Norman Bertram Coleman, Jr. (born August 17, 1949) is an American attorney and politician. He was a United States senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009. Coleman was elected in 2002 and served in the 108th, 109th, and 110th Congresses. Before becoming a senator, he was mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota, from 1994 to 2002. Previously a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), Coleman became a Republican in 1996.
Coleman's 2008 US Senate re-election bid, in which he was challenged by Democrat Al Franken and former senator Dean Barkley, was long unresolved. His term ended on January 3, 2009, and after a six-month legal battle in which he lost each of his contests, the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously declared Franken the election winner by 312 votes (out of over 3 million cast) on June 30, 2009, prompting Coleman to concede.
As of 2011, Coleman works as an adviser and board director with the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Coleman was born in New York to Beverly and Norman Bertram Coleman, Sr. He was a graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn and Hofstra University on Long Island. New York Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, attended high school with Coleman; Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are both graduates of the same high school.
During his time at college, Coleman was an active member of the 1960s counterculture and a liberal Democrat. "Carting a bullhorn around campus, he'd regularly lecture students about the immorality of the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War." He successfully ran for president of the student senate during his junior year. Under Coleman, the senate refused to ratify the newspaper's editor and her co-editor and cut some funding to the newspaper. But after refusing to swear in the editor on four different occasions, the senate finally backed down. He allegedly smoked marijuana, and he celebrated his 20th birthday at the Woodstock Festival. He worked as a roadie for Jethro Tull and Ten Years After, amongst others.
He is Chairman of the American Action Network, a center right 501 (c)(4) whose mission is to broaden the appeal and reach of center-right ideas. He is also a senior government advisor to Hogans Lovell, a prominent national law firm .
Coleman attended Brooklyn Law School from 1972 until 1974 but later received his Juris Doctor from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1976. Coleman then joined the office of the Minnesota Attorney General as a prosecutor, eventually rising to chief prosecutor and then solicitor general. Coleman left the Attorney General's office upon being elected the mayor of St. Paul.
Coleman married actress Laurie Coleman (née Casserly) in 1981. They have two children, Jacob and Sarah. Two other children died during infancy (Adam, 1983; Grace, 1992) from a rare genetic disorder known as Zellweger syndrome.
Coleman is a member of the Freemason fraternity, having been made a Mason at sight in 2003 by then Grand Master of Masons in Minnesota, Neil Neddermeyer.
On September 11, 2009, Coleman announced he had been diagnosed with Bell's Palsy, a typically reversible condition.
In 1993, Coleman was elected mayor of St. Paul as a Democrat. Coleman had also run for mayor in 1989, but dropped out when Jim Scheibel won the DFL endorsement. In 1996, he joined the Republican Party and was reelected in 1997 as a Republican, beating DFL nominee State Senator Sandy Pappas.
Norm Coleman's best-known, accomplishment as mayor of Saint Paul was bringing professional hockey back to Minnesota. In 1993, the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas, Texas. The loss of their National Hockey League franchise was particularly tough on local sports fans since many felt that Minnesota was the hockey capital of the United States. Coleman played to these feelings as well as the sibling rivalry between Saint Paul and Minneapolis in his efforts. Several attempts to lure existing NHL teams to play at the Civic Center Arena with corporate welfare failed. On June 7, 1997 the NHL awarded Saint Paul an expansion franchise, later named the Minnesota Wild, that would play a new arena in downtown at the site of Civic Center Arena. The new arena, later named the Xcel Energy Center, was built with $65 million from state taxpayers and $30 million from the city of Saint Paul.
After succeeding in bringing professional hockey to Saint Paul, Coleman also attempted to bring Major League Baseball, making several attempts to get the Minnesota Twins to move from Minneapolis. The closest these attempts came to success was in 1999 when Saint Paul voters rejected a referendum that would have authorized a 0.5% sales tax in the city to pay for a stadium in downtown Saint Paul. In 2006 plans were finalized to build the Twins a new stadium, later named Target Field, in downtown Minneapolis.
Coleman's lobbying for the hockey team and arena raised his profile around the state and made him contacts that would help him in his later runs for statewide office. In 1998 he lost a bid for governor of Minnesota to former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, a member of the Reform Party of Minnesota; the DFL candidate was Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III.
