “Give It Up, Norm” campaign. Melendez unveiled the campaign’s second Web video (see below) at a State Capitol press conference today.

Melendez claimed to have received “a significant blip” of e-mails from “Coleman voters out there who are tired of the litigation.” When pressed, he said that by “blip” he meant a dozen.

Asked about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s role, Melendez also said “the state executive branch has nothing to do with this” beyond the “ministerial” task of issuing an election certificate. Melendez also said instant runoff voting would have broken Franken-Coleman logjam by distributing ballots for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley between the two leading vote-getters.

Here’s the DFL’s new Web ad, titled “Norm Would Step Back.”

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Pawlenty said, “Unlike my friends in the DFL, who are proposing to cut education, we are increasing education.”

In a followup press release, Pawlenty’s spokesman Brian McClung said, “While DFLers have not issued a priority-based budget, they did make choices. Their plan doesn’t recognize that some parts of the budget are strategically more important. DFLers are choosing social services, welfare and publicly subsidized health care over Minnesota’s K-12 schools and students.”

But Sen. Tarryl Clark said the governor’s message is “don’t get sick, don’t get old, don’t lose your job or you’ll lose health care.”

Pawlenty told reporters that the DFL budget would raise taxes on those making $65,000 a year, but DFLers said that’s not true.

DFL chair Brian Melendez shot back, “Gov. Pawlenty is again spouting his false rhetoric about taxes, misleading Minnesotans for his own political gain. On St. Patrick’s Day, Minnesotans were hoping for a pot of gold from our governor. Instead, we got a crock — of something else. Gov. Pawlenty’s do-over budget again fails to address the economic crisis in a fair, honest, or realistic way.”

Left to right: Dick Morris, Norm Coleman, Brian Melendez

The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party charged former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman and a GOP lawyers’ group with violating Federal Election Campaign laws by raiseingmoney for a post-recount lawsuit challenging the results of the Senate recount.

The Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) is soliciting donations for a legal contest of election results certified by the state Canvassing Board. The results show Al Franken defeated Coleman by 225 votes. But the DFL Party’s complaint says the RNLA has failed to register with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) and is breaking the law by taking sums in excess of legal limits and from corporations that aren’t allowed to donate.

The DFL complaint also names Coleman for having failed to report contributions to his campaign from the RNLA.

Federal law allows a new contribution limit separate from the pre-Election Day campaign in the case of a recount, the DFL complaint acknowledges, but so-called “soft money” is not allowed. The RNLA is an unregistered 527 organization under Internal Revenue Service code, Democrats contend, and cannot steer cash to Coleman’s campaign, his recount committee or the state GOP’s federal account. Yet that’s what appears to be happening at a NewsMax Media Web page, where check boxes indicate donations for as much as $5,000 are being accepted — far more than the $2,300 maximum allowed by law.

What if the RNLA isn’t really giving Coleman money?

“The Coleman campaign should publicly declare that it has received and expects to receive no contributions whatsoever from the Republican National Lawyers Association,” DFL Chair Brian Melendez said in a statement, adding that such a declaration “would then expose the RNLA as a group that is simply defrauding Republican contributors.”

Another link to the RNLA fundraising Web page is via a Newsmax article by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, or a separate appeal from the mysterious GOPUSA also signed by Morris.

“This time Al Franken’s gone too far,” Coleman says in the commercial, his wife Laurie seated next to him. “My name’s on the ballot. I’m fair game for his ugly smears. My wife and family are not.”

Laurie Coleman is at the center of the two lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware courts this week. They allege that Nasser Kazeminy funneled $75,000 through a Texas company that he owns to the Senator’s wife via a Minneapolis insurance firm where she works.

Franken immediately called a press conference to denounce and deny the allegation. “In this ad Sen. Norm Coleman looks the people of Minnesota in the eye and lies by blaming me for something that I had absoltuely nothing to do with,” he said at DFL headquarters this afternoon. “For Norm Coleman to try and deflect attention from this incredibly serious matter by attacking me with false claims is simply insulting to voters who have a right to know the facts before the election.”

Franken further stated that neither he nor anybody associated with his campaign had any knowledge of the lawsuit until news of the Texas case surfaced in media reports earlier this week. The Democratic challenger said he’s uncertain if his campaign will release its own ad to counter the Coleman attack. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is running a spot featuring video of Coleman refusing to answer questions from reporters about the controversy.

Prior to Franken’s press conference, DFL chair Brian Melendez called on Kazeminy to answer questions about the allegations. “These lawsuits have rocked the race for the United States Senate,” Melendez said, flanked by a blown-up picture of the Iranian-American businessman. “Minnesotans could have a lot more clarity about the choice they’re being called to make on Tuesday if only Mr. Kazeminy would come forward and clear the air about his role in the affair, preferably under oath.”

The DFL chair also pointed out that Paul McKim, the plaintiff in the initial lawsuit, made the allegations under oath and could face criminal punishment if they prove to be fabricated. “Such an oath has serious consequencees,” he said. “It can’t be taken lightly or dismissed as a stunt.”

Melendez further stated that if the allegations are true, Coleman would be facing a criminal investigation. “These charges are serious,” he said. “We are in Ted Stevens territory here.”

Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign is illegally collaborating with two independent organizations that have been running advertisements on his behalf, according to a complaint filed by the state Democratic Party today with the Federal Election Commission.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business SAFE Trust (NFIB) have both been running ads praising Coleman and attacking Democratic challenger Al Franken. Last month, for instance, the Chamber spent $42,500 to air an ad criticizing the DFLer’s supposed desire to raise taxes.

In its complaint the DFL notes that both the Coleman campaign and the two business groups have paid money to FLS Connect for services. FLS Connect is one of the country’s most influential GOP fundraising and consulting firms. Jeff Larson, a longtime confidant of Coleman who works in St. Paul, is one of the company’s owners. Since 2001, Coleman’s campaign and his Northstar Leadership PAC have paid FLS Connect more than $1.5 million for consulting services and rent. In addition, the National Journal reported in June that Coleman rents a basement apartment owned by Larson in Washington for $600 a month. The other tenant at the Capitol Hill dwelling? FLS Connect.

“When Norm Coleman comes home at night he walks right into the office of the political consultants of outside organizations that are running ads on his behalf,” DFL chair Brian Melendez said at a press conference this afternoon. “Unless he’s climbing into his bedroom through the window every night he has to walk through FLS Connect’s office to get to his bedroom. This arrangement does not pass the smell test.”

Melendez conceded, however, that the DFL possesses no proof that the Coleman campaign has violated election laws. “I don’t have any direct evidence of coordination,” he said. “There is not a smoking gun. But the fact that he’s refusing to answer some very simple questions that could clear him immediately tells me that there’s probably something going on here.”

The FEC complaint is seeking an investigation into whether the Coleman campaign wrongly coordinated activities with the Chamber and NFIB. In addition, it raises the question of whether the two business groups failed to adequately report donations to the Coleman campaign or exceeded limitations on in-kind contributions.

Coleman campaign spokesman Tom Erickson did not immediately respond to a phone call and email seeking comment on the complaint.