Franken leads +225 (+21 and +14 of the "Nauen61" the Elections Contest Court has ordered into the "Ready to Count" pile at the the Secretary of State's office; all these voters have indicated they voted for Franken)= +260.
Nothing go on, no news to report in the Sunday Minnesota Media, whether lamestream or new media.
But I thought some of you might want to post something MN Recount related, so below the fold here I do a little assessment.
Nothing really, so get on with your Sunday unless you really want to go past the Orange fold......
UPDATE ADDED (not news but motion to amend the diary) second to last paragraph.
The Mighty Mississippi starts its life in Itasca State Park and is currently frozen solid. From Mark Twain (yea, from Hernando DeSoto) we think of the "Father of Waters" as a southern, broad, twisting even lazy river. But here in the north country its like most other rivers, the Minnesota and the St. Croix-- typical, average, and frozen in winter.
Now spring arrives and the ice cracks and breaks up in fair sized pieces on the Mississippi. So likewise the river of the Minnesota Recount, frozen for seven weeks in the Elections Contest Court, is cracking. Judges Hayden, Marben and Reilly are drilling holes here and there, setting charges, using sledge hammers, to break the up the ice so the last votes of the 2008 election can be counted and the final senator of the class of '08 can be seated.
Before the flow starts, consider with me some of the ice slabs piled up and jammed along the shore, the chunks heaped by the abutments of the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis. You know...the lawyers. They will drift out of sight downstream pretty soon so before they do I thought I'd put my feet up in the ice house and consider them.
The Law is as diverse as human activity: corporate, labor, contract, real estate, divorce, juvenile, medical. A lawyer has to pick an area of concentration because being a "general practitioner" just isn't possible. And even these areas are so vast that practicing in one of them is almost routine and provides a steady or even lucrative living (like doing divorces in Hollywood.)
You can also do well being a specialist, practicing law in a niche where you get good at the subtleties: David Lillehaug does a lot of construction law-- e.g. the legal issues connected with putting up a skyscraper. I have a cousin who is married to a lawyer who does "social security" law (a dependable niche in Florida I'll bet.)
Election law is esoteric and yet very diverse: all 50 states conduct their own elections by their own standards. I suspect it can vary also at the county level. Cities can have their own rules for choosing water commissioners that will be vastly different than the water control board in a rural area. If ever you need a specialist, a close election is the time to get somebody on retainer and have them start boning up the particulars.
Assessment: Team Coleman
Fritz Knaak (b. 1952) Rutgers College & State University of Florence, Italy/ St. John's University,(St. Cloud, MN) B.A., Summa Cum Laude, 1975; University of Minnesota Law School, J. D., 1978. Private Practice 1978-85. MN State Senator, 1983-93. Private Practice since. City attorney for Fridley, Maplewood & Newport, MN.....Was attorney of record in Mower County state senate race recount. Client ended up losing by 5(!) votes .....
This last has to be a big reason why Knaak was asked onto the case. Here is someone who is a MN native and has practiced law here for decades. He has been politically active in state GOP affairs, been a state senator for several years. He has tried at least one case under MN election law, complete with a recount and an election's contest court (ECC).
We all got to meet Knaak early on as the public face of the Coleman press gatherings. He was straightforward, plainly advocating for Norm as you'd expect, and handled himself and the press quite well, with a certain wit and charm from time to time.
Yet when the entire Recount ended up in the ECC Knaak was mute, practically invisible. He was at the Coleman table almost as part of the furniture. His remarks this week on the credit card fiasco for Team Coleman were both the first time we've heard from Knaak at a presser in ages, and a reminder of how long its been.
GRADE: C-; started solidly and had potential but declined noticeably.
Tony Trimble (b.1953) Education: BA St. Olaf College, mid 70's. JD WM. Mitchell College of Law, maybe 1979. Admitted to bar in '80. Represented Mark Kennedy(R) in 2000 when Kennedy upset US Representative David Minge(D) and Minge decided to "step back" from a recount......
Hard to see from the outside why Trimble was on the Coleman Team. He runs a law practice out of Hopkins (Trimble & Assoc.) that appears to handle a general gamut of law. Its hard to tell because Trimble & Assoc. does not have a web presence, which seems old-fashioned but in a bad way. It may suggest a certain allergy to things computerized and may account for the Team's difficulties with spreadsheets, use of Powerpoint for exhibits, etc.
Tony was the "inside guy" to Fritz Knaak's "outside" guy in the opening weeks of the Recount. He doesn't wear well publicly so it was a smart move to send out Knaak for the PR side of things. From the Kennedy-Minge case he has at least some familiarity with MN election law even though that case did not end up going as far as this one.
Trimble emerged when the Recounting ended and the issue moved to the challenged ballots. He was the point man in arguing issues with the State Canvassing Board and was often seen opposing Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.
