TwinCities.com

By Rachel E. Stassen-Berger

05/30/2008

After hours of divisions over rules and presidential candidates, the Minnesota Republican Party this afternoon united behind U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s re-election bid.

Coleman, who is vying for his second term, was the only candidate the Republicans considered for endorsement at the state convention.

In the presidential race, a loud minority of state delegates supported presidential candidate Ron Paul over John McCain, the presumptive nominee. The outcome of the spirited split, which evoked shouts, boos, cheers and a series of procedural fights, will likely be that the majority of delegates elected today will support McCain.

Although a few delegates said they wouldn’t support Coleman, a former Democrat who has pitched himself as a man willing to work across the aisle and against the party when needed, he won his backing from the party with a shout of “Aye!”

“My wings are the great Republican party and the bold vision we can bring to the future,” Coleman said to delegates. He also listed some of Washington-based Republicans’ problems, including the apparent inability to maintain fiscal discipline while funding the war in Iraq.

Coleman’s longest and loudest applause came as he talked of the need to win the war in Iraq, protect children from birth to natural death, “end our addiction to foreign oil,” and the need to keep taxes down.

“Our message to the DFL: Keep your hands out of our pockets and keep your hands off our change,” Coleman said in his 40-minute
Advertisement
speech.

The backing of Republican activists will not be enough to win election in November.

Coleman is considered one of the most vulnerable sitting senators up for election this fall, in large part because of the national anti-Republican mood and disquiet over the war in Iraq, the tanking national economy and housing market and rising consumer costs.

“This will be a very tough election, I have no doubt about that,” Coleman said this week.

But his presumed Democratic opponent, writer and comedian Al Franken, has made it a bit easier.

Franken, who is expected to be endorsed at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor convention next weekend, has written and said the types of things that no politician would publicly own up to, including a graphic 2000 Playboy article that Minnesota’s Democratic U.S. Representatives condemned this week.

This year, he was also fined in New York for failing to pay enough workers’ compensation insurance and, in April, admitted he’d wrongly allocated tax payments for years and paid back taxes to 17 states.

Franken’s profile is one of the reasons Sharon Obst, a delegate from Cloquet, said she is supporting Coleman.

“A lot of it has to do with who Al Franken is. He is not someone I can take seriously,” said Obst, who never considered voting for Franken. She also said that Coleman has been a consistent supporter of gun rights and opponent to taxes and abortion.

There’s also another contrast Coleman likes drawing: Coleman grew up in New York but spent his adult life in public service in Minnesota; Franken grew up in Minnesota but spent his adult life in entertainment outside the state.

Coleman highlighted again his St. Paul and Minneapolis Police Federations’ endorsement this week. The federations have a history of endorsing Coleman through his successful races for mayor of St. Paul, his unsuccessful race for governor and his first Senate race six years ago. The federations jointly talked to both Franken and Coleman, their leaders said, before backing Coleman this year.

“He’s just came back to the state a couple of years ago…It’s a huge, huge difference,'’ Coleman said. “Night and day, and again, they screened both candidates. On these issues there is a clear difference, I’m not even making a reference to paying taxes or those kinds of issues.”

But Coleman’s long history in politics — and his record in Washington — has also given DFL opponents ammunition in the Senate race.

The DFL party officials say that Coleman has touted his beliefs one way in his campaign but voted another way in Washington. They say he is a friend of special interests, Republican powers and big business, not the people of Minnesota.

This week, DFL party chair Brian Melendez upped the special interest ante by drawing a connection between Coleman’s financial donations, political friendships and DCI Group, the Washington D.C.-based public relations and lobbying firm that had represented the dictatorship in Myanmar.

McCain’s pick to run the Republican National Convention and a McCain campaign official both quit this month when it was revealed they worked for DCI and were involved at some level with the Burma campaign.

Melendez criticized Coleman for not shedding campaign contributions he’s received from DCI officials and for his close relationship with the FLS Connect. FLS Connect is run by one of Coleman’s close confidants and political allies Jeff Larson. DCI is a spin-off from FLS, which has done work for Coleman’s campaign. DCI officials have made contributions to his campaign.

“They don’t just fund his political campaign; they are his core political operation,” he said.

Coleman Thursday dismissed the criticism.

“They’re a legitimate business that happens to represent a client who is a deplorable, despicable client. I’ve never had a conversation with them about that client. I’ve had conversations …on other issues of public importance but never about that,” he said of DCI. “I think the DFL is searching. They’re reaching out.”