Minnesota

Three election-law experts who have been closely tracking the Norm Coleman-Al Franken contest for U.S. Senate weigh in today with written reactions to the final order (pdf) from the three-judge panel that heard Coleman’s complaint. All admired the order for its unanimity and deft handling of Coleman’s equal-protection claims.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar gets more plaudits in today’s New York Times for soldiering on as Minnesota’s sole senator. And she’s staying popular as she stays busy — though that isn’t quite good enough for one University of Minnesota political-science blog.

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.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann says he has no regrets about voting for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley over Al Franken. But his ticket-splitting raises the question of what role DFL voters played in setting the stage for Minnesota’s recount drama. Political observers say Democrats who didn’t vote for Franken don’t have to take the blame. As one observer put it, “party loyalty isn’t what it used to be.”

Senate Republicans advise Norm Coleman to make a federal case out of his election contest, if that’s what he wants to do. But one legal expert says he’d only be wasting his time.

Norm Coleman made his umpteenth recent press appearance on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” today, pressing his case in the media in advance of an imminent appeal to the state Supreme Court. The show’s trio of co-hosts and the former senator were like four legs of a very shaky table when it came to presenting [...]

On Fox News Radio today, Norm Coleman vowed, “We’re going to push to the Minnesota Supreme Court.” He clarified his timetable after next week’s expected election-contest trial court ruling: “We’ll file [a petition to the state's high court] quicker than 10 days.”

Listen:

(h/t Polinaut)

Here’s a 16-minute video recap of Minnesota’s five-month slog (so far) to elect a new U.S. senator. It’s the work of those stalwart Franken-Coleman multimedia chroniclers at The UpTake.

The Republican ticket of Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau has twice emerged from three-way races victorious by plurality. Now Pawlenty is thinking about seeking a third term in 2010. If he goes for it, he’ll have a past failure to thank for the opportunity: In the 1990s, he and Molnau sought to enshrine term limits on governors and lieutenant governors in the Minnesota Constitution.

The Federal Election Commission didn’t tell Al Franken what he wanted to hear about setting up his own fund to cover election-contest legal costs. Franken’s legal rhetoric about “no end in sight” didn’t hurt his case, a commissioner tells MnIndy, but the specter of future recounts did.