Decisions, Decisions...

The fallout continues for Team Franken. Friday and Saturday saw stories in the Star Tribune on the Franken tax issues. Both stories have a common theme....that it is the fault of those nasty Republicans that Franken is having these troubles....

Responding to new Republican charges that DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken hid income from California tax authorities for years, Franken's campaign said Thursday that his accountant is trying to sort out whether taxes are owed.

Republicans, who for more than a year have eagerly unearthed controversial tidbits from Franken's comedy routines and books, have in recent weeks discovered several slip-ups in the celebrity's business life. On Thursday, they claimed to have found another possible irregularity, a charge that has yet to be resolved.

While Republican opposition researchers (or in this case a FORMER Republican opposition researcher) may have uncovered these financial "irregularities", let's be perfectly clear here....the government of the states of New York and California are the ones making these charges...not the Republican Party.

Speaking of Michael....he has posted a video clip from Friday's Almanac program that has some very harsh words for Team Franken.



The most damaging comment is this...

They don’t have a professional seasoned campaign manager and the result is they’re making rookie mistakes. They should have scrubbed Franken, they should have known this beforehand and they should be doing a lot of other fairly plain vanilla, sort of professional activities to set up the campaign.
“…and there’s even some talk out this week, that there’s some folks in the Democratic Party wondering about running in the primary. What’s going on in the Franken campaign is unnerving. Anyone who is a professional, watching this race, it is alarming. This is just not the way a top-flight, top national race ought to be run”

The DFL is at a cross-roads in the Senatorial campaign. They can either find another candidate between now and their state convention, they can find someone to run a primary challenge to Franken (which will no doubt help Senator Coleman perserve campaign funds since he won't have a challenger until September) or they can stay with a Franken campaign that is self destructing at a rapid rate.

Decision time is almost upon us. What will the DFL do? We shall probably know in the very, very near future.

Update and Bump....

Michael has a link to the Star Tribune's Pig's Eye Podcast for today. There were a couple of interesting quotes in the podcast. First comes from Lori Sturtevant of all peopleand it echo's what was said on Almanac last Friday.

This doesn't just suggest disorder in his business life, but also in his campaign and that is what has the DFLers that I talked to over the weekend were actually LIVID about. Why is this now coming to light...at this late in the day...why is it coming to light with dribs and drabs of information from the Republican Party, tee heeing at every turn. Why wasn't this all cleared and vetted TWO YEARS AGO when this man first began to surface as a major potential candidate. This is, after all, one of the premier races in the country.

The second point comes from Doug Grow and it has to do with how long it took Team Coleman to answer the State of New York's claims of impropriety.

They gave an answer beginning with the idea that New York was wrong and that they would get this thing corrected and some weeks went by and they finally issued a fairly indirect statement acknowledging that New York, after all, was correct and I'm not sure that worked so badly for them...I think it's going to be more difficult for them in this case because of the underlying situation feels a little more serious.

We are almost a month away from the DFL state convention which would endorse Al Franken for Senate. He does not have the luxury of having research time. These allegations need to be answered ASAP. Worse - if there are ANY other tax irregularities that come forward, there will be no recovering from it. There is no indication from Franken as to whether he regrets the oversights etc which makes this issue even more troubling. IF there are any further allegations of tax irregularities, you can stick a fork in the campaign because it will be done!

UPDATE II - Welcome Hot Air and Memeorandum readers. Poke around, kick the tires and come back often!