Coleman says he’s going 100 percent positive

Sen. Norm Coleman’s campaign announced Friday it is pulling all of its negative advertisements off the airwaves. 

Coleman (R-Minn.) said he will pull all negative ads run against Democrat Al Franken and will urge all his supporters to do the same.

{mosads}“I decided that I was not all that interested in returning to Washington for six years based on the judgment of voters that I was not as bad as the other two guys,” Coleman said in remarks released by his campaign. “I want folks to vote for me, not against the other guys.”

Vulgar and dicey statements Franken made in the past as a comic and satirist gave Republicans a goldmine of quotes and videos and made for powerful commercials questioning Franken’s fitness for the upper chamber.

Nonetheless, Coleman finds himself trailing in the race in some recent polls.

“I have directed my campaign this morning to begin the process of immediately pulling any negative ad that I am personally responsible for approving,” Coleman said. “I am also issuing a press release today calling on those who choose to weigh in on this race to honor my call for only positive ads.”

The Coleman campaign announced the move just as a tempest was brewing over whether one of Coleman’s donors, Nasser Kazeminy, purchased suits for the senator. Harper’s magazine has cited unnamed sources claiming that he had.

Coleman’s campaign deflected questions for days, only to see the issue continue to dog him in the local and national media. The campaign held a press conference Friday morning.

Coleman said at the press conference that nobody but he and his wife have bought his suits, and that his campaign was simply trying to avoid making a story out of a non-story.

In a statement, Franken called Coleman's move “cynical” and a “stunt.”

“From the start, our campaign has focused on the change Minnesota needs,” Franken said. “And we will continue to focus on our competing views of how our country has gone in the wrong direction, how we can curb the influence of special interests in Washington, and how we can get out of the tough economic situation we're now in.”

Chris Truscott, a spokesman for Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley, said Coleman’s decision is too little, too late, after running such a negative campaign to this point.

Barkley, a former interim senator who held the seat before Coleman, has risen to the high teens in the polls and is being regarded as a force in the race.

“It’s great that Sen. Coleman’s going to respect Minnesotans’ intelligence for the first time in this campaign,” Truscott said. “But it’s an awful lot like trying to unring a bell.”

Truscott also expressed skepticism that groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which Coleman might lead next election cycle, will comply.

“The people in Washington have the political equivalent of Tourette’s [syndrome], so I don’t know if they’re going to be able to help themselves,” Truscott said.

NRSC spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher noted that the committee cannot, by law, coordinate with its independent expenditure unit. Independent expenditures make up most of a committee's spending on a given race.

"Therefore, neither the NRSC nor the Coleman campaign can dictate the message or the type of ads that the I.E. unit chooses to run," Fisher said.