Pawlenty Says Minnesota’s Lone Representation In The Senate Is Hurting The State
Pawlenty Says Minnesota’s Lone Representation In The Senate Is Hurting The State
As Norm Coleman’s legal challenges to Al Franken’s recount victory for Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seat drag on, his friends in Congress have begun helping him foot the bill. Earlier this month, prominent Republicans held a “ritzy fundraiser” for Coleman with many “max[ing] out to Coleman’s effort” (some giving as much as $10,000 in PAC money) while others pleaded with supporters in a YouTube message to contribute to his legal fight.
If Franken ultimately wins, the Senate Democratic caucus will grow to 59 members, close to a filibuster proof majority. But as evidence mounts that Coleman stands little chance of winning, speculation has emerged that Republicans in Congress are simply trying to keep Minnesota’s seat empty as long as possible to avoid making it easier for the Democrats to pass their agenda.
But the longer the seat remains vacant, the longer the citizens of Minnesota remain underrepresented. Indeed, today on C-SPAN, Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) said that the lone representation in the senate is hurting the state:
HOST: [H]as it hurt the state not having a senator, a second senator available? [...]
PAWLENTY: Yes, it has put Minnesota at a disadvantage when there’s only 100 senators total and you are missing one and it is one of two from your state, that puts you at a disadvantage. When you have big legislation being decided and you are trying to fight for your perspective, or your influence on a piece of legislation it puts our state at a disadvantage.
Watch it:
Pawlenty later added that the Coleman/Franken race “is going to be decided through the courts, unfortunately” and that a decision will be made “in the next month or two.” “If one side or the other then appeals to the federal court it could really drag on well beyond,” he said, adding, “So we’re kind of just stuck pending the court process.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said being Minnesota’s only representative in the senate has been a “challenge.” She added that “her home-state office has been flooded with phone calls and said her staff has seen its casework double in size.”
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Send Al to Washington!
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 pmColeman, who couldn’t bear the thought of taking time for a recount last fall because it was “time for healing”, will now run this thing out as long as he possibly can. He knows he lost, he knows Franken will eventually be seated, but he’s getting his last digs in by making it as difficult as possible for the Senate Dems to reach the 60 votes they apparently need to do what the GOOP did with 51 votes.
All at the expense of the people of Minnesota.
PEACE
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 pmOf course if the situation were to be reversed the democrat party would be hailing Franken as having the spine to fight unlike AlGore and Kerry.
All depends on whose Al is getting Gored, doesn’t it?
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:21 pmNorm Coleman is like syphilis; he just won’t go away. There is no way this stooge wins. Even if he were to pull this election out of his ass; he would have -0- credibility with most Minnesotans. In Washington I’m sure the Democrats would treat him well, yeh right. Either way with this Cheney picked stooge, Minnesotans lose, even Pawlenty realizes that.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:23 pmThe Minnesota legislature has a duty to its citizens to ensure that while the legal process continues, that the party certified by the election board is seated. If this doesn’t happen, the public i not represented. If this were the presidential elections, it would automatically go to the highest court; but it obviously doesn’t in these circumstances.
We have the disgusting circus of the loser being able to thwart the will of the majority by legal gamesmanship. Where is the Minnesota legislature on thi?
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:24 pmDidn’t Coleman tell Franken to concede and “let the healing process begin”?
Oh wait, I forgot that God wants Coleman to win. That’s why he won’t concede.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 pmjacambece Says:
The two situations are completely different. All the votes were not COUNTED in Florida. When they finally were they found out that if ALL VALID VOTES were counted Gore won by any counting standard. All the votes in Minnesota have been counted. Do you EVER know what you are talking about?
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 pmDr. Hussein Matt Says:
jacambece Says:
Of course if the situation were to be reversed the democrat party would be hailing Franken as having the spine to fight unlike AlGore and Kerry.
All depends on whose Al is getting Gored, doesn’t it?
Jebus, you twit, learn how to write the English language.
*
wait… he’s thinking really hard about an answer.
*
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 pmAll depends on whose Al is getting Gored, doesn’t it?
