rssGovernor Coleman!
Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 1:15 pm
- 4 Comments
Josh Kraushaar writes the umpteenth appraisal of former Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) chances for a political comeback:
The conventional wisdom, fueled by an AP report today, is that he’d be a logical candidate and likely front-runner to succeed Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) in the governor’s mansion.
I wrote much of this back in June, but it hasn’t stopped being true: Coleman is not that popular. He’s run for statewide office three times, losing twice, and winning only after his opponent, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), died in a plane crash and was replaced on the ballot by former Vice President Walter Mondale. Coleman’s clever and delicate 11th-hour campaign against Mondale was impressive, but it still only netted him 49.5 percent of the vote in a very good Republican year. The last Minnesota poll, conducted in April by the Star-Tribune, gave him a 17-point net negative favorable rating. And for much of 2007 and 2008, he was considered the heavy favorite for re-election, considering Al Franken’s long record of potentially controversial jokes, a strange tax issue (he failed to pay taxes on speaking fees in different states) and his difficulty uniting the Democratic base. (After Franken locked up the Democratic nomination at a state convention, he drew a bitter primary challenger who attacked him for his “record of pornography and degradation of women and minorities” and drew 30 percent of the primary vote.)
Add this to Coleman’s ongoing legal problems and considerable debt and it’s really quite strange that reporters handicap his chances for a comeback in an election only 16 months away.
Follow David Weigel on Twitter
4 Comments
Pingback posted July 3, 2009 @ 9:51 am
[...] Washington Independent: David Weigel says enough to the conventional wisdom that says Norm Coleman’s comeback will be winning the next governor’s race in Minnesota: “Coleman is not that popular.” [...]
Comment posted July 3, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
Wow, how many lies can be packed into one statement?
(After Franken locked up the Democratic nomination at a state convention, he drew a bitter primary challenger who attacked him for his “record of pornography and degradation of women and minorities” and drew 30 percent of the primary vote.)
Senator Franken had no serious primary challenge at all, the challenge was just at an endorsing convention.
Senator Franken had two serious challengers before the endorsing convention, one who dropped before the convention.
Senator Franken called his opponent one of the most gracious people, he had ever known. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer was always talking about vision, values and issues. JNP could never accurately be portrayed as “bitter” and never attacked on anything remotely like “record of pornography and degradation of women and minorities”. Of course, maybe the article is talking about another challenger other than JNP like Soren Sorenson, whose every word was not monitored by even media like us. The DFL (the name of the Democratic party in Minnesota) always has a long list of challengers, most of them are not serious contenders.
The negative attack came from the Republican blogs, from an old article about how Saturday Night Live writing groups brainstormed for generating skits. In brainstorming, alot of inappropriate stuff is generated and thrown away. That was part of the point of the article.
JNP had 39% not 30%, I was there!
Thus we have the perfect example of Republican lying and myth making!
Comment posted July 4, 2009 @ 4:08 pm
Actually, Grace, the article is accurate. Priscilla Lord Faris (judge Miles Lord's daughter) ran against Franken in the primary in September 2008 and got 29.72 percent of the vote. Franken got 65.34 percent in the primary, and several other candidates received less than 5 percent together. I got these figures from the MN Secretary of State's website.
Faris had not, as I recall, been a candidate before the endorsing convention, but joined the race after Franken was endorsed. I just heard one of her ads in a documentary piece on MN Public Radio this week, and basically her concern was that Franken couldn't win because of the ammunition the Republicans had due to his previous writings.
As far as the rest of the article, I agree Coleman is not a strong candidate. I think people here just want to move on and not re-fight these old battles.
Kathy in Minnesota
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
