Clockwise from upper left: Coleman, Franken, Rolvaag, Andersen

It would seem out of character at this point for Norm Coleman to concede the race for the Senate seat he occupied until Saturday, even after this morning’s negative ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court and the certification of the vote in favor of rival Al Franken by the State Canvassing Board this afternoon. But it could happen — just read between the lines of his recount lawyer’s remarks yesterday, or listen to former senator and Vice President Walter Mondale today. A close reading of what Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak said on Sunday suggests that it’s Coleman’s choice whether to proceed with an election contest. And that implies that Coleman might at least be considering not contesting the election — in other words, conceding.

That’s exactly what Mondale had in mind when he told Minnesota Public Radio listeners today that he recommends the example of Republican Gov. Elmer L. Andersen, who, as the incumbent in Minnesota’s last big statewide recount in 1962–63, bowed out rather than pursue an appeal to the state’s highest court. “When we got to a point like this,” Mondale recalled (and he was not only there but, as the state’s popular attorney general, was very nearly a candidate himself), “Elmer Andersen said, ‘No, this has gone on long enough.”

The parallel isn’t exact, because by the time Andersen conceded it was March 23, 1963, and the election had already been a three-judge review of the sort that would look at the current vote if Coleman files for an election contest. But the candidates’ words from that time could stand as a model (or, more likely, as a contrast) for Minnesota’s current recount rivals.

Gov. Elmer L. Andersen:

Today ends one chapter, admittedly a shorter chapter than I intended, but there are more to be written. I am disappointed but not the least discouraged; I am defeated but not the least disheartened.

Lt. Gov. Karl Rolvaag (of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, who succeeded Andersen as governor after Andersen’s concession):

I am sure the decision made this afternoon by Governor Andersen was a most difficult one. Had he chosen to go on and exercise his right or appeal in this matter, I hope that no voice would have been raised against that decision. I do not believe it would be possible for any person to adequately describe the tremendous pressures, the anxieties and the physical demands placed upon the parties to this recount action. … While at no time during these long months did I ever despair of emerging the victor, there were times when the situation became seemingly unendurable. I would assume that through these many months Mr. Andersen was constantly beset by similar pressures which only he could begin to describe. To continue in office in the face of the vicissitudes of the contest we have just completed must be an agony of its own.

Minnesota media mostly keep those two straight, but even locals find the profusion of Scandinavian surnames in the various recount venues vexing. Typical is KARE-11′s recent confusion of Roger Magnuson, an attorney who makes Coleman’s recount arguments before the state Supreme Court, with Eric Magnuson, the Supreme Court’s chief justice who doesn’t hear such cases due to his current service on the State Canvassing Board. (To make matters worse, there’s also a U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson in Minnesota.)

And don’t even get started with another name that’s so common and so golden in Minnesota politics that it’s inspired a term –”The Anderson Effect” — to describe the often ill-informed preference voters give to candidates who bear it.

You can look in any political direction in Minnesota and find an Anderson. The last major recount in Minnesota 46 years ago involved Gov. Elmer L. Andersen (slight spelling variant there). The last non-Jewish major-party candidate (as it happens) for the U.S. Senate seat that’s now under recount was Joan Anderson Growe in 1984 (the others, all Jews, being senators Rudy Boschwitz, the late Paul Wellstone and Coleman). And this year an unknown Independence Party candidate named Bob Anderson drew a whopping 10 percent of the vote, possibly helping an embattled incumbent U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann win re-election in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

And sure enough, there’s a pair of Andersons on the Minnesota Supreme Court: Paul and G. Barry. The latter has recused himself from the courtroom for recount matters while he serves in the recount effort as an appointed member of the State Canvassing Board, just like his colleague Eric Magnuson — who was himself appointed this year to be chief justice after the retirement of a man who spent more than a quarter century on the state’s highest bench … a man by the name of (you guessed it) Anderson.

On a day like today when both the state Supreme Court and the State Canvassing Board are in action, and Scandinavian names are flying through rarefied air in the halls of power like so many potato pancakes, Minnesota needs to consult its most time-honored pair of experts in the Abbott and Costello vein: Sven and Ole.

SVEN: Oy, Ole, this recount is taking longer than lutefisk. Who’s deciding this here thing then?

OLE: Minnesota State Canvassing Board, they say.

SVEN: Who’s on that?

OLE: Well, there’s Magnuson and Anderson…

SVEN: OK, Magnuson and Anderson are canvassers.

OLE: No, Magnuson and Anderson are justices on the Minnesota Supreme Court.

SVEN: You said Magnuson and Anderson are on the State Canvassing Board!

OLE: Yah, for the recount they are but then they go back to being on the Supreme Court.

SVEN: So who’s on the Supreme Court while Magnuson and Anderson are doing the recount?

OLE: Well, there’s Anderson …

SVEN: But you said Anderson’s on the canvassing board!

OLE: That’s the other Anderson.

SVEN: So there’s still an Anderson on the Supreme Court?

OLE: Yah, he told Norm Coleman’s attorney, “This is not Florida.”

SVEN: “This is not Florida?” Well, who said it was?

OLE: Was what?

SVEN: Florida!

OLE: Magnuson said it was.

SVEN: Magnuson at the canvassing board said this is Florida?

OLE: No, Magnuson at the Supreme Court.

SVEN: There’s another Magnuson at the Supreme Court?

OLE: Roger.

▲ What elected official set the table for both the 1962 and 2008 recounts by backing out of or losing a race?

▲ How does the name Freeman figure into the 1962 and 2008 recounts?

▲ What are two echoes in 2008 of the Highway 35 scandal in 1962?

Answers after the jump. Answers:

▲ Walter Mondale. As Minnesota’s young attorney general in 1962, his decision not to pursue the DFL endorsement for governor left the field open for eventual winner Karl Rolvaag. And in 2002, Mondale’s unsuccessful last-minute candidacy as a fill-in for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone set the stage for Republican Norm Coleman to seek re-election to the seat in 2008.

▲ Gov. Orville Freeman lost to Republican State Sen. Elmer Andersen in 1960, setting up the 1962 contest between Rolvaag and Anderson. In 2008, Mike Freeman, Orville Freeman’s son, used his position as Hennepin County attorney to propose that local officials sort rejected absentee ballots so as to create a so-called “fifth pile” of ballots that had been wrongly rejected.

▲ The I-35W bridge collapse in 2007 and reconstruction in 2008 occurred on the same highway that was the subject of a scandal that broke just before the 1962 election concerning construction costs, possibly hurting Andersen. The 2008 election had its own last-minute scandal involving lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware that alleged that businessman Nasser Kazeminy had funneled money to Coleman via Coleman’s wife’s job. That scandal may have hurt the Coleman vote.