Actually, both Al Franken and Al Gore won… what was your point?
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:34 pmColeman is a nincompoop and a shill for Right Wing wackos.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 pmPawlenty later added that the Coleman/Franken race “is going to be decided through the courts, unfortunately” and that a decision will be made “in the next month or two.” “If one side or the other then appeals to the federal court it could really drag on well beyond,” he said, adding, “So we’re kind of just stuck pending the court process.”
Governor, it’s your party’s candidate that is keeping your state from getting its full representation in the US Senate with his legal challenges.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 pmThe RNC is paying Coleman to stay at it.
It’s all about the EFCA.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:43 pmIf I lived in MN I would be hopping mad at Coleman by now. The people there are not being represented as they should be…and it is costing them money to boot.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 pmMysteriousTraveller Says:
I bet you are right. Republicans definitly hate unions. They will fight that one to the DEATH.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:47 pmColeman lost, Franken won. This is a stall tactic by the republicans. If I lived in Min. I’d be pissed.
The other major issue is how come Coleman isn’t in jail? It’s already been sworn to that he extorted money out of business associates to fund his campaing.
I guess it’s o.k. to be a felon (I know he isn’t one yet) and still be part of the republican party.
Seriously, this shi*’s got to stop.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:50 pmjacambece Says
All the votes were not COUNTED in Florida. When they finally were they found out that if ALL VALID VOTES were counted Gore won by any counting standard.
I don’t know where you got your fact but the opposite is true. I just checked Wikipedia and they confirmed that Bush still won.
Please check the facts/
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:51 pmSorry to go all OT, but WOO HOO:
SAN DIEGO — A state legislator is reviving the debate about legalizing marijuana as a way of raising money for cash-strapped state and local governments.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a bill Monday that if approved by the California Legislature would put pot on the same legal footing as alcohol. Adults over the age of 21 would be allowed to buy it, and driving under the influence of marijuana would be prohibited.
Under Ammiano’s proposal, which has been endorsed by some law enforcement officials, pot would be taxed at a rate of $50 per ounce and bring an estimated $1 billion into state coffers.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 pmRich H, I heard something the other day about Coleman still being under investigation for that extortion. So you may still get your wish that he ends up in jail.
If I were from Minnesota, I’d be equally embarrassed that Michelle Bachmann is one of my Congressional Representatives.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 pmPawlenty Says Minnesota’s Lone Representation In The Senate Is Hurting The State
When you consider all things , Timmeh , with yourself and that mindless banshee Bachmann representing Minnesota , one can easily see that having only one Senator isn’t the only thing hurting that state…….
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:55 pmMcMetal, great minds…
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pmblclem Says:
——————————————————————————–
jacambece Says
All the votes were not COUNTED in Florida. When they finally were they found out that if ALL VALID VOTES were counted Gore won by any counting standard.
I don’t know where you got your fact but the opposite is true. I just checked Wikipedia and they confirmed that Bush still won.
Please check the facts/
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I did ……..Obviously you DID NOT
This is from :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000
If all votes in Florida had been counted either under Florida law (which prescribes “intent of the voter”), under the rules requested by Bush, or under the request by Gore within a week of the election to count all the Florida votes, Gore would have won the election.
Get a clue………..
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:02 pmJane E. Schneider Says:
——————————————————————————–
McMetal, great minds…
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm ——————————————————————————–
Yes ma’am ………
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:03 pmstill waiting…
*
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:05 pmThe republiCONS continue to block and obstruct PROGRESS. No wonder they’re called the Regressive Party among other things (the No party, the American Taliban, the Got Our Problems party).
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:14 pmblclem Says:
Bush WON 4 to 4
NO I am not wrong. It is PLAIN FACT. NORC counted all the votes and put them in categories. If ALL VALID VOTES are counted that is under and overvotes Al Gore won by any counting scenrio. That is without dispute.
