All Blog Posts from Horserace

Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken's campaign says it may appeal to the U.S. Senate or the courts because it believes that up to 1,000 absentee ballots were improperly disqualified in the state's recount of votes, The Hill reports.

"Wherever the numbers stand today…that number simply cannot be relevant if it does not include all the votes that were legally cast," Franken attorney Marc Elias said, according to the newspaper. "No recount can be considered accurate or complete until all the ballots cast by lawful voters are counted."

Franken trails Republican rival Norm Coleman by 282 votes with most of the vote counted, though his campaign claims the deficit has shrunk to 73 votes.

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Hillary Clinton has sent a fundraising email out through her political action committee on behalf of Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken, whose electoral battle against rival Norm Coleman is headed for a recount.

"Just 206 votes," the email opens. "That's the difference separating Al Franken and Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race -- 206 votes out of about 3 million cast."

"In the coming days, Minnesota officials will carefully count every vote to make sure they get the most accurate count possible," the email continues. "But once again, Republicans want to interfere any way they can with the vote-counting. They're setting up legal challenges and questioning the voting officials' integrity."

The email goes on to request donations to Franken's campaign to "make sure every vote is counted."

Democrats now effectively control 57 Senate seats. If this race, along with the other two outstanding contests in Alaska and Georgia, goes their way, they will have the 60 votes necessary for a filibuster-proof majority.

Election Day may have come and gone, but three Senate races are still being fought, and fought hard. If all three go the Democrats' way – an unlikely outcome, but certainly not an impossible one – it would give the party 60 seats in the Senate, a crucial number since it would mean Democrats have attained a filibuster-proof majority.

(One cautionary note for hopeful liberals: Even if Democrats reach the 60 seat threshold, their majority would include independent senator and John McCain backer Joe Lieberman, who has broken with his party on national security issues, as well as other relatively conservative Democrats who might not always vote with their party.)

Here's the latest on the three races.

Alaska:

For a while, it looked like 84-year-old Republican Ted Stevens had overcome his felony conviction to be reelected for an eigth term. But early and absentee ballots, which are still being counted, have now given a slim lead to Stevens' Democratic rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, who says he is "cautiously optimistic" that he will prevail. (The latest count, as of late Wednesday: 132,196 to 131,382. A Stevens pollster reportedly suggested Thursday that Begich will prevail.)

If Stevens ultimately wins the race, he still faces the possibility of expulsion from the Senate due to his conviction. If that happens, there will be a special election in Alaska to replace the longtime Senator, and all eyes will be on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as a potential candidate.

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There’s a new controversy surrounding Al Franken in Minnesota, the front-runner for the Democratic Senate nomination to take on Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in the fall. The comedian and Saturday Night Live alumnus is taking heat for an article entitled "Porn-O-Rama!" that he wrote in Playboy magazine eight years ago.

Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, who supported Franken’s rival until he dropped out of the race, said in an interview with the Associated Press that she was shocked by the article and that she was worried about other Democrats on the ballot with a candidate "who has pornographic writings that are indefensible."

"As a parent and an aunt, and talking to other parents, people are very concerned about the type of Internet use that's out there, and how it has a potentially harmful effect on children," McCollum said. "Sexually explicit material is one of the things that parents are very concerned about, and want to make sure that they're steering their children away from."

Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison and Tim Walz also expressed concerns about the article, but none of them so far have called on Franken to step aside.

At the state GOP convention on Friday, Coleman also took a swipe at Franken. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Coleman said that "eight years ago I was making the streets of St. Paul safer and he was writing porn."

Franken’s spokesman responded to the uproar: "Al understands, and the people of Minnesota understand, the difference between what a satirist does and what a senator does.”

Idaho Senate: Voters in Idaho on Tuesday picked nominees to battle for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Larry Craig -- famous for an incident in a airport bathroom last summer that led to him announcing his resignation (and then withdrawing that resignation a few weeks later before it took affect). On the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Jim Risch defeated several lesser known challengers with 65 percent of the vote. He will face off against former Democratic Rep. Larry LaRocco, who won with 72 of the vote. Risch has defeated LaRocco twice before, including the 2006 election for lieutenant governor. He is favored again this time in the rematch.

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With all the attention being paid to the presidential race, it's easy to forget that the House and Senate are also up for grabs in November. But since there are 435 House seats and a third of the Senate on the ballot, it can be hard to keep track so we'll be helping you do just that from time to time with a look at all the key developments in those campaigns across the country.

This week, we take a look at Senate races in Minnesota and New Jersey, tidbits from Michigan and Nebraska and the return of "Dr. Death."

Minnesota Senate: Republican Sen. Norm Coleman formally kicked off his re-election campaign on Wednesday. This race is sure to get a lot of attention in the coming months for two reasons: one, because it's expected to be a close race in a key swing state; and two, Coleman's likely Democratic opponent is comedian Al Franken.

Franken will try to tie Coleman to President Bush's agenda throughout the campaign. In a speech to supporters on Tuesday, he presented his candidacy as a vehicle for helping to set "a new direction in this country."

Coleman's challenge will be to counter anti-Republican sentiment in the state, a tall order especially with Republican National Convention taking place in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September. He is going to focus on his record and by highlighting the times he had diverged from the president. He said he was a "voice of optimism in cynical times," the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.

New Jersey Senate: Ex-Goya Foods executive Andy Unanue just jumped into the race for the Republican nomination in New Jersey on Sunday, but already there's a brewing controversy about him.

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