With all the brouhaha about money being funneled from a political benefactor through the Hays Companies to Norm Coleman, it got me to thinking: what did Laurie Coleman, an aspiring actress and model, do for an insurance brokerage to warrant a salary?
The Minnesota Department of Commerce website allows users to search for licensees of state agencies -- specifically, real estate appraisers, insurance brokers, and the like. A search of the site for Mrs. Coleman's name turned up no matches.
While it's possible the DoC's website has out-of-date information, it might be worth asking Sen. Coleman what exactly the Hays Company paid Mrs. Coleman for, and if her role there had any influence over these alleged illegal donations.
Accompanying her standard article yesterday, Esme Murphy also put together a solid blog post on the topic:
The real issue is that the Coleman campaign has always been super-sensitive about Laurie Coleman. I am not sure why. She is an exceptionally beautiful woman who has pursued a modeling and acting career long after most of us could not hope to look one-quarter as good as she does. Whatever you think of Norm Coleman he has been an active dad. I remember covering him when he was Mayor of St. Paul and he was late to an interview because he was bringing his son home from the dentist. I really don't understand why the Coleman campaign doesn't say something like "Laurie Coleman has spent periods of time away from home pursuing her career. Her husband continues to be supportive."
It really seems the Coleman campaign is not comfortable with the fact that the Colemans don't fit a cookie cutter mold of what is a family. But what family does these days?
Exactly -- the campaign's response is to attack anyone who asks questions about the Colemans' relationship. What are they trying to keep out of the public eye? Murphy's point should be a well-taken one, and the Coleman campaign could have made this go away by following her advice before it was given. Instead, we have the appearance of something to hide and the relationship (made an issue by the Coleman campaign itself) thrust into the public eye, warts and all.
MinnPost's Doug Grow also noted the story in his regular column:
Outtakes of the commercial shoot prove that the couple was together, the Coleman campaign says. But this is the classic case of an ad backfiring, says the Humphrey Institute's Larry Jacobs. It took the spotlight off Franken and put it right on the untraditional Coleman marriage.
That's what you get when you put Jacobs' comments in their complete context.
Quick Update:Publius caught the Strib's response as well. The tradMed is a bit slow to the party, but this story needs to be aired. Great work all around.
Bloggers say the Coleman campaign was making the Colemans' relationship appear to be something it isn't. The Coleman campaign moved quickly to prove the bloggers wrong.
The campaign allowed outtakes of the commercial to be released. The outtakes clearly show Laurie Coleman was there for the filming. But in cyberspace the debate rages on.
"By putting Laurie Coleman in this ad, the Coleman campaign has invited scrutiny on an issue they thought was long forgotten," said Professor Larry Jacobs of the Humphrey Institute. [Emphasis added]
I would add a slight correction to Murphy's coverage, however: the debate that's raging isn't about the production of the ad anymore (although that was fun). The debate is over the ad's content -- namely, the truthiness of the happy-couple image it portrays.
Laurie Coleman is an actress, model and entrepreneur whose career has led to her spend time out of state.
"It is not OK in our book to attack the senator's wife," said Erin Rath of the Coleman campaign.
Campaign staffers are indignant over any suggestion that Laurie Coleman is anything but a devoted wife and mother who juggles career, husband and two grown kids.
I have to laugh whenever I read the words "campaign staffers are indignant." I would challenge the Coleman campaign to show where anything we bloggers have asked, said, or explicitly implied could reasonably (read: by someone other than the Coleman campaign and its bought-and-paid-for minions) be considered an attack against Mrs. Coleman. Quite the contrary -- whatever arrangements she has to make her marriage and career function are perfectly okay. Let's just make sure Minnesota is getting an accurate picture of those arrangements if they are to be used in campaign advertising.
Well, it's Monday, now two days since I suggested that Norm Coleman should sever ties with the staffers who wasted donors' money and their time attacking bloggers late last week. No matter. The ad isn't what's important -- it's the content of the ad we need to be discussing this week.
