GOP Senators Waste Big Bucks Trying to Keep Franken Seat-less

Posted by John Nichols, The Nation at 1:22 PM on February 17, 2009.

It is now clear that Senate Republicans have a strategy for maintaining their ability to stall -- or, at the least, dramatically alter -- Obama administration initiatives.

Individual GOP senators are paying big bucks to keep the Senate's 100th seat -- representing Minnesota -- vacant for as long as possible.

In effect, key Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are paying $10,000 a piece to maintain their power to obstruct Congress.

Consider it an investment in the short-term future.

The partisan divide in the Senate is currently 58 Democrats (56 party members and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Connecticut's Joe Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders) versus 41 Republicans.

That 41 figure is perilously close to the number that Republicans need to threaten filibusters. It takes 60 seats to invoke cloture and force action on legislation and appointments in the tradition-bound Senate.

If Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate Al Franken, who state officials determined weeks ago won the Senate seat by 225 votes, is seated it would be harder to block Senate deliberations. And with Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter -- a moderate, labor-friendly Republican who faces a tough reelection fight in a Democratic state next year showing a willingness to deal -- GOP Senate leaders well understand the vulnerability of their position.

So Republican senators are pouring money into the dead-end recount fight of former Senate Norm Coleman.

Coleman -- now the better part of two months out of office -- continues to mount an exceptionally expensive legal battle to "win" the Minnesota seat that all evidence suggests he has lost.

Coleman's lawyers are now pleading with a three-judge panel charged with conducting what was supposed to be a final review of the close result of the Coleman-Franken race to reverse a ruling that had seemed all but certain to settle the matter.

The three-judge panel rejected counting certain categories of contested absentee ballots.

Coleman's team is pressing for the counting of the ballots -- most of which have been repeatedly rejected by local and state officials -- in hopes that they will help reverse Franken's narrow lead.

Getting the judges to reverse their ruling is very much a long shot, Hamline University Law School professor David Schultz tells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

So why are Coleman's lawyers objecting? Schultz suggests Coleman's lawyers are laying the groundwork for an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court that will keep this unsettled race unsettled. "This is sort of the first step if they're thinking of doing an appeal," explains the professor.

Bottom line: It looks like we will have a 99-seat Senate for a good bit longer.

That's fine by Senate Republicans, who are dead set against seating a 59th Democrat -- especially if its the bombastic Franken -- in a chamber where they are barely clinging to their ability to filibuster Obama administration initiatives.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, says he is glad that Coleman understands he "owes it to... his colleagues here" to keep the seat vacant.

"He realizes how important retaining that seat is to us," says Cornyn.

All Coleman has to do is look at his campaign fund-raising receipts.

McConnell, R-Kentucky, has given the maximum allowed amount of money to keep the Coleman recount fight going -- $10,000 -- as has House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Idaho Senator Mike Crapo slipped Coleman another $10,000, as have Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson and Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander.

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe is in for $5,000, as is Iowan Charles Grassley.

Maine Senator Susan Collins, the champion of faux bipartisanship who used his "swing" position to extract massive amounts of job-creation money from the stimulus package, added $2,000 to the Coleman kitty.

Eric Schultz, a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee aide, tells Politico that, "It's clear that national Republicans see the vacancy in Minnesota as one of the few arrows in their quiver to obstruct Democrats in the Senate from getting real change passed."

Actually, they don't just see it that way.

Senate Republicans are willing to pay to keep it that way.

John Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent.