by Bill Kavanagh: I’ve been less than charitable to Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman this week. Apparently, my approach was mistaken. I would have been much tougher initially, had I known how he would respond to allegations of his own financial wrongdoing.
After first running from press inquiries about allegations that a businessman had funneled $75,000 to him through his wife’s employer, Coleman has since turned around and accused his opponent of being behind the charges, attempting to turn the tables with days to go before the election. Perhaps his advisors believe that the best defense in such a situation is an outrageous offense, but the Senator’s turnabout, going from running away from press inquiries to later putting out an ad saying his opponent is behind a personal attack on his family is more than a little incredible.
The Senator began his response by suddenly cutting short his campaign schedule when accosted by the press about a lawsuit, filed in Texas, between parties in a business owned largely by one of Coleman’s major backers. The lawsuit alleged that Nasser Kazeminy had used Deep Marine Technologies, a business he has a controlling interest in, to launder payments to Coleman by disguising them as invoice payments to the Hays Company, which employs Coleman’s wife, Laurie. The money was then supposedly used by the Hays Company to pay her salary, despite a lack of any services provided to Kaziminy’s company in return.
The first moments of Coleman’s responses looked dreadful, with Coleman ignoring questions from reporters all around him as he ducked into an SUV behind a beefy bodyguard, then sped away, hunkering down behind closed doors with campaign officials. Then, after this press disaster, Coleman issued a response that the charges were false, but didn’t take questions about the specifics, preferring to instead to rely on a recorded 30 second ad to refute the charges by accusing Al Franken, his opponent, of making, “phony accusations, filled with lies, delivered anonymously to a Minnesota paper, before being filed in a Texas court— a vicious personal attack on my wife.”
Sitting in a cozy living room setting with his wife Laurie, the ad features a close-up of him turning to her as he utters the words, “…a vicious personal attack” and her then turning to the camera as if to show how incredibly hurt she is by it all. It’s great theater, but it’s anything but a denial of the charges that Kazeminy has funneled funds to him. Instead, the charge that the accusation was “delivered anonymously to a Minnesota paper” makes the whole thing sound less like a specific charge issued in an open court document by one business partner against another than some kind of whispered smear against his wife.
There’s been no evidence shown to this date that the Franken campaign has had any role in the lawsuit between two Republican businessmen in which these charges play a role. Instead of questions now for Coleman to answer, we see Franken having to issue a denial of his role in the affair. It’s classic Rovian politics, beautifully executed. One hopes the ruse will not go unchallenged, but it’s breathtaking in it’s ‘big lie’ style of chutzpah.
Franken took questions this afternoon and was asked how he’d counter the impression left by the Coleman ad that he was actually behind the charges lodged against Coleman. Franken’s response was to point out that the Minneapolis StarTribune has already refuted any connection between their breaking story on the Texas lawsuit charges against Coleman and the Franken campaign. After telling the reporters that they know the charge against his campaign is false, Franken said to them, “Here’s where you have a job.”
"This lawsuit in Texas, that's Nassar Kazeminy's problem and Norm Coleman's problem. This ad and Norm Coleman's attempt to make it my problem instead, well, that's simply shameful," said Franken.
Meanwhile, Kazeminy has remained away from the press and the owner of the Hays company has issued only a non-specific statement that it performs consulting services for Deep Marine which doesn’t include a specific denial of the charges against it.
Comments