Trimble may have been the original guy to be lead attorney for the ECC but somewhere in there a decision was reached to bring in a "name" for the lead, sending Tony to a sidekick role. He did carry some of the witness load during the trial and raised and argued at least a few objections.
And then of course Trimble was at the center of the Pamela Howell disaster, where not only was the witness' testimony twice (!) stricken from the record but also caused by Trimble mis-handling of pre-trial Discovery. The court's $7500 sanction had Trimble at the center of the bullseye.
GRADE: F, for poor preparation, and for the sanction.
Joseph Friedberg (b. 1937) University of North Carolina, B.S., 1959; University of North Carolina Law School, J.D., with honors, 1963
Extensive criminal trial experience.....late addition (1/16) to Coleman team.... well known in Twin Cities law circles....
Joe Friedberg was the "name" attorney brought in as lead. He is well known and well liked in Twin Cities legal circles, both attorneys and judges. He is folksy, humorous and rather clever in many ways. But he was brought in late to the case, only 10 days before opening and just days before pre-trial filings were due.
In the trial Joe was overwhelmed. His line is criminal law, and defense at that, where the task is to just move the needle enough from "She did it" to "are you sure beyond a reasonable doubt? If there is a doubt you must acquit." To move from this to having to handle reams of paper (which the team was not good at in providing him), carrying the burden of proof, and having to pile up that proof to a height and weight that it constitutes a "preponderance of the evidence" was a tall order--- too much of one for Friedberg. He admitted as much in his closing argument noting that he started from a zero base 7 weeks ago on election law.
GRADE: C-; Joe was out worked and overwhelmed and in some ways it was sad to watch. It was like kidnapping the pilot of an ultralight and strapping them into an F-14 on the steam catapult of the USS Enterprise and the first words he hears in the helmet are "Clear for launch. 3-2-1..." It'll fly but it may not end well.
Ben Ginsberg: AB, Univ. of PA, '74; JD, Georgetown Univ.,'82 .... a newspaper reporter for five years before becoming a lawyer (The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, The Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle, and The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise.)....... national counsel during both of former President George W. Bush's campaigns and played a key role in the 2000 Florida recount......legal advisor to the Swift Boat veterans of 2004.
Ginsberg came on board in November but stayed very low key all through the Recount. He seemed to want to play the mastermind without leaving fingerprints. He emerged from the cave in mid-January, not to take the lead on the case but to become its public face. (I wonder if bringing on Freidberg was Ginsberg's idea? He may have sized up Knaak and Trimble and decided the Team needed a late-season acquisition for the play-offs.)
In that public role he was... visible. He spun like a figure skater, almost an incarnation of Faux News: any development in the case is "Good news for Norm!"
Strike your own first 2 days of testimony?
"Great head-fake by Norm, eh?"
An absentee voter testifies his girlfriend signed his ballot for him?
"A system riddled with errors that has injured my client Norm the senator."
A genuine case of vote fraud in Warroad, where a convicted felon on parole without voting rights votes for Coleman?
"It is a fatally flawed system that keeps men who have paid their debt to society from voting for Norm Coleman. The state should be ashamed." It didn't work.
GRADE: Past F to W, with his friend. (For a "Z" he'd actually have to stand in front of a mirror and NOT see his reflection.)
Assessment: Team Franken
Kevin Hamilton — Washington state attorney one of the go-to lawyers for that state's Democrats for years...... trial counsel in the 2004 fight over the governor's race. The Democratic candidate won.
Hamilton came on the Team in early December I believe and was not heard from at all until basically the ECC opened. But with election law being as obscure a field as it is there may well have been a LOT of behind the scenes work going on. Vitally important, Hamilton has extensive, intense, and fairly recent experience in a drawn out recount battle on a statewide level. Not many do and the Team was very smart to get him early and set him to work. Between Hamilton and Lillehaug I imagine it is the 2 of them who really assembled some first class clerk/paralegal and junior attorney talent behind the scenes to do research, line up witnesses, assemble affidavits, etc.
And when you have a top-drawer staff it lets the in court team pull off "stunts" like this (and make it look easy!)
An example of Franken's lawyers' competence. (5+ / 0-)
Sometime during Friday's proceedings, a question came up as to whether or not one of Coleman's pieces of evidence had been actually been accepted by the court. After a couple of minutes, Lillehaug came up with the answer.
It had been accepted. Lillehaug not only gave him the date, but the exact time.
by mswojo on Sat Mar 14, 2009 at 03:18:37 PM CDT
*
4:07 pm (2+ / 0-)
I L'dOL, he was so precise.
by rincewind
Hamilton carried a fair bit of the witness examination and cross-examination load. He knew what to ask and how to ask, so the Franken case clicked off witnesses about every 9 minutes. He even let a bit of wit shine through (when "offered" to trade Marc Elias to the other team :-)) and was picked to do the closing argument. That close was methodical, detailed, relentless and compelling.