I read it at the time at the NORC website myself
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/50769.html
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What you should know about the Florida recount (Re: HBO’s Recount)
Source: Eric Alterman in Media Matters (5-23-08)
You need to be made of stronger stuff than yours truly to watch Recount. I’m sure it’s great, but I’m going to hold off until we inaugurate President Obama and I can stand to look back on it. In the meantime, Alessandra Stanley writes in Today’s Times, here: “In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by The New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been re-tallied. But both studies also issued caveats about the varying standards used in different counties to count and reject ballots, including late-arriving votes from abroad, noting that had they been included and counted accurately and by the same standard, they probably would have given Mr. Gore the edge.”
The following is from What Liberal Media?:
Following the court’s announcement, a group of eight newspapers invested nearly a million dollars to hire the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to undertake a detailed study of the Florida vote, to discover, if possible, who really won. The Bush administration always opposed this action and treated the ultimate correctness of the court’s intervention as all the legitimacy it needed. And, during the long period before the results of the count were announced, the news outlets who funded the study communicated a decided impression that they were not terribly eager to call the president’s (and hence the system’s) legitimacy into question either. September 11 made this impression unmistakable. Top New York Times correspondent Richard Berke admitted as much when, shortly after the attacks, he declared the outcome of the recount to be “utterly irrelevant” and worried that its release might “stoke partisan tensions.”[1]
Berke was right to be concerned. Shortly before the September 11 attacks, a Gallup Organization poll found that nearly half of Americans surveyed remain convinced that President Bush either “won on a technicality” or “stole the election.” They were right, though this would have been difficult to discern based on the coverage the eventual release of the recount report received. The headlines read: “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote” (New York Times) and “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush” (Washington Post). These were misleading at best. What the NORC researchers really discovered was the Gore legal team’s incredible incompetence. The lawyers happened, it turned out, to choose just about the only counting argument that would have lost Gore the election even had the court ruled in his favor. Lead member David Boies had explicitly ruled out a more inclusive recount of Florida’s votes — one that not only would have elected his man, but would have been immeasurably more fair to the people of Florida. Instead Boies asked the court to count “undervotes” but not “overvotes.” Using that method, Bush did indeed outpoll Gore and the court’s intervention did not ultimately make a difference. It was, perhaps, a perfect coda to a perfectly awful campaign.
But buried beneath the misleading headlines was the inescapable fact that Al Gore was the genuine choice of a plurality of Florida’s voters as well as America’s. As the AP report put it, “In the review of all the state’s disputed ballots, Gore edged ahead under all six scenarios for counting all undervotes and overvotes statewide.”
http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf
Rather than dimples or not dimples the deciding factor in the recount was inclusion of all ballots or only a subset of ballots if all the ballots were counted there were enough potential Gore votes to give him a victory.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/12/politics/main317662.shtml
Under any standard that tabulated all disputed votes statewide, Gore erased Bush’s advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:24 pmI dont know what happened there the first four paragraphs of the first link snuck in
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 pmI take exception with the headline of this post. The Governor did not say the lone Senator was hurting the State. His comment was that with only Senator the benefits to the State were possibly diminished. A position that is defensible. However, if Coleman succeeds in stealing the election (my bad—read if the Republicans succeed in buying enough illegal votes, ala Bush 2000-2004) the comment becomes doubly erroneous: two would certainly be less than one.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:28 pmColeman will whine and biyotch until the bitter, cold end, when they pry the last challenged ballot from his skeletal remains.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:30 pmpeculation has emerged that Republicans in Congress are simply trying to keep Minnesota’s seat empty as long as possible to avoid making it easier for the Democrats to pass their agenda.
HAS EMERGED?!!??! that’s been the m.o. from the beginning…
send al some love!
http://www.alfranken.com/content/splash_recountBrief
the red button.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pmWhat’s hurting our state more, Governor Pawlenty, is your inability and downright refusal to govern. We’re paying the price for your 2012 preening. Do something right for once and seat Franken!
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:49 pmoops… better link:
http://www.alfranken.com/
still the red button
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:51 pm——————————————————————————–
barfly Says:
——————————————————————————–
Sorry to go all OT, but WOO HOO:
SAN DIEGO — A state legislator is reviving the debate about legalizing marijuana as a way of raising money for cash-strapped state and local governments.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, introduced a bill Monday that if approved by the California Legislature would put pot on the same legal footing as alcohol. Adults over the age of 21 would be allowed to buy it, and driving under the influence of marijuana would be prohibited.
