Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Oh-so-cold Minnesota will have the hottest race in the country this election, as Norm Coleman, former mayor of St. Paul, Bushıs hand-picked candidate, goes up against No. 1 Bush agenda basher Sen. Paul Wellstone.

Coleman wound up in Washington last May, ostensibly to discuss President Bush's budget priorities. There, Coleman said, he "got strong encouragement from the White House [to run against Wellstone]. It was not something I pursued."

Coleman helped orchestrate Bush's 2000 campaign in Minnesota, where the president came just 2 percentage points from beating Al Gore. Coleman lost the 1998 governorıs race to Jesse Ventura, but managed a strong showing with 34 percent of the vote.

The stage for the crucial contest began at the highest levels when Minnesota House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty, who was all set to run against Wellstone, got a surprise call from Vice President Dick Cheney asking him to step aside for Coleman. Pawlenty is now a gubernatorial candidate.

"Things have a way of working out in the end for the better," he said. Suddenly catapulted to the national arena, two-term St. Paul mayor Coleman conceded, "We have a long way to go." He pledged to bring bipartisan collaboration to the Senate, where Wellstone has represented "impassioned advocacy."

Dan Allen of the National Republican Senatorial Committee described the race as between "Mayor Coleman, who can point to a very strong record, versus someone who is fighting tooth-and-nail against things that are getting done."

Meanwhile, Jeff Blodgett, Wellstone's campaign manager, announced, "We're running against the hand-picked candidate of the White House, and that means we're facing an array of resources mustered by the White House and its allies."

Campaign rhetoric aside, the two candidates could not be more different. Coleman switched parties in 1997 and is seen as appealing to moderates put off by Wellstoneıs leftist views. He spent 17 years in the state attorney general's office, serving as chief prosecutor and solicitor general. He was elected mayor of St. Paul in 1993 and re-elected in 1997.

Often described as St. Paul's first cell-phone mayor, Coleman is credited with the renaissance of the downtown, but has been criticized for his taxpayer-funded stadium. Coleman is pro-life and favors the constitutional right to bear arms, but is rigorous in enforcing the laws that "get guns out of the hands of the bad guys."

Cutting Taxes

"I've cut taxes every year I've been in office. I believe it's a freedom issue. Let the people make their own choices about how their money is spent," he recently told an interviewer from America's 1st Freedom.

Famous in St. Paul for sharp dress and a gleaming smile, Colemen recently joked with reporters as he moved out of the mayoral offices: "I'm a walking advertisement for good orthodontia."

With few positions on national security issues on the record, he is expected to be supportive of the Bush foreign policy.

Anti-defense Wellstone

The incumbent Wellstone is also originally from out of town. He was raised in Arlington, Va. For 21 years, he was a professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., where he taught political science, engaged in protest politics during the Vietnam War and was a nuclear disarmament activist. Wellstone pushed for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention. He has supported paying down the U.S. debt to the United Nations, campaign finance "reform," raising the minimum wage and not allowing voluntary partial privatization of Social Security.

And he's dead set against the President's defense initiatives.

"The most important question we must ask ourselves is whether a missile shield will make us more or less secure. I think it is likely to make us less secure by encouraging Russia to retain more nuclear weapons. [The shield] will also spur China to build up its limited nuclear strategic arsenal, which in turn would fuel the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan."

Boosting Coleman's national visibility last May, President Bush gave his energy policy speech to the nation at St. Paul's Touchstone Energy Place.

Wellstone's campaign has also attracted its own glamour and glitz. Barbra Streisand, Bonnie Raitt, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner and Norman Lear have all lent support and stroked big checks.

Not to be outdone, the national Republican Party formed a Coleman Victory Fund in Washington, where corporate donors can give tens of thousands of dollars at a clip.

So far, the Wellstone campaign has raised more than $4 million and has $2.1 million in the bank. Coleman's campaign raised $2.2 million last year and has $1.4 million in the bank, not counting the Washington fund.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

DNC

George W. Bush

Missile Defense

Presidential Race 2000

RNC

A product that might interest you:
Get "The Map" - Bush Country T-Shirt