GRADE: A; would put a REAL notch on his holster if he ends up on the winning side of a second statewide recount case.
Marc Elias (b.1969! The KID in the Court) Hamilton College, B.A., Government, 1990; Duke University, M.A., 1993 AND Duke University School of Law, J.D., 1993.... general counsel for Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign, general counsel for Chris Dodd presidential campaign 2008....... the public face of the Franken legal team.... quick with a line ("the universe is still expanding") and good with adjectives (described a Coleman legal move as inconceivable, miraculous, stunning, staggering, implausible, extraordinary and a "constitutional game of gotcha").... perhaps the most "election law" experience on either side......
Elias came in early, days after the election ended and was the public face of the Franken campaign from beginning to end (easier to stay on message that way when its just one person.) He dueled in the PR wars with Knaak, Drake, Freidrich, Sheehan, Trimble.....it didn't matter, there was Marc, making the case, answering back with facts, law and wit. No doubt he was the principal advisor on all things Constitutional and has been guiding his side of the case as tightly as possible to leave no toehold for an appeal to the federal courts (equal protection and all that.) He has been Obama-ly focused on MN law, MN procedures, MN courts, studying them with all the intensity of a customer at the Mustang Ranch making a choice. (Just a metaphor; Mrs.E would kill him and no prosecutor would even indict for such a case of justifiable.)
He was in court but let Hamilton and Lillehaug carry most of the witness load. He did weigh on with objections from time to time that were masterpieces of the lawyers art. He often wrote and argued the motions from team Franken, working over the Coleman team like Steven Segal taking apart a martial arts bad guy.
GRADE: A; just the right man both public and private from beginning to end.
David Lillehaug (b.1954) Augustana College (Sioux Falls, SD), B.A., summa cum laude, 1976; Harvard University, J.D., cum laude, 1979. ...... prepped Mondale for 1st Presidential debate, the one where Reagan looked BAD)...joined Wellstone campaign in 1990, wrote speeches, coached Wellstone for debates, could also go heart to heart and do "tough love" so "Paul would stay Senatorial"........according to former law firm staffer and kossack, a tremendous debater, and scary brilliant lawyer, so knows this case cold; hard to work for and hard to get along with but just the kind of sore-pawed bear you want ON YOUR SIDE....
Lillehaug was there from the start but you never knew it. Passionate, abrasive and behind the scenes all the way. The mainspring of the whole Franken effort and probably the guy who thought of going to Ramsey county court 3 days after the voting machines cooled to force the county to release the names of absentee voters (required by law but Ramsey wasn't doing it. The morning after the court agreed with Franken and ordered the names released some lunatic with a laptop posted the news on a blog called DailyKos, called it v. 1.0 and signed off as "WineRev" :-))
Lillehaug (no doubt helped by Elias and Hamilton) assembled the legal staff, chose the best and brightest and ordered intravenous lines installed from Caribou Coffee (MN answer to Starbucks.) Undoubtedly these people are good, motivated and energetic. Lillehaug would have left them exhausted; the man is the incarnation of relentless.
Lillehaug also carried a lot of the cross-examination of the Coleman witnesses and argued objections rather calmly...... a dead flat, ice down your spine kind of calm. When the explosion came over the Howell testimony and lack of discovery he didn't scream or jump, just turned to the judges and said, "I move to strike the testimony of this witness.." and bit off the reasons. He just coolly kept tossing sticks of dynamite onto the fire and wetting it down with gasoline. After the recess, when it came out in a few minutes that Team Coleman had in effect tampered with the witness during the break, Lillehaug let his voice rise just slightly, "I re-NEW my motion to strike on the further grounds of..". That $7500 sanction on the other side in a case of this magnitude is one for David's trophy case.
GRADE: A; what else is there to say? Wow.
UPDATE: Shoot I forgot to ask this of all of you and meant to work it in above. Curious as to the opinion of the house on the following: The ECC rules, ballots are counted, and decision is final and in favor of Franken. Loser Coleman can appeal (15 days to file I believe but some here have said 10.) to the MN Supreme Court.
Question: What are the odds the MN Supremes will refuse to hear the case? You know, nothing here to talk about. No grounds to hear anything. Could they do that? Or should they hear it at least partly on PR grounds to forestall a certain kind of whining?
OK I hope that will give you something to talk about. How would you grade them? Don't spend a lot of time on it if you're in MN: Get outside today-- its going to be in the low 50s! (For all of you Sunbelt types, around here than means shorts and sandals at the lakeside while throwing rocks onto the ice and seeing whose will skid the farthest. Then you go for ice cream.)
Until there's something from the court, thats the least of the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.