Under Ammiano’s proposal, which has been endorsed by some law enforcement officials, pot would be taxed at a rate of $50 per ounce and bring an estimated $1 billion into state coffers.
Dude – 50 bones an ounce in taxes? How much for the product itself? Are they going to tax the dirt, sunshine, water and fertilizer required to grow The Weed? Any talk of licensing folk to grow 6 or so plants for personal use? Now THAT would be Progress!
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 pmbelac Says:
All depends on whose Al is getting Gored, doesn’t it?
Actually, both Al Franken and Al Gore won… what was your point?
Actually I’m very disappointed that AlGore folded. I would love to be able to have voted for that Great American Statesman Vice President Joe Lieberman for The President of the United States of America.
Now that sends a tingle up my leg.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:24 pmnice sportsmanship, R’s
you teach your little leaguers to play that way too?
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:44 pmjacambece Says:
You really are an ignorant punk. You do understand that dont you?
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:48 pmacambece Says:
belac Says:
All depends on whose Al is getting Gored, doesn’t it?
Actually, both Al Franken and Al Gore won… what was your point?
Actually I’m very disappointed that AlGore folded. I would love to be able to have voted for that Great American Statesman Vice President Joe Lieberman for The President of the United States of America.
Now that sends a tingle up my leg.
*
that would be down your leg.
and it’s only because you
forgot to put on your depends
this morning.
*
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:55 pmjacambece Says:
Now that sends a tingle up my leg.
_________
No doubt the end result is a pleasant throbbing sensation in yer trousers…
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:23 pmKeltoi at Night Says:
Dude – 50 bones an ounce in taxes?
_____________
Not terribly surprised at that. No doubt the growers will not like it… but what are ya gonna do? I’ve seen this coming for a long, long time. $1BB/yr? Sounds low to me, but then there will also be the savings at the law enforcement level, huh?
Now… if we could only get the Feds to back off…
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 pmNice blog
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:40 pmGay
Pawlenty shouldn’t worry. It won’t be long before the courts hand Coleman the Senate seat. Anyone that puts their faith in the courts has a very short memory, Bush v Gore.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:55 amThe situation could be worse. Minnesota could still have Norm Coleman as one of its two senators.
February 24th, 2009 at 8:41 amAm I the only one who thinks it is not right for the GOP to use the judges to gain a vote in the senate which in effect is what they are doing? There has to be a point beyond which further litigation is simply a delaying tactic and the judges have to be made aware that they are helping the GOP in that effort.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:07 amAnother factor why I think he is fighting so hard is this is his only chance to stay in politics. And the reason is he may be facing 3 FBI investigations in the not to distant future. What better place to defend himself than as a sitting Senator?
Details in a post I wrote last night at MN Progressive Project:
What is actually going on with the Minnesota Senate race?
February 24th, 2009 at 11:47 amEverything will be all right. Almost the same thing happened in WA with the 2004 governor’s race. It went through two recounts, which reversed the score and put Chris Gregoire (D) up by about 140 votes. The challenger completely changed his tune at that point, exactly like Coleman did. But all is well, and this time she won handily against the same slimy Republican opponent. Your system, unlike Florida’s, is sensible like ours, and truth, justice, and the American Way will win out. Would be nice for all of us if it would hurry up, though!
February 24th, 2009 at 2:03 pm—-
“If one side or the other then appeals to the federal court it could really drag on well beyond,” he said, adding, “So we’re kind of just stuck pending the court process.”
—-
That’s actually not true. No appeal to the federal court will be allowed:
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/02/23/franken-coleman-update-022309-a-few-loose-ends/#comment-24572
- Tom
February 24th, 2009 at 3:49 pmThat’s Tim’s official stance. But you can bet that he’s one of the contributors to Coleman’s defense.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:01 pmdoes the wining ever stop.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:50 pm