Conservative Blog to Coleman: Get Some Better Lawyers

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January 8, 2009 1:54 PM

Conservative Blog to Coleman: Get Some Better Lawyers

Posted by Brian Baxter

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post stated that Power Line's Scott Johnson was suggesting that the Coleman campaign should hire Dorsey & Whitney's Roger Magnuson. Magnuson has already been retained on the Coleman recount effort and Johnson was arguing that he should be given a more prominent role. We regret the error.

Power Line, a popular conservative political blog founded by partners from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Faegre & Benson, has some advice for Minnesota's senator-on-the-ropes Norm Coleman: don't point to a partisan recount for your loss to Al Franken, blame your lackluster political campaign and flat-footed lawyers. (Hat Tip: David Brauer of The Minneapolis Post's BrauBlog.)

Scott Johnson, a Minneapolis lawyer and frequent Power Line blogger, has posted a scathing critique of Coleman's recount efforts and The Wall Street Journal's editorials decrying "funny business" in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Johnson hammered Coleman's lead lawyers--former state senator Fritz Knaak from Vadnais Heights, Minn.-based Knaak and Kantrud and Tony Trimble of Hopkins, Minn.-based Trimble & Associates--for being outmaneuvered by Franken's recount team. Coleman is also being advised by Roger Magnuson, the Minneapolis-based head of Dorsey & Whitney's national strategic litigation group, and Patton Boggs election law of counsel William McGinley.

When Coleman's lawyers filed suit on Tuesday challenging Franken's win, The Am Law Daily reported that the former comedian/radio talk show host's lead lawyer, Perkins Coie's Marc Elias, began receiving boatloads of accolades.

The Minneapolis Post reports that Elias is being assisted by Perkins Coie labor and employment chair Kevin Hamilton--a veteran of recounts for Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington and Senator Maria Cantwell--and political law partner Ezra Reese. (Rounding out Franken's legal team are former Minnesota U.S. Attorney David Lillehaug of Fredrikson & Byron, litigator William Pentelovitch of Minneapolis's Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand, and Charles Nauen of Minneapolis's Lockridge Grindal Nauen.)

Without naming him directly, Power Line's Johnson suggests that Elias, who served as general counsel to the 2004 Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign, pulled all the right strings. Johnson writes that Franken's advisers were quick to recognize the importance of counting absentee ballots that had been rejected by election officials. The Coleman campaign, writes Johnson, failed to develop "a countervailing strategy."

Johnson writes that he's known personally and professionally two members of the Minnesota canvassing board convened to oversee the recount--state Supreme Court justice G. Barry Anderson and Chief Justice Eric Magnuson (no relation to the Dorsey partner), both Republicans--and that the panel "conducted itself honorably under difficult circumstances."

As a result of the canvassing board's certification of the recount results, Johnson believes that Coleman needs to look elsewhere for more effective legal counsel.

"The Franken campaign out-hustled and outsmarted the Coleman campaign," Johnson writes. "If I were advising Senator Coleman, I would tell him to shake up his team and send in a new quarterback to run the offense now that he has the ball in overtime, i.e., the election contest."

And it turns out Coleman doesn't have to look far for the man Johnson has in mind to come off the bench to lead the reelection team: Dorsey's Magnuson, who served as a member of the legal team that worked on President Bush's successful recount effort in Florida in 2000. (We called Magnuson to see if he was interested in quarterbacking Coleman's recount legal endeavors, but so far we haven't heard back.)

Power Line was founded in 2002 by Minneapolis-based commercial litigation partner John Hinderaker of Faegre & Benson, his former partner Johnson (now a senior vice president with Wayzata, Minn.-based TCF Financial Corporation), and Washington, D.C.-based Akin Gump employment partner Paul Mirengoff.

Time Magazine named Power Line its Blog of the Year in 2004.

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So, ex-Senator Coleman's law team failed to produce "a countervailing strategy" to Mr. Franken's "count ALL the votes"
strategy. A successful countervailing strategy would be to NOT count ALL the votes, or to suppress those votes/ballots that may favor the opposing candidate? A strategy which is in direct opposition to what a free and fair election process is all about?

The fact that they (Mr. Coleman's legal/recount team) rejected many absentee ballots based on frivolous parameters as having the date of the witness and voter not match (not required under Min election law) shows that THIS WAS the strategy. When a candidate and supporters go to great length to suborn the election process,suppress legally cast votes, and try to game the electoral system, it is NOT a legal strategy. It is obstruction of the voting rights of the citizens of Minnesota. Something of which the law community should take notice.

Comment By bottlcaps - January 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM

Brian, your reporting is incorrect. Roger Magnuson has already been hired by Coleman, and he was the lawyer who represented Coleman before the Minnesota Supreme Court over the past few weeks. If you look at Coleman's contest pleadings, Magnuson's name is featured prominently.

I think Scott Johnson's point isn't that they have completely ignored Magnuson. I think his point is that Magnuson should be running the show (from a strategic standpoint) instead of Fritz Knaak and Tony Trimble.

Comment By Harry - January 9, 2009 at 9:49 AM