Franken claiming victory outside his Minneapolis home. Photo: Stefan Lund

Al Franken, calling himself “the next senator from Minnesota,” said Monday afternoon he is ready to go to Washington, D.C., to get to work just as soon as possible.

But Franken didn’t respond to reporters’ shouted questions about exactly when he would go to Washington and retreated up the front steps of his downtown Minneapolis townhouse with his wife, Franni, and campaign aides.

In a brief statement in which he twice referred to his “victory,” Franken also acknowledged just how close his 225-vote margin of victory over former Sen. Norm Coleman was. “I didn’t win the support of every Minnesotan. I’m going to have to earn it,” he said. “I work for you now and I will work hard to earn your confidence.”

Franken paid tribute to Coleman with a note of sympathy that recalled former Minnesota Gov. Karl Rolvaag’s statement after the state’s last big recount in 1962. “I know that this isn’t easy” for the Colemans, Franken said, because his own family had faced tough days since the election. But he described the recount process as “long, fair and … thorough.”

With a nod toward threats of lawsuits and filibusters, Franken said he hoped Minnesota would continue to be served by two senators “without interruption.” Whatever happens on that score, Franken said he would “focus all my attention and all my energies” on working on issues facing Minnesotans — including an economy he said was in the “worst crisis since the Great Depression.”

Franken’s appearance was one of a very few he’s made since Election Day, and his statement included offerings of thanks to staff, supporters and others that “I wish I’d been able to give on Election Night.” He also thanked election workers in a state that he said had shown the world it “takes its democracy seriously.”

As Franken ended with a pledge to get to work, a woman passerby who had stopped to listen shouted out, “Yeah, get on the job!” From the tone of her voice, it wasn’t entirely clear whether she was a Franken fan, a Coleman backer or simply another citizen ready for the recount to end.

Here is the prepared text of Franken’s statement as released by his campaign:

It has been a remarkable couple of months. Our recount brought national attention
to Minnesota, and what Americans saw is that we take our democracy seriously. Our
recount process was long, it was fair, and it was thorough. We should all be proud
of our state, and we should all be grateful for the incredible hard work and
dedication of all of our elections officials, from the state canvassing board and
the Secretary of State’s office to the officials in the cities and counties and
precincts of Minnesota.

After 62 days, after the careful and painstaking hand inspection of nearly 3
million ballots, after hours and hours of hard work by elections officials and
volunteers across the state, I am proud and humbled to stand before you as the next
Senator from Minnesota.

This victory is incredibly humbling – not just because it was so narrow, but
because of the tremendous responsibility it gives me on behalf of the people of
Minnesota.

While the recount process played out, the challenges facing our state and our
nation have only grown. With tensions in the Middle East reaching the boiling
point, our economy facing its worst crisis since the 1930s, and Minnesota’s middle
class families being squeezed harder than ever, it’s clear that we have a lot of
important work to do.

I want you all to know that I’m ready to go to Washington and get to work just as
soon as possible. And I look forward to joining President-Elect Obama and Senator
Klobuchar in getting our country moving in the right direction again.

I know this is not an easy day for Norm Coleman and his family, and I know that
because Franni and I and the kids have had plenty of time over the past two months
to contemplate the possibility that this election would turn out differently. Norm
has worked hard for this state and this country, and I hope to ask for his help to
ensure that Minnesotans can continue to count on receiving excellent constituent
services from their two Senators without interruption.

I also know that this was a hard-fought victory, and that I didn’t win the support
of every Minnesotan. I’m going to have to earn it by being a Senator who fights for
every Minnesotan, whether you voted for me or not. And I want every Minnesotan to
hear me say: I work for you now. And I will work hard to earn your confidence.

There may still be additional legal proceedings related to our recount. But I’m
now in the business of serving the people of Minnesota. And the best way I can
serve the people of Minnesota right now is to focus all my attention and all my
energies on getting to work for them on the issues we’ll be facing together.

I would like to close by doing something I wish I’d gotten a chance to do properly
on Election Night, and that is to thank some people. My amazing staff and
supporters across the state who made this victory possible and stuck with us this
whole way. All the volunteers who woke up the morning after Election Day and got
right back to work to help our recount effort. Our state’s dedicated elections
officials, our tremendous congressional delegation, and our fantastic Senator, Amy
Klobuchar, who continues to be a mentor and an inspiration. And, of course, my
beautiful wife Franni and our amazing family.

For our state, today marked the end of a long process that will forever be a part
of Minnesota history. But today is also a beginning. The history of our country
will be forever altered by what we do together to address the challenges we face
together. So, with tremendous gratitude for the victory we have won, I’m ready to
get to work.

Thank you.

Not only that, wrote Smart Politics’ Eric Ostermeier last week, but a Coleman Senate win would also be unique for a Republican in a year in which the DFL fares so well in state legislative races. According to the headline, Coleman’s doubly unprecedented but still-theoretical victory would be “the Greatest GOP Senate Triumph in Minnesota History.” Which is another way of saying the most unlikely.

In an earlier post, Ostermeier saw electoral strength of historic proportions in Coleman’s 42-percent showing amid a national rout for the party at the top of the ticket. And on Sunday, Ostermeier posted that “Coleman (Probably) Survived the Democratic Wave” not because of weakness in Al Franken’s candidacy but, among other reasons, because “Coleman actually has a record of bipartisanship” and Minnesotans like voting Republican.

