Coleman ran a good campaign, got better (Analysis by St. Paul Pioneer Press)

Although this article emphasizes what Coleman did right in his campaign, it delves into the Wellstone "memorial/rally" just as so many other articles have and will, and not without good reason. That event will live forever in political science textbooks in the "great screwups of all time" section...

Republican Norm Coleman won Minnesota's tumultuous U.S. Senate race Wednesday with a combination of a strong finish, an opposing party that shot itself in the foot and an inadvertent boost from a onetime foe.

Following an all-night hand count of paper ballots, Coleman was declared the winner at 9:40 a.m., when his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale, conceded. With votes from more than 99 percent of Minnesota's 4,106 precincts counted, Coleman led Mondale 49.6 percent to 47.2 percent — a margin of less than 52,000 out of 2.2 million votes cast.

Mondale took the blame for the loss, telling exhausted supporters in St. Paul, "It's on my shoulders."

But Mondale made the most of a frantic, five-day campaign that followed the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone, an event that shocked Minnesotans and deprived Democrats of their liberal icon.

Mondale and the Democrats didn't lose the race as much as Coleman won it, said Lilly Goren, who chairs the political science department at the College of St. Catherine. Even the most famous living Minnesotan couldn't adequately define himself to voters in just five days.

The former St. Paul mayor won "conducting a good campaign that got better and better in the final days," said former Republican Sen. Rudy Boschwitz.

In the weeks before Wellstone's death, Coleman started opening himself to the voters, showing his warm side. After the plane crash, he proved himself in a crisis, said former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber, a leading Republican strategist. Coleman grieved with the state in a compassionate and healing manner that reinforced his bond with voters.

In addition, he effectively drove home his message that the choice was between a bright future and a failed past — a subtle way of calling attention to his age, 53, and Mondale's, 74.

Coleman also benefited from both a historic DFL blunder that turned Wellstone's memorial service into a noisy political rally and Independence Party Gov. Jesse Ventura's subsequent tirades directed mostly at Democrats.

After Wellstone's death, many political observers thought the race was over for Coleman. They expected his Democratic replacement to be swept into office on a wave of sympathy.

But when Wellstone's supporters politicized the memorial service, they sparked a fierce backlash. "It was the DFL's Boschwitz letter to the Jewish community," said veteran DFL operative Fred Gates, referring to the former senator's 1990 letter criticizing his challenger, Wellstone, for raising his children outside their faith. That 11th-hour attack contributed to Boschwitz's defeat.

The partisan speeches at Wellstone's memorial service angered and galvanized Republicans, Weber said. Before the memorial service, they had suspended campaigning out of respect for Wellstone. But after the service turned into a rally, Republicans were freed and motivated to resume campaigning with a fury.

Angered by the political speeches, Ventura stormed out of the memorial service and blasted the DFLers in a series of public statements. That stirred public resentment in what pollster Bill Morris calls "Jesse Country," the 6th Congressional District, which arcs from Washington County to St. Cloud. Ventura carried the district by a wide margin in 1998, when he defeated Coleman and Hubert Humphrey III.

Later, "Jesse kept the controversy over the (Mondale) coronation before the voters," Morris said, by angrily criticizing Democrats, Republicans and the media for excluding his party's candidate from the only debate between Mondale and Coleman on Monday.

In Tuesday's election, Coleman ran 20 percentage points ahead of Mondale in the 6th District, his largest margin in any congressional district. Morris attributed much of that margin to Ventura.

Coleman, President Bush's hand-picked candidate, also got an 11th-hour boost from the White House. Vice President Dick Cheney and first lady Laura Bush warmed up the crowds Friday and Saturday before the president's big rally for Coleman at the Xcel Energy Center on Sunday.

Bush's visit was a mixed blessing, however, a Coleman campaign insider said. It fired up the loyal Republican troops, but internal polls showed that the president's partisan message undermined Coleman's support among independent voters, who were attracted by his campaign theme of working across party lines to get things done.

In the end, an exhausted Coleman said Wednesday, his message of bipartisanship and optimism about the future prevailed.

"I think independent voters were looking for somebody to fix the problems," he said. "Seniors want a prescription drug plan now. Farmers want disaster relief now. That was a pragmatic thing, and I had a record of getting stuff done in a bipartisan way."

He wouldn't have been in a position to win had he not raised more than $8 million and spent two years courting first the Republican faithful and later the rest of the electorate.

First, his campaign staff took a page out of the DFL book by putting together a big, well-organized grassroots operation to turn out voters. Second, after waging a negative television advertising campaign through most of the year, Coleman brought in a new media consultant, Scott Howell, in September to produce more positive ads, said campaign manager Ben Whitney. Howell also produced ads for the Republican challengers who unseated Democratic senators Tuesday in Georgia and Missouri.

