After Long Court Battle, Franken Wins Minn. Senate Seat
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Democrat Al Franken narrowly defeated Republican Norm Coleman in last year's U.S. Senate race. Analysts discuss the case and the significance of Franken's win.
JIM LEHRER: Now that long-awaited outcome in the Minnesota
U.S. Senate race. The Minnesota Supreme Court today ordered Democrat Al Franken
certified as the winner. He had been locked in a recount battle with his Republican
opponent, Norm Coleman, for more than seven months.
This afternoon, both Coleman and Franken spoke to reporters.
FORMER SEN. NORM COLEMAN, R-Minn.: Ours is a government of
laws, not men and women, and the Supreme Court of Minnesota has spoken. I
respect its decision, and I will abide by its result. It's time for Minnesotans
to come together under the leaders it has chosen and move forward. And I join
all Minnesotans in congratulating our newest United States senator, Al Franken.
SENATOR-ELECT AL FRANKEN, D-Minn.: I won by 312 votes, so I
really have to earn the trust of the people who didn't vote for me and of all
the people of Minnesota, and let them know not just by my saying so, but by my
actions that I'm going to be working for every Minnesotan.
JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill
has more.
Gaining from absentee ballots
GWEN IFILL: Today's ruling has implications not only for Minnesota, but also for
the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. Here to fill us in on the details
are Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of the Hotline, National Journal's political
daily, and veteran Minnesota political writer Eric Black, who blogs for
MinnPost.com.
Eric, 238 days later, absentee ballots count. People forget
that at one point on Election Day Norm Coleman was actually ahead by 200 votes.
What made the difference?
ERIC BLACK, MinnPost.com: Well, it was a long process. And
at almost every stage, Franken actually gained ground. He gained ground when
they did a hand recount. And he gained ground when they went over the
challenged ballots to see if they could ascertain voter intent. And then, for
months now, they've really been arguing about which absentee ballots should and
shouldn't have been counted. And in the final decision by the courts on that
matter, Franken's lead went up a little more.
It's still a very, very tiny 312-vote lead out of 3 million
votes cast, but Franken gained ground at every stage.
GWEN IFILL: Did he in the end really benefit from the fact
that these were absentee ballots that this election was hanging on?
ERIC BLACK: I think he did. I think he benefited from that
in part because this was a very strong state for the Obama campaign, and the
McCain campaign pulled out early, and the Obama campaign was really pushing
people to vote absentee, and they probably created a pool of absentee ballots
that was better for Franken than the general pool.
But the fact is he did -- Franken did pull into the lead
before they started going over the absentee ballots.
GWEN IFILL: Did the Coleman forces ever try to make the case
that there was fraud involved in this election outcome?
ERIC BLACK: They never did. And the Supreme Court today
called a lot of attention to that. Certainly, in, you know, partisan circles,
there were people looking for that and grumbling about it, but there was never
a formal allegation that had any legs at all that anybody did anything fishy to
bring about this result.
Implications for the U.S. Senate
AMY WALTER, editor-in-chief, The Hotline: That's right. When
is 60 not really 60? Sixty is not sixty when there are two Democratic senators,
Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd, who have not been a very active presence in Washington recently.
They both are ill, so that means...
GWEN IFILL: And we should point out, the 60 is the
filibuster-proof majority.
AMY WALTER: Correct.
GWEN IFILL: That's why it's the magic number.
AMY WALTER: That's right, the magic number when supposedly
everything can get done when you have 60. So you're really starting now with
58, including Franken.
Now we shave it back a little bit more. And we say we've
already seen the battles on the climate change bill, on health care. We know
that there are moderates and liberals who aren't on the same page, and so
getting 60 votes just from Democrats is still going to be a very difficult
thing to do.
In fact, the great irony is going to be, the only way to
pass a lot of this stuff is maybe to get to 60, but getting there with a
handful, maybe two or three, Republicans.
GWEN IFILL: So Senator-elect Franken arriving in the Senate
at a time when health care is about to be teed up, the climate change bill that
just passed through the House with, what, 40-some Democrats defected...
AMY WALTER: Right.
