|
||||||||||||
|
|
Minnesota's US Senate Candidate Profiles: Norm Coleman
Senator Norm Coleman drew a huge round of applause the day he formally launched his campaign last spring, with a line that doesn't look all that spectacular on paper. "Minnesota is a place that respects hard work, common sense and public service!" But his loyal followers, and anyone who reviews Coleman's political career, knows that "work" is a recurring theme that runs through his campaign rhetoric. It's a reflection of a politician determined to move beyond ideology and focus on the job at hand. "I'm in the get-it-done business," the Republican told KARE recently, "I'm in the let's-solve-a-problem business." He grew up in a working class family of eight children in 1950's Brooklyn, New York. His father, the late Norm Coleman Sr., was a World War II veteran who lost his electronics business and went to work as a carpenter. "I remember things were great, and then things were not so great and we had to move in with my grandmother," Coleman recalls. He can't remember ever meeting a Republican in his boyhood neighborhood. "You know I just grew up in a traditional Democrat family," said Coleman, "I remember dropping literature for Adlai Stevenson when I was seven-years-old." As an undergrad at Hoffstra University in New York he headed the campus anti-war committee, and a classic yearbook picture captures that moment in time quite well. He is standing next to other activists at a rally, hair down to his shoulders and fist raised into the air. "A lot has changed since then," said Coleman, "Getting married, having children and a taking on a mortgage will change a lot of things." He started at Brooklyn University law school, but followed a mentor to the University of Iowa law school. From there he was recruited by the Minnesota Attorney General's office. By the time he married Laurie Casserly of Saint Paul in 1981, he was a deputy attorney general. The Colemans would become parents four times, but only two of the children - Sarah and Jacob - survived beyond infancy. Two others, Adam and Grace, died as babies due to a rare genetic disorder. Political Career Coleman ran for mayor of Saint Paul in 1989, but withdrew from the race when he couldn't gain the DFL endorsement. In 1993 he didn't let the endorsement, or lack thereof, stop him. He ran as a Democrat against the DFL's endorsed candidate, State Representative Andy Dawkins. His pro-business, law-and-order tone won the day, and in 1994 Coleman became the mayor of Saint Paul. The Xcel Energy Center, and the NHL's Minnesota Wild, remain the icons of the Norm Coleman era in the Capital City. But he prefers to emphasize the revival of downtown Saint Paul. "Bringing hockey back was part of it," he argues, "But so was growing 18,000 jobs and rebuilding the riverfront and changing the attitude in Saint Paul." Along the way Mayor Coleman changed party labels. But his jump to the GOP didn't keep him from winning a second term in the fall of 1997. "I didn't switch a single position personally," Coleman said, "I'm still pro-life, and I'm still for low taxes. Positions that I held as a conservative Democrat, I didn't change them when I became a Republican." Only a couple of months into his second term, Coleman decided to run for Governor. As the new arena began to take shape in downtown, he campaigned as a "can-do" results-oriented public servant. At first the major storyline was that he was taking on his old boss, Democrat Attorney General Skip Humphrey. That's the same Skip Humphrey who can be seen cheering in old video clips of Coleman's first victory party as Saint Paul Mayor. But as the two of them sparred publicly, they were eclipsed by the Reform Party's rising star, Jesse Ventura. "Skip and I kind of fighting with each other and there was this third guy that both of us kind of ignored," Coleman remarked, "And the voters said a pox on both your houses and elected Jesse." In 2001, as State Representative Tim Pawlenty was on the verge of announcing a run for the US Senate, he fielded a call from Dick Cheney asking him to stand down. The White House wanted to avoid a contentious primary fight between Coleman and Pawlenty, and wanted Coleman to have a clear path to the Republican nomination. Pawlenty ran instead for Governor, putting Coleman on a collision course with the incumbent two-term Democrat Paul Wellstone. Coleman went after Wellstone for running for a third term, after earlier pledges to limit himself to 12 years in Washington. He also questioned Wellstone's effectiveness in Washington, as a liberal maverick. As the race tightened, the White House put on the full-court press, bringing President George W. Bush to Minnesota four times on behalf of Coleman. At the time Bush was at the peak of his popularity. "You know that what is best for Minnesota, and what is best for America is that Norm Coleman become the next United States Senator," President Bush told the crowd at an October rally. But 11 days before Election Day, Wellstone died in a plane crash, along with his wife and daughter and five others. It sent waves of shock and grief throughout the nation, and sent the political scene into chaos. "We suspended everything until after Paul was buried, and then Mondale was nominated as a candidate," Coleman remembered, "So that was a five day campaign, that was it." Even while his campaign was in pause mode it received an unexpected boost, when a televised Wellstone memorial service at the University of Minnesota took on a partisan tone. The ensuing backlash against Democrats erased any possibility of a sympathy vote factor. Former Vice President Walter Mondale