This morning Smart Politics liveblogs a conference on reforming Minnesota’s redistricting process at the University of Minnesota, hosted (as is the Smart Politics blog) by the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs’ Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

“We have reason to be optimistic,” recount attorney Marc Elias told reporters at an afternoon press conference. “We are picking up votes across the state.”

The candidate himself — seldom seen locally since recount gears began turning — shared that view, according to communications director Andy Barr. “Al is cautiously optimistic,” Barr said.

Describing the stacks of ballots recounted by hand Wednesday as a “slightly redder” subset of the 2.9 million ballots cast on Election Day, Elias said the campaign believes Franken closed the gap with incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman by more than the secretary of state’s official count of 43 votes.

Elias also claimed to have seen local examples of the same phenomenon in Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis counties, where Franken gained on Coleman in recounts of areas where the Nov. 4 election results show the Democrat didn’t run as well as in the remaining (yet unrecounted) precincts in those counties.

Elias said he was relying on internal campaign tallies of the recount’s Day One results, including reports from counties whose results came in too late at night to be part of the state’s official count at 8 p.m. Wednesday.

Elias also said that anecdotal evidence received Wednesday about frivolous challenges has emerged as a pattern. “There are clearly a significant number of instances of challenging clear Franken votes,” he said. “We have seen examples of challengers that clearly are not meritorious and will not be upheld by the Canvassing Board.”

Elias granted that some of the frivolous challenges he alleges could be due to first-day jitterson the part of Coleman workers. He also conceded that Franken’s challengers — who on Wednesday demanded that nearly as many ballots be set aside for Canvassing Board review as did the Coleman challengers — may have also been overzealous. “It’s a very good question,” he said. “It’s part of our review.”

Competing with the recount for the campaign’s attention, Elias said, were the newly arriving lists of voters whose absentee ballots had been rejected by county election officials. That flow of info follows a Ramsey County District Court ruling Wednesday ordering Ramsey Countyto provide any such lists to the Franken camp.

Barr said about three dozen counties had so far followed suit. But the data isn’t uniformly presented, Barr said, so the campaign wasn’t sure what it had yet and wouldn’t state what it plans to do with the lists. On Tuesday, the state Canvassing Board promised to consider whether it would conduct its own review of rejected absentee ballots.

Barr expressed satisfaction that the Coleman camp’s claims of victory were being taken with a grain of salt even in GOP circles. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that national Republicans are beginning to realize that Sen. Coleman has not been determined the winner of the race and are becoming concerned,” he said, noting in particular that some Republicans are already suggestions of other lines of work for Coleman, such as the post of Republican National Committee chairman.

Twin Cities graphic designer Pat Thompson tells Minnesota Independent that Coleman’s Web site uses the same font, Gotham, that Obama’s much-admired branding program has used throughout his campaign. She and local type designer Mark Simonson found a lot to love about the design work from Obama’s camp — as Coleman has too, apparently — when they critiqued the graphics of presidential contenders earlier this year. 

“Victory” is Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s mantra now, his one-word answer to Democratic challenger Al Franken’s new one-word mission statement: “Recount.” Coleman used the word again and again at a press conference this morning, even when referring to the slim lead he holds over Franken. It’s not a tiny, fragile lead, uncertified and vulnerable to reversal; it’s “my margin of victory.”

I saw this banner ad at democraticunderground.com but didn’t use it above because I’m not sure it came from the Obama for America campaign. It doesn’t actually link to anything, and Thompson and Simonson told me last spring that replacing the actual letter “O” with Obama’s wheat-field logo wasn’t a habit of the official Obama design team but rather a hint that knockoff artists were at work. It does however serve as another comparison to Coleman’s copycat Web site.

David Lillehaug

“The odds are that something went wrong with respect to counting.”

That’s what Democrat Al Franken’s campaign counsel, David Lillehaug, said this morning about the prospect of a pending statewide recount in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. ”We want to make sure that each ballot that was cast is counted appropriately,” he said.

Lillehaug called the 0.03 percentage point margin separating Franken from Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman “just a hair” and “unprecedented” in Minnesota history. A 1962 recount in the race for governor had a wider margin and far smaller number of votes, he said on Minnesota Public Radio.

Those comments came after Coleman spoke publicly for the first time since Election Night, when he told supporters at the state Republican Party gathering that the emerging results presaged a nail-biter (video). At a morning-after press conference, Coleman said he is “humbled and grateful for the victory that the voters gave us last night.” He acknowledged the possibility of a recount “because of my margin of victory,” but added, “It is up to [Franken] whether [a recount is worth] the tax dollars it will take to conduct.”

Coleman seemed to make reference to the bitterly fought campaign as he offered an Abraham Lincoln quote from the Civil War and urged that “we proceed in a Minnesota manner” in which any recount would be, in his words, “a respectful review.” Expressing doubt that a recount would change the result giving him a slim victory, Coleman added, “I commend my former opponents” — referring to Franken and Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley.

MPR has audio for both Coleman’s and Lillehaug’s comments today at its Polinaut blog.