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The Coleman camp apparently signaled its main strategy in a conference call Sunday:
As former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman’s lawsuit contesting the results of a hand recount in Minnesota begins today, his lawyers are predicting a ‘very, very tedious proceeding."
The three-judge panel overseeing the suit will convene at 1 pm CT Monday. Coleman is contesting results that gave Democrat Al Franken the edge with 225 votes out of approximately three million ballots.
On a conference call Sunday, Coleman lawyer Joe Friedberg said he expects a "very, very tedious" proceeding. Friedberg, a prominent Minnesota lawyer, will present opening arguments in the case.
"It will be very boring," he said. "There’s no way I think I can interject any jokes into it."
So Joe Friedberg, Minnesota’s top white-shoe courtroom lawyer, is leading with the "Let me win even though you’re ahead or else we’ll keep holding the entire state and nation hostage with boring and bizarre stuff" strategy.
I was waiting to see Fritz Knaak’s and Tony Trimble’s names come up, but apparently the decision was made from On High that they couldn’t run a one-car parade — and really, when you’ve got the most prominent right-wing bloggers in the state, bloggers who are also practicing attorneys, repeatedly chewing you out over your bogus strategy, you know you’ve screwed up. So now, aside from Friedberg, the local talent has been pushed aside and the Pros from Dover are taking over spin duties:
Ben Ginsberg, a Coleman adviser since the recount who last week was chosen as the legal spokesman and who played a key role for Bush/Cheney in the Florida recount of 2000, admitted that in a "strictly legal sense" the burden falls on them in this case.
"We are, after all, the contestant," Ginsberg said, "but I have to say that we feel little weight on our shoulders as we go forward."
Yeah, because you know you’re going to lose. The Republican Senate caucus wouldn’t have agreed to three-member margins of dominance for the Democrats controlling Senate committees if they thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell of your winning. You’re not under any pressure to win, your job is to delay and obfuscate and muddy the waters so much that either people throw up their hands and call for a do-over, or to try and taint Al Franken’s win so he’s not perceived as legitimately Senator.
The urge to delay is likely one reason why, even though the trial was supposed to start at 1:00 pm CST today, it didn’t. Among other things, the Coleman campaign needs to subpoena all 10,000-odd properly rejected absentee ballots, ballots it wants added to the count even though they have already been reviewed and rejected twice. Why? Because the ballot copies they’d submitted as evidence were covered with marks and erased marks put on them by the Coleman team. As Eric Kleefeld, who has been covering this case for both Talking Points Memo and The UpTake, says, the Coleman people are very lucky the three-judge panel didn’t toss the whole case once the Franken team pointed out how messed up their evidence was.
Why is Norm fixating on absentee ballots that were rightly rejected twice per Minnesota law? No doubt because he’s hoping that you, the average person watching this from afar, will confuse these 10,000-odd rightly rejected absentee ballots with the wrongly rejected, or "fifth pile", absentee ballots, that Al Franken successfully sought to have included in the recount. That this in fact part of their game plan is shown by the Coleman team and their media surrogates’ attacking Al Franken for his alleged "hypocrisy" in wanting only legal absentee ballots counted.
The court proceedings start up again tomorrow at 9:00 am Central Standard Time. Follow along on The UpTake’s liveblog, and remember that the spin is quicker than the eye.
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it is the method of attrition
“very, very tedious” as the Coleman camp’s description of the court proceedings likely pace is a dead giveaway to what we already know to be true.
This is not a case to win a Senate seat. It is a p.r. campaign, using legal devices, to drag out as long as inhumanely possible the final resolution of the seat in Democrat Al Franken’s favor.
And it is a building block of the 2010 RNC/and their allies’ fundraising campaign in US Senate races.
You watch. Senator Franken will be their new bogeyman.
Where or Where is Norm getting his money from?
That’s a good question.
What happened to the “gentlemen” of the Senate or good “sportsmenship.” We saw all this obfuscation in Florida and have lived to pay the price. Is there any appeal in the words “good for the country”? Next they will bring in Rush Blowhard to do the play-by-play (I think I recall how successful he was at that.) I can hardly wait to hear the Franken commentary on the whole phony, ridiculous charade.
Next step get the MSM to ask that question or the Feds.
Lawyers don’t come cheap and I thought Norm was already in trouble for accepting gifts?
It’s extreme bad faith, extreme incompetence, or (very likely) both.
