U.S. Senate

During Sunday’s U.S. Senate debate, Norm Coleman touted his record of job creation during eight years as Mayor of St. Paul. He forgot to mention that the city’s job-growth rate during those heady economic times was less than half of that experienced statewide.

The redoubtable folks at the Uptake have posted the entire U.S. Senate debate between Norm Coleman, Al Franken and Dean Barkley. You can watch the whole thing in one dreary sitting if you’re a glutton for energy policy discussions and political bickering. But they’ve also made it available in a more palatable question-by-question format. I thought the most interesting part of the evening was the two questions focusing on foreign policy, with Barkley and Franken taking turns teeing off on the pinata presented by the incumbent’s unflagging support of the Iraq war. Watch the clips after the jump:

With recent polls offering starkly different assessments of the the U.S. Senate race, the three major party candidates squared off at University Center Rochester last night in the first of five debates. Democrat Al Franken and incumbent Republican Norm Coleman frequently sparred, while Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley took shots at both opponents and portrayed himself as an effective alternative to the broken two-party system.

Everyone who has seen Rep. Betty McCollum’s comments from yesterday — reported this morning at the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, AP and Politico — already knows that May 29 was another red-letter day in the Al Franken for Senate campaign, and that the red was once again Al’s blood. Referring to a January 2000 Franken [...]

In politics there are races that someone wins and races that someone manages not to lose for the simple reason that not everyone can lose. The Minnesota US Senate contest is shaping up to be one of the latter. In one corner there is the not-very-popular, Bush-associated Republican officeholder with job approval ratings in the [...]

Al Franken is falling further behind in the polls and facing down the doubts of Minnesota political pros, many of them in his own party, after the campaign was slow to stanch the bleeding from his tax imbroglio. But the campaign should be buoyed by the “He’s Not Joking,” a Joshua Green article about Franken [...]

Last month Jesse Ventura floated the idea of joining the race to unseat incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman in an interview with the Associated Press. The gambit seemed more like an attempt by the former Gov. to pimp his latest book than an actual testing of the electoral waters.

But if Ventura ultimately sits out the race, [...]

Yes, it’s true that, as Andy Birkey noted here this morning, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah for the Minnesota GOP to hurl stones at Al Franken’s tax debts in California. It’s also true that Franken’s tax issues appear to be fairly nickel-and-dime stuff as IRS troubles go.

Be that as it may, stories like [...]

The FEC has released new numbers summarizing the financial status of the Al Franken for US Senate campaign through March 31, and here’s how they break down:

Franken’s first-quarter 2008 take was about $2.2 million, bringing the campaign’s total receipts so far to $9,356,168.
During the same period, the campaign spent $1.8 million.
Franken’s cash on hand thus [...]

Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman is the Senate co-sponsor of a little-noticed domestic anti-terrorism bill that could carry us several steps closer to the good old days of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joe McCarthy. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (S.1959) is currently in committee after passing the House last year with [...]