Coleman had made plans for a second run for governor in 2002, but was persuaded by Karl Rove and George W. Bush to run against incumbent Senator Paul Wellstone in that year's Senate election. The White House was determined to unseat Wellstone, and felt Coleman, with his popularity in heavily Democratic St. Paul, offered the best chance of doing so. Coleman easily won the Republican nomination.
Coleman and Wellstone were neck-and-neck in most polls for most of the campaign. Wellstone died in a plane crash on October 25, 2002. The Democrats named former Vice President Walter Mondale to replace Wellstone on the ballot. Mondale had held the same Senate seat from 1964 to 1977. Coleman narrowly defeated Mondale in the election, winning by just over 61,000 votes out of over 2 million statewide. Coleman succeeded Dean Barkley, who had been appointed by Ventura to serve the remaining two months of Wellstone's term.
In April 2003, Coleman told a Capitol Hill reporter that he was a "99% improvement" over Wellstone because he had a better working relationship with the White House. Many Wellstone supporters found this offensive and insulting, and at least one member of Congress urged Coleman to apologize. In 2004 Coleman campaigned for the chairmanship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), but was narrowly defeated for the post by North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole in a 28-27 vote.
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Coleman's politics have changed dramatically throughout his political career. In college, Coleman was a liberal Democrat and was actively involved in the anti-war movement of the early 1970s. He once was suspended for leading a sit-in protest. He ran for student senate and opined in the school newspaper that his fellow students should vote for him because he knew that, "These conservative kids don't fuck or get high like we do (purity, you know)... Already the cries of motherhood, apple pie, and Jim Buckley reverberate through the halls of the Student Center. Everyone watch out, the 1950s bobby-sox generation is about to take over."
While running for mayor in 1993, Coleman wrote in a letter to the City Convention Delegates: "I have never sought any other political office. I have no other ambition other than to be mayor." He goes on in the same letter to say:I am a lifelong Democrat. Some accuse me of being the fiscal conservative in this race — I plead guilty! I'm not afraid to be tight with your tax dollars. Yet, my fiscal conservatism does not mean I am any less progressive in my Democratic ideals. From Bobby Kennedy to George McGovern to Warren Spannaus to Hubert Humphrey to Walter Mondale — my commitment to the great values of our party has remained solid.
In December 1996, Coleman announced he was leaving the DFL party to join the Republican Party. He cited his frustrations with the Democratic Party and his belief that the Republican Party offered the best chance to continue his efforts to hold the line on taxes and grow jobs.
Many in Minnesota speculated that his switch was motivated by his known aspirations for statewide office. As an abortion opponent and a frequent adversary of public employee unions, Coleman's positions put him at odds with the DFL Party leadership in Minnesota. In a letter to supporters announcing the switch, Coleman wrote that “while the political party I belong to changes, nothing about how I govern or what I believe changes at all.” He was re-elected as St. Paul Mayor in 1997, with nearly 60% of the vote.
Prior to becoming a Republican and running against him in 2002, Coleman had chaired Wellstone's Senate re-election campaign in 1996. While making the Wellstone nomination speech at the 1996 state DFL convention, Coleman stated: "Paul Wellstone is a Democrat, and I am a Democrat." At this point in time, tensions were so high between Coleman and the DFL party that a number of delegates at the convention were loudly booing Coleman's speech.
Coleman was a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership. In March 2007, National Journal ranked Coleman the fourth most liberal Republican in the Senate. GovTrack, an independent tracking website, also describes Coleman as a "moderate Republican" based on their own bill analysis.
In September 2008, Coleman joined the bipartisan Gang of 20, which was seeking a bipartisan solution to the American energy crisis. The group pushed for a bill that would encourage state-by-state decisions on offshore drilling and authorize billions of dollars for conservation and alternative energy.
He received a 14% progressive rating from Progressive Punch And he scored a 73% conservative rating by the conservative group, SBE Council. In contrast, Minnesota's other senator at the time, Democrat Mark Dayton, received a score of 90% progressive and 9% conservative by the same groups.
From the start, Coleman was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and the War on Terror. He has been a consistent supporter of the war over the past several years, and generally tended to agree with the positions of the Bush Administration on Iraq. He is in favor of the eventual removal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but does not believe in any kind of timetable for the removal of troops until the situation in Iraq becomes more stable. According to Eric Black of MinnPost.com, "He believes the prospects are good for a drawdown of U.S. troops, but it must be done based on conditions on the ground as reported by commanders in the field, not according to an "arbitrary" timetable set for "political" reasons in Washington."
