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Capitol View®
Tim Pugmire

Daily Digest

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Congress

Former Republican U.S. Senator Norm Coleman was feted in Washington by his colleagues yesterday, an hour-long tribute to his six years of service at the Capitol. MinnPost and the Strib covered. Sen. Amy Klobuchar expressed her gratitude for the end of the recount battle: "He could have appealed that decision, he could have gone to federal court. It was his right. But, he made a decision, which he felt was best for the state of Minnesota, and the state thanks him for that, and I personally thank him for that."

[Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander said Coleman deserved an "easy, humdrum conventional political race some day," blissfully unaware of the 1997 St. Paul mayoral race, when Coleman clobbered DFLer Sandy Pappas by 18 percentage points, teeing up his run for governor and Senator.]

Al Franken met with Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor ahead of next week's scheduled start of her confirmation hearings. MPR and MinnPost had coverage.

Unallotment

One of the largest state employee unions, MAPE, is still hoping to thwart some of Governor Tim Pawlenty's budget cuts, according to the Mankato Free Press.

2012

University of Virginia political expert Larry Sabato told the Huffington Posts's Dan Dorfman that he considers 2008 contender Mitt Romney and Minn. Gov. Tim Pawlenty frontrunners for the Republicans in 2012, despite Pawlenty's 1 percent showing this week in the Rasmussen poll. (Sabato also lists "somone else" as a strong contender.) North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling says it plans to release results of a robopoll about Pawlenty today. They're also supposed to have some Obama numbers, possibly in MN. Their most recent numbers found the president slipping noticably in Virginia.

Other

Pawlenty is speaking at a National Guard deployment ceremony in Cottage Grove this morning. Mayo is sponsoring a health care reform forum at the History Center this morning, and Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Amy Klobuchar are among those expected.