Norm Coleman and the Republicans have been blasting Al Franken with negative ads.
Al Franken hasn't been shy about returning the fire. His latest ad:
The first part is a response to this Coleman ad attacking Franken for his tax and accounting troubles. Franken is smart to respond to these charges and not ignoring them. Ethical concerns are taken very seriously by voters. Is this an effective response? If the best you can say is, "It was an honest mistake," you're making a pretty weak case. Fair or not, phrases voters generally don't like to hear from politicians include, "it was an honest mistake."
Moving from defense mode to attack mode within the same ad is probably a good strategic move, especially when it is also on the issue of ethics. Senator Coleman lives in a mansion in DC practically given to him for a mere $600/month by his lobbyist-related friend? That sounds pretty bad.
At best, though, Franken is playing loose with the facts. While there are legitimate ethics issues with Coleman's rental arrangement that was first revealed by the National Journal in June, it isn't to the scale Franken describes. Coleman is living in a small basement studio apartment for $600. It's been a few years since I lived on Capitol Hill, but I remember lots of what are referred to as "English Basements" in the row houses on Capitol Hill. Usually they went for at least $900/month then. But living in a $600 basement apartment is a bit different from an entire "mansion."
I'm no fan of Norm Coleman. He's a slimy, unprincipled, political opportunist without a single ounce of integrity. Alas, Al Franken appears to be stooping to his level.
In fairness, here's another of Coleman's prominent nasty ads that's been covering the Minnesota airwaves for the last two weeks.
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2 comments:
If it was, indeed, an honest mistake, then Al Franken did not understand that he had to pay taxes in states where he earned money. This is pretty simple tax law to not understand. I sincerely wonder about his abililities as a lawmaker if he can't understand such simple rules that we all have to live by.
I don't fault Al Franken himself for not knowing the tax law in this regard. Although I agree it isn't rocket science. We can't know for sure, but my guess is that it was an "honest mistake." Thing is, that's still a cruddy excuse.
I do fault Franken for apparently doing things on the cheap and not receiving good accounting advice and going without an expert lawyer when he was doing things such as moving his corporation from one state to another. And as I've written before, this is the kind of thing his campaign should have figured out and fixed once he became a candidate. The Republicans found this so easily. Everybody knows you do opposition research also on yourself. Maybe he did that on the cheap too.
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