stepped into Wellstone's slot on the ballot and went toe-to-toe with Coleman in a tense, televised debate, but that night the energized Coleman sprinted hard to the finish line and won a seat in the US Senate by 49,000 votes. Senator Norm Coleman He was sworn into office in a time framed by the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Senator Coleman, like most in Washington, feared Saddam Hussein. It comes across in three different interview clips from early 1993. In 2004, as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Coleman targeted fraud in the United Nations oil-for-food program in pre-war Iraq, and called on UN Secretary Kofi Annan to quit for failed oversight of the operation which allowed Saddam to pad his pockets. He now takes heat because the panel, at the time, did not look into fraud and abuse by profiteering military contractors taking part in the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq. Coleman insists that was work best left to other government agencies, which later took up those probes. He's proud of his committee's work, uncovering waste and detecting serious lapses in port security. "We've identified more than $80 billion of tax dollars that we should be getting, and we've brought billions back into treasury to take the burden off taxpayers," Coleman told KARE. In the summer of 2004 Republicans deployed Coleman to the Democratic National Convention in Boston to play the role of "truth squad" leader, in the counterattack to Senator John Kerry. At the same time, comedian, political writer and liberal radio talk show host Al Franken was already starting to nip at Coleman's heels. "They have sent Coleman out to call Kerry a flip-flopper," Franken told a group of retired labor activists, "Isn't that great?" That year, however, Coleman was more focused on reelecting his embattled president. "We have to do all we can to get out the vote," Coleman said during an election eve bus tour for the Bush campaign in Minnesota, "Folks on the other side, there's a long of anger out there about the President." The Record Coleman voted with the President 90 percent of the time during his first two years in the Senate, and dialed that back down into the 70 percent range over the past few years which puts him behind other Republicans in that respect. Critics call it calculated to make himself appear more independent. Coleman scoffs at the idea. "Those numbers don't mean anything because we're talking about different types of votes in different years," he protests, "I voted for what I believed was best for Minnesotans, for what reflected Minnesota's values." He counts new renewable fuel standards among his most significant accomplishments in the Senate. "That bill started the renewable revolution here in Minnesota," he told KARE, "There were subsidies for oil companies too, but sometimes you have to vote for what will be best for your state even if you don't like everything in the bill." He's also proud of a bill he co-authored with Senator Mark Dayton to pay for travel expenses for soldiers on leave. Prior to that, the military expected service members to foot the air fare from bases on the coasts to their home states. And, despite its shortcomings, the Medicare Part D prescription drug program "has provided prescription medications to tens of thousands of Minnesotans." Coleman's rivals question how he could support that plan, when it bars the government from negotiating lower drug costs. The Republican incumbent counters that it's about what is possible in Washington, when it takes 60 votes to get any bill passed in the Senate. "You've got to make a choice," he exclaims, "Sometimes there are things that you don't like that are in that bill, and you've got to decide are those things that I like more important than the things that I dislike? And then you have to act." On the looming question of health care, Coleman opposes universal health care, especially any single-payer version operated by the government. But he wants to make it impossible for private insurers to deny policies for Americans. "Insurance companies shouldn't be able to deny you coverage. I don't think anybody should be uninsurable!" When it comes to Iraq, Coleman has opposed firm timetables for withdrawal, but says it will soon become a non-issue. "Ultimately the commanders on the ground with the next president will make that decision," he said, "And I don't think we're that far apart at this point in time because of the success that we've had." "I want that decision made in consultation with the commanders on the ground, not because a political party has picked an arbitrary deadline," he added, "It would not be in the interest of those who've sacrificed and those who will be called to sacrifice later." Coleman voted with the majority for the bailout bill, or the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. "We're going to make sure that we're going to protect taxpayers," he said October 11th in a senate debate, "We're going to make sure that we're going to protect taxpayers." "And it really was in a way like putting a tourniquet around a bleeding artery that's broken, but it isn't the solution." He maintains solving the energy crisis and working for bipartisan solutions is the best way to look out for the interests of Americans. "I think what Minnesotans need is hope that Congress can put aside the partisan side, and show a little confidence," Coleman asserted. "There's fear out there! And if all we have is the partisan bickering then in the end fear is going to prevail and that's not what we need now."
|
 MORE HEADLINES
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