GWEN IFILL: ... does he make a big difference...
AMY WALTER: So I don't think that he makes as big of a
difference. Look, if you're Harry Reid, it's another vote. You're very happy
about that.
But it's also a mixed blessing for the majority leader,
because he's looking at this now and that's the thinking nationally, is,
"Hey, you have 60 votes. You can get anything done you want to get
done." It raises the expectations bar when he knows that getting those
votes are a lot more difficult than it seems.
I think for Republicans, too, they may see this as an
opportunity to paint Democrats as the party that's not able to get anything
done.
It was interesting. I got the press release from the
Republican Senate Campaign Committee chairman, John Cornyn, senator from Texas, who says about
this, Franken's win, "The era of excuses and finger-pointing is now
over." In other words, Harry Reid, if you don't get things passed in the
Senate, it's not our fault. It's yours. And to say...
GWEN IFILL: They're already campaigning on this.
AMY WALTER: Nobody -- right. And you will see them
campaigning on this, if, indeed, energy, health care don't get done.
Costs of the recount
ERIC BLACK: I'm sure she'll be glad to have another senator
to share some of the work with, especially constituent service work, which, you
know, generates a lot of staff work. But she seemed to have conducted herself
well in the meantime. And I was impressed at how far Senator Coleman,
ex-Senator Coleman, went out of his way to thank her publicly during his
concession speech this afternoon.
GWEN IFILL: Both of these candidates -- or at least their
supporters -- are $11 million poorer for having continued this recount. It was
an expensive race to begin with. Where did that money come from?
ERIC BLACK: Well, both were drawing from a substantial
national base of contributors. Of course, once you get into the recount, people
who are very devoted to either party don't have that many races to contribute
to, so there was a perpetual fundraising effort on both sides, very successful.
And it often seemed that a lot of what they were doing in
public was more about keeping the money coming in than it was about winning the
case, although they obviously had to be working on both fronts.
No 'average senator'
GWEN IFILL: Let me ask both you and Amy about, now that we
have Senator- elect Franken, you've been covering his race. You've been
watching his evolution from a comedian to a United States senator. What kind of
senator will he be?
ERIC BLACK: Me first?
GWEN IFILL: Yes.
ERIC BLACK: Well, I think he's not going to be your average
senator. He didn't come from a typical background for a senator. His
pre-politics life left him with some impressions that people found difficult to
accept from a senatorial candidate. He's got a different personality. I think
he's on his best behavior now and is going to try to keep it up.
But, you know, he was a comedian. He was a radio talk show
host. He was very aggressive and argumentative in some of those roles. And now
he's pledging to be someone who can work across party lines.
And, you know, he won't have to face the voters of Minnesota for
five-and-a-half years. We'll see what they think of his personality when his
turn comes around.
GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that?
AMY WALTER: Yes, I agree with Eric. And I think he wants to
dispel those stereotypes, that I'm just the guy from "Saturday Night
Live" that's going to come in and I'm going to be either, one, the funny
guy...
GWEN IFILL: Is it a stereotype or is it what he was?
AMY WALTER: Well, OK, you're right. Or that I'm going to
just be the funny guy in the Senate, number one, because, quite frankly, Amy
Klobuchar, very funny, so she's, I think, taken that mantle. If you've seen her
in public, she's been really seen as sort of a rising star in part because she
has this wonderful sense of humor.
But also that his temperament was going to be a problem.
Remember, he wasn't just a liberal talk show host. He was a very aggressive
attack dog, writing books like, "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot."
So I think he's going to want to -- he wants to come in, prove that he has the policy
chops, prove that he has the temperament to do this job.
Now, it's going to be a lot different when he has to go in,
in the back-and-forth in the Senate, but I think it's very telling that for
these seven months that this process has dragged out, you have not seen Al
Franken do any of that temperament stuff that some have suggested he would.
GWEN IFILL: First big test is Sotomayor hearings. He said
today he's going to be on the Judiciary Committee, so we'll be hearing from him
then.
Eric Black in Minnesota,
Amy Walter in Washington,
thank you both very much.
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