As Coleman’s hope dims, pursuit of seat questioned

Even Republican strategists are beginning to admit that former Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) options to regain his seat are looking limited following his latest legal defeat.

The ruling by a three-judge panel on Monday has emboldened Democrat Al Franken and national Democrats, who made their most overt claims of victory so far during the lengthy legal fight.

{mosads}On Tuesday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine for the first time explicitly called on Coleman to end his legal challenge.

“It is time for Norm Coleman to concede and for Al Franken to be sworn in as the next U.S. senator from Minnesota,” Kaine said.

“He’s cooked,” one veteran GOP campaign operative said of Coleman’s chances following the ruling. “At this point, continuing to carry on only damages his brand for future bids for office.”

Coleman immediately vowed to appeal the decision to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but election law experts said Coleman’s chances on appeal are little better than they were in front of the three-judge panel.

The latest court ruling declared Franken the winner by 312 votes. The court allowed an additional 351 ballots to be counted, which ended up increasing Franken’s lead from 225.

The court found Minnesota did its best to provide uniform standards for counting ballots, which “will make it very hard for Coleman to persuasively argue to a majority of either the state Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court that there was a constitutional violation in how this recount was conducted,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and author of the Election Law Blog.

Hasen also said any hopes of a federal lawsuit, should Coleman exhaust his state options, might not stop Franken from taking the Senate seat.

“Nothing will prevent Coleman from filing a federal lawsuit,” Hasen said. “But if he files it, that doesn’t mean it would delay the issuance of a certificate.”

Compared to Kaine, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was more circumspect, though Senate leaders have signaled they will pressure Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) to sign the certificate of election Franken needs to be seated.

“Norm Coleman is entitled to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. If he does so, we look forward to a prompt decision from that court so that Gov. Pawlenty can issue an election certificate and we can finally bring an end to an episode that has left the people of Minnesota without full representation for too long and has cost taxpayers too much money,” Reid said in a statement.

“I am honored and humbled by this close victory, and I’m looking forward to getting to work as soon as possible,” Franken said outside his Minneapolis home. “It’s long past time we got to work.”

Republicans in Washington, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas), have voiced support for Coleman’s continued legal challenge, a strategy both parties say effectively denies Democrats an additional vote in the Senate, further enraging Democrats.

“Former Sen. Coleman’s insistence on continuing his quixotic quest for this seat at best shows that he is putting his own political ambition ahead of the people and worst that he is complicit in an effort by national Republicans to deny Al Franken this seat for as long as possible so there is one less Democratic vote for President Obama’s agenda for change,” Kaine said.

Republicans maintain the three-judge panel left thousands of voters wrongly excluded from the process, an argument that will serve as the basis of Coleman’s appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Coleman legal team spokesman Ben Ginsberg used a Tuesday conference call to reiterate the GOP’s belief that some ballots were double-counted while others, largely from precincts that went for Coleman, were discarded.

“The point is — is that there are still thousands of voters who have not had their votes counted whose votes should be counted,” Ginsberg said on the call.

“We must appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court so that no voter is left behind,” Ginsberg added in a Monday statement.

Ginsberg said the campaign would review the three-judge panel’s ruling and take several days to file the appeal with the Supreme Court. Coleman’s team has 10 days to file an appeal.

“We feel [the three-judge panel has] misunderstood a number of issues as well as what’s at stake in this case,” Ginsberg said Tuesday. “The court seems not to be in the least bit bothered that they have included illegal votes in the final count.”

GOP leaders are pushing Coleman to continue his challenge. Several strategists said Coleman’s team should have been more aggressive immediately after the election, and pledged to avoid what they see as mistakes in the future.

“The buzz in GOP circles is that if Sen. Coleman’s team and party strategists were to have launched a full-blown PR campaign as the recount was unfolding, they would have had a better environment prior to the legal proceedings,” said one Republican operative. Instead, he said, “They allowed the legal proceedings to define the media environment.”

“A lot of noise has to be made immediately, and it has to be sustained,” the campaign strategist agreed. “Where the heck has [Pawlenty] been?”

Strategists compared Coleman’s post-election efforts unfavorably with the 2000 Florida recount, during which then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush had top national legal talent like Ginsberg and former Secretary of State James Baker pleading his case almost immediately.

This time, Coleman’s legal challenge was handled by Minnesota lawyers, with Ginsberg taking on more of a spokesman’s and advisory role. Meanwhile, Democrats relied on Marc Elias, one of the party’s leading election lawyers, to head Franken’s legal team.

Sources close to Coleman declined to comment, saying lessons cannot be learned from an episode that has yet to conclude.