What's the issue with the content of the controversial ad? Norm Coleman's image as a happily married man, emphasized at numerous times during the ad. Norm happily complies with his wife's lovingly given command to take out the trash (an old gimmick that was used by Chris Gabrieli in his unsuccessful bid for Governor in Massachusetts in 2006), the zoomed-in shot of a wedding ring, etc.
Google Laurie Coleman's name and you get a hodge-podge of results: political sites on both sides of aisle lauding her hotness, some actor bios, some BLO-N-GO information and articles, and more than a few mentions of her splitting time between Los Angeles, Minnesota, and Washington D.C. The question raised by last week's ad snafu is this: how much time is she spending in each place? Is she really the dutiful yet assertive wife depicted in the strangely-produced ad, or is that image merely a politically convenient construct?
Given the viciousness with which the Coleman campaign fought back against our questions last week, one has to wonder whether there's more here than meets a cursory glance.
I would have posted this last night, but we lost power in the brief wind storm and I was given a few extra hours to mull over what I wanted to say. Here goes.
Q: How do you know when a Republican incumbent's campaign is knee-deep in trouble?
A: When they throw together a press release complete with a make-fun-of-the-issue video to defuse the problem on a Friday afternoon and post it to the front page of their website.
Oh, and attack bloggers too. Personally.
The Coleman campaign -- not one of its allies in the conservative blogs, not a volunteer, no, the Norm Coleman for United States Senate campaign, paid for a video of someone wearing an Al Franken mask poking fun at the issue of their strange-looking ad including Laurie Coleman -- and spent time and effort writing a sarcastic campaign-blog post insulting the integrity and commentary of those of us who dared to question their video production capabilities.
I suppose I should be honored, in a sense: I've joined the club populated by those who have been personally attacked by Sen. Norm Coleman. I would expect this kind of conduct from some in the blogosphere, that great unwashed commentariat, but from a campaign fighting to re-elect a United States Senator?
Really? I've been surprised at the course of this campaign at times, but this really jumps the shark.
Senator Coleman: you really should fire or request the immediate resignation of anyone on your campaign that had anything to do with the production, posting, or approval of this video and post. Just let them go. These people are doing you a disservice, and are undeserving of further employment by your campaign. Minnesota deserves better than these personal, sarcastic attacks right out of John Kline's playbook.
I understand that the campaign has published outtakes from the shoot -- that's a good thing. I'm glad to see it's a matter of the campaign having hired videographers who simply produced a weird-looking and poorly-done ad spot in an effort to highlight the Senator's family-values bona fides.
However, now that it's fair to discuss Sen. Coleman's relationship with his wife, let's have that discussion: is the image presented in the ad a fair one? A realistic one? A truthful one?
How much time do the Colemans spend in the same state, on average?
This, dear readers, is the real issue at hand: is Norm Coleman presenting false images to the voters of Minnesota? That's what we should be discussing instead of watching a campaign for the United States Senate campaign attack people whose names aren't on the ballot.
And of course, this entire discussion is distracting us from this:
This is weird. Just weird. But...well, not that weird, considering the odd domestic situation rumored to be the case for Norm Coleman and his wife.
Others are wondering whether Laurie Coleman was greenscreened into this ad, which is right in line with Mark Kennedy's 2006 "a little too close" ad, designed to show off a human side of the candidate with a little humor. But look at this angle:
Lighting and reflections are one issue, but they were issues when we landed on the moon too. However, check out the angle in that shot -- it looks like Mrs. Coleman is either embedded into the counter, or wasn't actually in this shot, especially when you consider that the height difference between the two isn't that big:
Contrary to what certain Republican mouthpieces would tell you, this isn't an attack on his family, especially with an ad -- quite the contrary, this is the Coleman campaign using Coleman's family to appeal to family-values voters across Minnesota. Given the persistent rumors about Sen. Coleman's domestic situation, however, I think it's reasonable to ask if the campaign is giving Minnesotans a false impression of Coleman's private life for the sake of electoral gain.
Do you think that's possible?
On a substantive note -- yes, Coleman campaign, keep saying things like "he's in the pocket of big oil." I'm sure that won't backfire on you, despite the context.