Coleman was a strong supporter of President Bush's attempts in 2006 and 2007 to pass comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. Senate, one of the few Republicans to do so despite the insistence of many in the GOP that it was "amnesty for illegal aliens".
On December 11, 2005, Coleman voted in favor of invoking cloture on, thus advancing, a defense appropriations bill that included oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) after having pledged in 2002 to oppose such drilling. He stated that he did so because although he planned to vote against the bill, he did not believe that a filibuster was warranted. In spite of this, many environmental advocacy groups (most notably the Sierra Club) viewed his vote as a betrayal of his promise. His vote notwithstanding, the filibuster held, and Coleman voted to strip the ANWR provision from the bill in a subsequent vote. Sen. Coleman received a score of 33% for 2007 from the League of Conservation Voters, in their view taking the pro-environment position in just five of fourteen cases.
Coleman has campaigned as a pro-life candidate since at least 1993. Coleman attributes his position on abortion to the death of two of his four children in infancy from a rare genetic disease. He supports limiting stem cell research to adult stem cells and stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood, and, in July 2006, he voted against lifting restrictions on federal research dollars for new embryonic stem cell lines. Senator Coleman is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership a group which supports Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Senator Coleman voted in favor of legislative intervention to prolong the life of severely brain-damaged Floridian Terri Schiavo.
Coleman opposes recognition of same-sex marriages by either the federal or state governments. In his 2002 Senate campaign, Coleman pledged support for an amendment to the United States Constitution that would ban any state from issuing marriage licenses to people of the same sex. In 2004 and in June 2006, he voted in favor of such an amendment.
When he was mayor, Coleman refused to sign a city proclamation celebrating the annual gay pride festival, explaining his opposition: "What we have had in St. Paul and Minneapolis for many years is signing a joint proclamation making it gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender month. I will say that I support human rights... And of course that includes sexual orientation. On the other hand, I've felt very strongly that it wasn't government's responsibility to give proclamations for people's sexuality. I don't think government has a responsibility to issue awards for one's sexuality." Coleman hired Susan Kimberly, a transwoman to be his deputy mayor in 1998. Kimberly also worked as state legislative director in Coleman's Minnesota Senate office.
Coleman recently made this statement about marijuana legalization: "I oppose the legalization of marijuana because, as noted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, marijuana can have serious adverse health affects on individuals. The health problems that may occur from this highly addictive drug include short-term memory loss, anxiety, respiratory illness and a risk of lung cancer that far exceeds that of tobacco products. It would also make our transportation, schools and workplaces, just as examples, more dangerous." Coleman himself, however, was known to be a frequent marijuana smoker as well as a marijuana legalization activist as an undergraduate student at Hofstra University.
In 2002, the Bush Administration persuaded Coleman to run against Wellstone rather than try for the governorship.
In December 2005, Coleman voted for a budget bill that cut funding from a number of programs, but kept funding for sugar beet farmers in Minnesota after Rove asked him to support the administration's position on the issue. Coleman told Congress Daily that he would not vote for a bill that cut sugar beet funding but "Karl Rove called me and asked what I wanted. A few hours later it was out of the bill."
On March 14, 2006, Coleman called on President Bush to replace or reorganize his staff, stating that they did not sufficiently have their "ears to the ground" on matters like Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers' failed Supreme Court nomination, and the Dubai Ports World controversy and accusing the administration of having a "tin ear." He stated that they showed inadequate "political sensitivity" in their handling of the issues.
On January 22, 2007, Coleman, along with fellow Republican Senators John Warner and Susan Collins, joined Democrats in opposition to President Bush's planned troop increase in Iraq.
Coleman expressed reservations about supporting DR-CAFTA (Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement) unless the interests of the domestic U.S. sugar industry (including Minnesota's sugar beet industry) were accommodated. He voted in favor of DR-CAFTA after obtaining quotas imposed on foreign sugar until 2008. He stood behind President Bush on August 2, 2005, as the trade agreement was signed into law. "This is a 3 year insurance policy that I have purchased for my sugar farmers..." he said.
