Free Republic

Minnesota’s Senate race isn’t one of the best chances for Republicans to pick up a seat, but a new poll shows that it’s a possibility. A new Suffolk University poll finds Democratic incumbent Al Franken leading all four, relatively unknown Republican candidates, but he fails to pick up majority support from voters. In four head-to-head match-ups with declared Republican candidates, Franken gets roughly 44 percent support to the Republicans’ 29 percent. While his lead is in the double digits, the gap falls within the percentage of Minnesotans who say they remain undecided on who to support. Nearly one-fifth, or 19...

Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is having a bit of a freak out out over Sarah Palin's endorsement on Thursday of state senator Julianne Ortman, the leading candidate to win the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in Minnesota and challenge him in the November general election. On Monday, Senator Franken sent out a dire email warning of Palin's influence on the election. He also could not resist attacking the Koch brothers as well. "Sarah Palin is now involved in the race — she just endorsed the Republican who, according to the Koch-affiliated poll, is only three points down," he...

You’re probably sourly amused at all the signalling done in these paragraphs: A new Minnesota poll, commissioned by a partisan group, finds that Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken is “potentially vulnerable” as he mounts his bid for re-election. It found that Franken has a 3 percentage lead over Republican Julianne Ortman and a 6 percentage point lead over Republican Mike McFadden. The poll was conducted by Magellan Strategies for American Encore, a group connected to the Koch Brothers that is already running television ads bashing Franken. It included 1,081 likely Minnesota voters in late March. …because you probably also suspect...

Framing the potential Senate contest as the "The Clown vs. The Mama Grizzly," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Minnesota State Senator Julianne Ortman Thursday in her bid to get the GOP nomination and unseat Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). The primary is August 14. Palin slammed the former Saturday Night Live comedian's record in the Senate as a "joke" and, riffing off of Franken's Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot book, called Franken just a "Big Fat Liberal" who voted with Obama 100% of the time: Al Franken’s career has been a joke; we all know this. The biggest...