That softened Coleman's tone and made him a more likeable candidate, especially after Wellstone's death, said University of St. Thomas political scientist Nancy Zingale.

From a personal standpoint, I found the last days of this campaign unforgettable. Though I couldn't have been farther from him ideologically, I had been saddened by Wellstone's tragic death. The choice of Mondale, I thought, was as good a choice as the Minnesota DFL could have made from their perspective, and I was 99% reconciled to his election.

Then came the "memorial." I was watching it on TV and simultaneously surfing Free Republic. This forum, of course, began to light up like the Tokyo skyline by night. Disapproval gave way to outrage as the "mourners" wearing Wellstone campaign buttons (!) mugged for the cameras; as they booed their Governor, and Trent Lott and whatever other Republicans they saw on the jumbotron; as Wellstone's campaign worker and sons whipped the crowd into a frenzy; as Harkin made his unforgivable rant. I could literally feel the political earth move as I sat there. "Holy @#$%," I said to my dog (the only one present at the time), "we just won the Minnesota Senate seat! And maybe even control of the whole Senate!"

The paragraph I highlighted in the article above has it just right: Republicans were now free to cast off their reticence, and go on the attack. Mondale could have run out the clock, but now we had an opening big enough to drive a Mack truck through. The other major Twin Cities paper (the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) says its tracking poll showed Mondale up 54-39 on the day before the memorial, even though he wasn't yet the official nominee, and I believe it. What we saw over the course of an hour or so was a political meltdown of historic proportions. Anyone who witnessed it will not soon forget it.

Mark Wellstone chants 'We will win' during his speech about his late father during a public memorial service Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2002, in Minneapolis for U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife Sheila, daughter Marcia and three staff members who died Oct. 25 in a plane crash in Eveleth, Minn. (AP Photo/Jerry Holt, Pool)

My nomination for Jackass Of The Month

One of the happiest guys in the world right now (as I posted here yesterday - and someone on Brit Hume's panel picked it up last night) is Fritz Mondale. Mondale accepted the ballot position as a favor to the party, but never in the world has there been a guy happier to have lost. Mondull has a very lucrative deal with a local law firm, gets to go home every night, travel when he likes, and in general, enjoy a pretty stress-free semi-retirement. Which is as it should be. He's earned it.

Had he won (and chosen to serve the full term), he would have given all that up to serve out much of his final life in DC - and that can't be nearly so appealing as what he's got at home.

Nope. Fritz WOULD have liked the seat to stay Dem, but he's REALLY glad he gets to stay home, make some money, and enjoy the good life as he chooses. He's one happy loser.

Michael

Note well that the article refers to the service as "a historic DFL blunder." Let's be absolutely clear here. That service was orchestrated, not by the family, certainly not by the Riverside Funeral Home (or whatever), but by the Minnesota DFL, with, I suspect, an assist from the national Dems. It was political from the get-go, and the people of Minnesota were rightly repulsed.

I believe it was orchestrated at the DNC and had the backing of the clintons!

You certainly cannot blame the family or DFL for the high fiving, etc. from the clintons. They were having a grand old time celebrating their supposed victory in Minnesota and putting Mondale back in the Senate!

This is great -- even with this the Clinton DemocRATs blame someone else! Gotta love it!

The Democrat metamorphous of the Wellstone Memorial

Wellstone as Wellhead...They saw this emotional opportunity as a stealth source of spewing bile all over the memory of fine people, to advance their archetypal Orwellian, totalitarian society! They gathered their usual Animal farm of characters and delivered a message that was the typical Rosettastone of meanness and misinformation.
Those outside of the inner circle, saw this Steppingstone, as a cheap use of TV time to introduce their Stoneage replacement to an shocked nationwide audience. This transparent, an arrogant display backfired, and the voters Stoned the
candidate and the Demonic Party... Ohwell It won't matter when they slither back onder their rocks and do what they do anyway when things get too hard..Getstoned!!

Had he won (and chosen to serve the full term), he would have given all that up to serve out much of his final life in DC - and that can't be nearly so appealing as what he's got at home.

Especially true if he'd have to serve as a member of the minority. Hard to imagine ol' Fritz -- former mover-and-shaker, VP, Presidential candidate -- sitting as a minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (for example), casting losing vote after losing vote against bringing Dubya's nominees to the floor for a full Senate vote.

Someone made an interesting point on another board yesterday... Recall that Mondale lost 49 states in 1984, and now he's lost Minnesota. Has any major party candidate ever lost all 50 states before? I don't think so.

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