Coleman supported allowing workers to divert a portion of their Social Security contributions to the creation of individual accounts to be invested in the stock market, a variation of a general plan referred to by supporters as "personal accounts," referred to historically as "privatization." He agreed with President Bush's statements that the contribution changes would apply to those younger than 55. "The Social Security system for those folks 55 and over will not change in any way, shape or form — no ifs, ands, or buts," he said.
In May 2005, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Coleman, held hearings on their investigation of abuses of the UN Oil-for-Food program, including oil smuggling, illegal kickbacks and use of surcharges, and Saddam Hussein's use of oil vouchers for the purpose of buying influence abroad. These Oil-for-Food Program Hearings covered corporations (including Bayoil) and several well-known political figures of various nations (including Vladimir Zhironovsky), but are much remembered for the confrontational appearance of British Member of Parliament George Galloway, a member of the RESPECT The Unity Coalition (Respect), a then-new British political party. Coleman accused Galloway of abuses, which Galloway forcefully denied. The previous year, Coleman had called for the UN's Secretary-general Kofi Annan to resign for other alleged program abuses. On June 2, 2006, Coleman responded to criticism that he had insufficiently investigated the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) for sanctions busting, saying that there were legal and cost hurdles. The Prime Minister of Australia at the time, John Howard, was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq. The Australian ambassador to the U.S., Michael Thawley, met with Coleman in late 2004 to lobby against any investigation of AWB.
On February 10, 2006, in a meeting of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs of which Coleman was a member, during testimony of former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown, Coleman attacked Brown for poor leadership during Hurricane Katrina disaster relief efforts, "you didn't provide the leadership, even with structural infirmities." Coleman went on, "you're not prepared to kind of put a mirror in front of your face and recognize your own inadequacies" and "the record reflects that you didn't get it or you didn't in writing or in some way make commands that would move people to do what has to be done until way after it should have been done." Brown responded combatively, "well, Senator, that's very easy for you to say sitting behind that dais and not being there in the middle of that disaster, watching that human suffering and watching those people dying and trying to deal with those structural dysfunctionalities" and implored Coleman to stick to questions. He later likened Coleman's charges to a "drive-by shooting." Brown had recently stated that he notified Department of Homeland Security and the White House of the tremendous scale of Katrina flooding earlier than had been previously reported.
On March 14, 2006, Coleman introduced a bill that would ban foreign companies from operating ports in the United States. (S.2410, 3/14/2006: A bill to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to limit foreign control of investments in certain United States critical infrastructure).
In March 2007, Coleman introduced legislation (S. 754) to kill the Defense Travel System, a program intended to automate the purchasing of travel services by the U.S. Department of Defense, which accounts for more than half of the federal government's total outlays of around $11 billion annually for travel, including transportation, lodging, and rental cars. Shortly after he filed the legislation, Coleman received a generous contribution from the CEO of Carlson Companies, which owns Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a business travel management firm whose CW Government Travel unit provides travel management services for some federal agencies. The Carlson Companies is based in Minnesota. Over the years, Coleman has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from people connected with Carlson Companies.
While running for re-election in 2008, Coleman was mentioned in a Texas lawsuit by Paul McKim, CEO of Deep Marine Technologies (DMT) against Nasser Kazeminy. Kazeminy is a longtime supporter of Coleman and owner of a controlling share of DMT. The petition alleges that Kazeminy used DMT to funnel $75,000 or more to Coleman's wife Laurie through her employer, Hays Companies, in order to enrich Senator Coleman. McKim's petition covers several issues, of which the Coleman matter is only one. Neither Coleman nor his wife are named as defendants in the suit. On Friday, October 31, a related suit was filed in Delaware Chancery Court by minority shareholders in DMT. The Delaware suit also alleges that DMT was used as a conduit for unearned funds to Laurie Coleman through Hays Companies, at the behest of Kazeminy. As in the Texas case, the Colemans are not named as defendants. Coleman has not been charged with any ethical or legal wrongdoing.
Coleman responded with a campaign ad in which he denied the allegations and blamed them on his opponent in the 2008 senate race, Democrat Al Franken.
Coleman's most recent Senate financial disclosure form discloses that Laurie Coleman gets a salary from Hays Companies, but Senate rules do not require the salary amount to be revealed.
