Norm Coleman: From Woodstock and Sit-Ins to a 312 Vote Senate Loss

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Norm Coleman was born in Brooklyn in 1949 to a Jewish family whose surname his grandfather had changed from Goldman. At Hofstra University he was an antiwar activist suspended for leading a sit-in, served as Student Senate president, fought the campus newspaper over funding, worked as a roadie for bands like Jethro Tull and turned 20 at Woodstock. After graduating from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1976 he moved to Minnesota and rose to chief prosecutor and solicitor general in the attorney general's office. Elected mayor of St. Paul in 1993 as a fiscally conservative Democrat, he helped bring NHL hockey back with the Minnesota Wild, switched to the Republican Party in 1996 and lost the 1998 governor's race to Jesse Ventura.

Recruited by Karl Rove and George W. Bush, he ran for the Senate in 2002 against Paul Wellstone, whose 1996 campaign he had chaired. Wellstone died in a plane crash days before the election, and Coleman beat replacement nominee Walter Mondale by about 61,000 votes. In the Senate he backed the Iraq War and the Bush tax cuts while supporting a minimum wage increase and joining the bipartisan Gang of 20 on energy. His 2008 race against Al Franken went to an eight month recount, and a three judge panel declared Franken the winner by 312 votes, a result the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld in June 2009. He later chaired the Republican Jewish Coalition and lobbied at Hogan Lovells for clients including Saudi Arabia and U.S. Steel.

• He froze St. Paul property tax rates for his entire eight years as mayor.
• He publicly berated FEMA director Michael Brown over the Hurricane Katrina response.
• He tied his opposition to embryonic stem cell research and abortion to losing two infant children to Zellweger syndrome.
• The initial 2008 margin against Franken was just over 200 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast.
• The Justice Department declined to charge him over a Texas lawsuit involving his wife's employer, and an investigation by a former FBI director cleared him.