Both sides are gearing up for a fight in the Minnesota gubernatorial recount –Â the state’s second consecutive statewide recount in two election cycles — where Democratic former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton leads Republican state Rep. Tom Emmer by just under 9,000 votes out of over two million.
As the Star Tribune reports, the state Republican Party is quickly working to mobilize its activist base:
The party sent out an e-mail Thursday, asking voters to contact it if they encountered or saw any irregularities at their polling places on Tuesday.
According to the party, such irregularities include voting machine malfunctions, unsecured ballots or voter intimidation.
The morning after the election, state GOP chairman Tony Sutton signaled the party’s approach this time, saying “we are not going to get rolled this time.”
Keep in mind that during the 2008 Senate recount, when Republican incumbent Norm Coleman ultimately lost to Democratic activist and former comedian Al Franken by 312 votes, Coleman and the Republicans were criticized for not having mounted a sufficient on-the-ground operation. For example, the Franken campaign contacted voters whose absentee ballots had been rejected almost immediately, while the Coleman team did not do so until December, after it became clear that Franken had gotten a head start on an important issue. Overall, the GOP didn’t seem to take the chance of a Franken win seriously, until it was too late to maneuver against it effectively.
Meanwhile, Dayton is putting together his own team of attorneys, some of whom had past experience with the 2008 recount. Heading up the team is Charlie Nauen, who represented a group of Franken voters seeking to get their absentee ballots counted. Also appearing again will be David Lillehaug, a former Clinton-era U.S. Attorney who was one of the main players on Team Franken.
Marc Elias, the Washington-based lawyer who headed up Team Franken in court, is not slated to appear again.
Keep in mind just how big the stakes are here. The Republicans won surprising majorities in the legislature, overcoming previous Dem control. And if the race is not resolved by early January then Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty will stay on until it is settled.
However, there are two factors here that could make this quicker: Dayton’s present lead is dozens of times bigger than any margin that Franken or Coleman ever had, and past experience would suggest that it is highly unlikely there would be enough leeway in the numbers for Emmer. Furthermore, the state now has a whole bundle of fresh legal precedents from the 2008 recount and legal contest.
But then again, if there were a will to fight this out, there could be a way.
Meanwhile, the GOP seems to be putting forward an interesting argument in the public-relations end of this — that a Dayton win amidst their other gains isn’t plausible:
Republicans are pinning their hopes on the idea that many of their candidates thumped their DFL rivals, yet Emmer placed second. Could it be that voters turned out in droves for Republican legislative and congressional candidates and then chose Dayton or Horner? Sutton doesn’t buy it.
“I don’t know if it was fraud or incompetence,” he said of the gubernatorial vote tally. “Something doesn’t smell right about this.”