In June of 2011, Coleman and Kazeminy were vindicated when former FBI Director Louis Freeh announced that the investigation against them had been closed.
Freeh, an attorney for Kazeminy, and a former FBI Director in the Clinton Administration said he learned the Justice Department had ended the investigation in a February 24th meeting with Andrew Levchuk of the department's Public Integrity Section in Washington.
Freeh was hired by Kazeminy to conduct a thorough, independent investigation of all charges, and concluded that there was no wrong doing or impropriety one behalf of the Colemans or Kazeminy. Freeh said both his investigation, and a separate Deep Marine board investigation, concluded McKim made false claims in an attempt to force a larger severance package out of Deep Marine.
McKim’s allegations were repeated hundreds of times in local and national media reports during the waning days of the 2008 election. According to Coleman, millions were spent to them “into multi million dollar attacks against my family and Nasser Kazeminy”.
Freeh says McKim later prepared an affidavit that would have recanted his allegations against the Coleman’s and Kazeminy in exchange for a financial settlement. He concluded that McKim had a clear motive to use false allegations as leverage to enrich himself. McKim still questions the legitimacy of insurance payments and says he has done nothing wrong , but another attorney for Kazeminy says his client has not ruled out future litigation against McKim.
Political observers now suggest it is possible that the allegations against Coleman may have handed victory to Al Franken, who ended up winning the seat by a razor-thin margin of a few hundred votes after a contentious recount process.
In 2008, Coleman's opponents for reelection were Dean Barkley and the DFL nominee, former Air America host and comedian Al Franken. On the day after the election, Coleman led in votes and claimed victory in the race. But Minnesota law requires an automatic recount when the margin between the leading candidates is less than 0.5% of the vote, and the margin between Coleman and Franken was about 0.01%. Barkley came in third with 15%.
The initial results of the recount put Franken ahead by 225 votes, out of almost 2.9 million votes cast. On December 24, 2008, after losing a unanimous decision at the hands of the Minnesota Supreme Court, Coleman's lawyers stated that it was now a "virtual certainty" that Coleman would contest the results of the election.
Coleman's term officially expired on January 3, 2009.
On January 5, Franken was certified as the winner of the recount by 225 votes. Coleman filed a legal challenge of the results on January 6, and a three-judge panel was seated.
On February 3, the panel allowed Coleman to introduce evidence that as many as 4,800 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and should now be counted. The Franken campaign had tried to limit Coleman to bringing evidence on only the 650 absentee ballots cited in the initial court filing.
On April 1, the panel ordered that an additional 400 absentee ballots be examined. After examining the 400 ballots on April 6, the panel ordered that an additional 351 ballots be opened and counted. On April 7, the additional 351 ballots were opened and counted before the panel and a packed courtroom. Franken got an additional 198 votes, Coleman gained 111 votes, and other candidates received 42, increasing Franken's lead to 312 votes.
On April 13, the three-judge panel issued its final ruling, sweeping aside all of Coleman's legal claims and declaring Franken the winner of the race by 312 votes. In its unanimous decision, the panel said, "The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the November 4, 2008 election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately", and said that Franken should be issued a Certificate of Election. The panel ruled that Coleman failed to prove that mistakes or irregularities in the treatment of absentee ballots would have altered the outcome of the election.
Coleman appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on June 1. On June 30, the court unanimously ruled in Franken's favor, declaring him the winner of the election, prompting Coleman's concession.
After sitting Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced that he would not seek re-election in 2010 it was widely anticipated that Coleman would run for Governor. Early polls showed him the favorite among Republicans and polling the strongest among all potential Republican candidates.
However Coleman announced on January 17 that he would not run for Governor in 2010 saying, "I love Minnesota and I love public service, but this is not the right time for me and my family to conduct a campaign for Governor.
"Timing is everything. The timing on this race is both a bit too soon and a bit too late. It is too soon after my last race and too late to do a proper job of seeking the support of delegates who will decide in which direction our party should go. The commitments I have to my family and the work I am currently engaged in do not allow me to now go forward."
Coleman was rumored to be a possible candidate for the Republican National Committee's Chairmanship. He emphasized, however, that he would not run against Michael Steele should he seek re-election. When Steele announced his candidacy for re-election, Coleman stated that he would not be a candidate.
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