The latest attempt to try to snag a ride on what Politico terms the “Franken-Coleman gravy train” involve the contending forces in New York State’s special congressional election.

Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy, locked in an electoral tie even tighter than Minnesota’s, are both lawyering up quickly, according to The Hill, and the GOP has vowed to put up a more aggressive fight than it has done so far in the Gopher State.

Politico has former Clinton administration aide Paul Begala (now with CNN) saying the Democratic Party “is awfully close to giving this president the filibuster-proof majority he needs. And I think that’s why the Republicans are fighting this beyond the bounds of reason. They have very little respect for democracy. They didn’t care that Bush got fewer votes than Gore.”

Begala, who was caught on video strolling the snowy streets of Minneapolis with Al Franken and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) this weekend, has joined fundraising efforts by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Both committees expressly tie the New York struggle to the Minnesota mess.

In their e-mail fundraising campaigns, Democratic and Republican groups trade accusations that Coleman and Franken, respectively, are trying to steal the election in Minnesota.

The story reviews the Republican National Lawyers Association’s fundraising effort (on its own behalf, Politico says), highlighting Coleman’s post-election campaign. Not mentioned: The suspicions that the group was illegally funding Coleman, prompting a DFL Party compaint to the FEC.

And it adds a coda to an appeal on Coleman’s behalf to more than 10,000 e-mail addresses by the New Jersey-based, pro-Israel group NORPAC (the group that called the former senator’s opponent “Al Franklin“):

Karen Pichkhadze, an official with the PAC, said the response was “actually pretty quiet.”

The group raised less than $2,000, which it forwarded to Coleman, she said.

“I think it’s kind of fading,” Pichkhadze said of the fervor over the race.

That’s what bloggers and reporters have been asking in recent days. Well, on Saturday at midnight he was greeting union picketers with a hug and a kiss in the sleet in downtown Minneapolis. Video (and update) after the jump.

Franken’s Republican rival for the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman, has been all over conservative radio and TV since a March 31 ruling that seemed to seal the former senator’s defeat in Minnesota’s election contest trial. On Tuesday judges will oversee the opening of only 400 absentee ballots — likely not enough to erase Democrat Franken’s 225-vote recount lead.

Franken, by contrast, has been little seen or heard from since March 28, when he told a gathering of young Democrats in St. Paul: “We will be seated — and by we, I mean we.”

But Saturday night, Franken was there when a small group of Communication Workers of America Local 7250 held an impromptu informational picket in the falling sleet outside the AT&T building in downtown Minneapolis. The occasion: Their contract with AT&T expired at midnight.

UPDATE: Walking with Franken under umbrellas were U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Paul Begala, the CNN commentator and former aide to President Clinton, who that evening delivered keynote speeches at the DFL Party’s annual Humphrey Day Dinner at the nearby Hilton Hotel. (The event was not open to the media.) Obama himself headlined the event in 2006 (video and audio) and the young Franken campaign made a video for the 2007 event.

Apparently not joining the after-party stroll was the third keynoter at the event, Mitch Stewart, director of President Obama’s new campaign group, Organizing for America, who last year ran Obama’s successful efforts at the Iowa caucus and in the general election in Virginia.  (I’ve e-mailed the Franken camp to ask what Kennedy was doing in town with Franken.)

In a video shot by the picketers, it’s not clear whether Franken and Kennedy sought out the protest or merely happened by. (Franken’s downtown townhouse is nearby and, as it happens, Franken’s old show, “Saturday Night Live,” had just wrapped up on NBC.)

In any case, Franken and Kennedy hear out a union member’s frustration with negotiations and Franken gives her a hug and a kiss.

Here’s the video:

Franken has spoken at the CWA hall the picketer mentions — “7200,” the offices of another CWA local on East Lake Street in Minneapolis. Franken addressed an enthusiastic crowd there only days after winning the DFL Party endorsement last summer.