Several people with courtroom experience have noted that the judges have probably noticed Coleman’s intent to appeal every damned thing that doesn’t go his way, which is why they didn’t toss out the case yesterday when they were well within their rights to do so. They know he’s going to appeal, so they’re going to make sure that any appeals he makes don’t have any basis in fact and so won’t go anywhere.
In fact, the GOP brass has shipped in some veterans of the 2000 Florida recount, and they’re the ones apparently running things on the Coleman side; the local talent, aside from the high-profile Friedberg, has apparently now been largely made to go sit at the kiddie table.
Does Norm if he loses have to pay Al Franken’s Lawyer’s fees? If he does can he weasel out by declaring Bankruptcy?
Jane’s up, for those interested
Of Mileage And Money
Representation delayed is representation denied. So long as they can keep Franken tied up in court that’s one less Democratic vote on important legislation. Keeping Franken off the field is only half as good for Republicans as replacing him with Coleman but it’s still better than having him on the field. So, they’ll drag this out as long as they are allowed to.
Loser pays all court costs, per Minnesota law. So yes, Norm’s going to be refinancing his house a thirteenth time, most likely.
Where are the public protests with picket signs saying “who owns you, Normie”?
Until there is a rising public clamor to drown out Red Skull enabled by his cronies in the press, a public clamor that says directly to Norm, “have you no shame?”, then Minnesota may as well prepare itself to see this drag out into 2010.
Probably just as well for them. They have to live with the judges after Coleman has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The outsiders will just go somewhere else to ply their trade.
“There’s no way I think I can interject any jokes into it.”
I commiserate with him, since it’s very difficult to think of a bigger joke than Normie’s contesting of Franken’s legitimate win…
Two points: I believe from this point forward Coleman has to pay fees and costs of the proceeding if he loses. Second, according to public records, Coleman increased the mortgage indebtedness on his St Paul home to over $750,000 from 350,000 in the past year. The home is assessed at less than $650,000. He is apparently in serious trouble for not reporting the $75,000 his wife took (as his surrogate) from his Texas corporate sponsor. It appears the only purpose of this litigation is to discredit Franken and his victory. If he loses, which is certain, he will declare bankruptcy.
Two weeks ago, who would have thought that Roland Burris would be a seated Senator before Al Franken? Not me, certainly. For the sake of the people of Minnesota, I hope this is resolved quickly.
I wonder how much of this is about winning at this point. Seems like all this poitnless litigation doesn’t serve so much to get Coleman in office, as it does to make Franken’s inevitable win seem illegitemate.
There’s even talk of ‘reforming’ Minnesota’s election laws in order to force the use of machines for recounts, and to force a run-off in close races.
For this kind of thing, the GOP has infinitely deep pockets.
The GOP would be happy to further muddy the waters in an effort to dilute our faith in what has to be one of the best, if not the best set of election rules in the country.
I call this kind of behavior the full-court-press, it’s corrosive of the democratic process, it’s directly attributable to Karl Rove’s ‘permanent Republican majority’ gang and it’s long ago become tiresome.
That’s exactly it. Either that, or Republican lawyers have got so used to being coddled and protected that they’ve either forgotten or never learned the rules of evidence.
I’m amazed that Powerline hasn’t stunk things up so far. They’ve been pretty rational. The only thing I can figure is that they just don’t like Norm very much, either because he’s too liberal or because he doesn’t invite them to his swinger parties.
It’s actually to Norm’s credit, and to Minnesota’s, that he’s not a rich man. He’s an opportunist but not really a grafter. It really is a clean politics state.
Ginsberg is the slimiest of the slimy — one of the Swiftboaters. Presumably that is what he’s here for, to smear Franken (and the whole state of Minnesota along with him.)
If nothing else, the Coleman fiasco keeps one more dem vote out of the senate for a few months or so- maybe goopers think that’s worth the cost.
If Franken can get the public to start projectile vomiting every time they hear the word “republican”, this sorry mess will have been worth it for dems.
Coleman Astroturf campaign.
They’ll work the media and the Republican faithful in order to put pressure on the judges. The judges are locals and not big shots and they might succumb. This method has worked elsewhere. Digby had a piece about it a month or so ago.
Delay, discredit, and ask for a new election. They know they can’t win the recount.
True that.
I think even most non-political “moderate” people will think that the man responsible for this kind of hilarity can’t be all bad.