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.
President Obama devoted his weekly address today to the communities of Minnesota and the Dakotas that are fighting record floods this weekend. He didn’t mention Hurricane Katrina.
More, including a full transcript, after the jump.
During a radio show on Saturday, Rep. Michele Bachmann described herself as a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, D.C. The Republican congresswoman went on to tell WWTC-AM:
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this
…
Joe Friedberg, the star attorney who gave the closing arguments for Norm Coleman last week in Minnesota’s Senate trial, predicts his client won’t prevail in the election contest without appealing to the state Supreme Court.
You could read about how Republican U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen tried to help Liberians and Republicans last week. You could hear about Paulsen’s opposition to the federal stimulus package in a radio ad by Americans United…
The last day of the Minnesota Senate trial played out like the closing minutes of a Final Two basketball game. With the courtroom’s wooden bleachers packed with fans and reporters, Al Franken and Norm Coleman each gave the ball to the man on their legal team who they figured had the best shot making closing arguments.
Norm Coleman told donors who are worried about the leak of personal and financial data from his campaign Web site to cancel their credit cards and call him with questions. A Coleman contributor in Atlanta who did just that — shelling out $16 for an expedited replacement card — tells the Minnesota Independent that no one answers the phone at the number Coleman gave.
The courts’ lag in keeping up with technological advances in American society could slow efforts to open government meetings to broader media access. That’s the word from Teresa Nelson, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, who is watching the current battle over limits on media access at the state House of Representatives with an eye to take possible action.
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