Coleman and Franken battle for expensive Minnesota Senate seat

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Good morning, everyone. We are live from New York, and from Atlanta, Georgia on this Election Day, where America’s Exit Poll is open.

[BEEP]

NELLIE:

Hi, this is Nellie from Ardsley, New York. I was second in line to vote in our very little village this morning. And by a few minutes after six, there were 25 people in line behind me, unheard of and pretty exciting and free coffee at Starbucks.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

[LAUGHS] Free coffee or not, tell us your story as you cast your ballot ? 877-8MYTAKE or email us at mytake@thetakeaway.org. Well, I’m really excited about this next segment. Tom Scheck. Sch ? Scheck is joining us from Minnesota Public Radio. Tom, thanks for being with us.

TOM SCHECK:

You got it.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Now, you just came from a polling place and I want ? I want you to describe what that was like before we get into the really delicious details of that fabulously ugly Senate race you got going in Minnesota. Tom, what was the polling place like?

TOM SCHECK:

Well, I, I woke up at about 6:55 this morning and looked out my front window and there’s a poling place across the street and there were 100 people in line already, getting ready to vote. And there’s also another polling place about a block and a half down.

So when I was driving down the way, there were about 200 people in line there. Minnesotans really take their voting seriously. They usually lead the nation in voter turnout and it’s gonna be evident again today.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

It might not be this year though.

TOM SCHECK:

Well, we’ll see.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

We’ll see.

TOM SCHECK:

I mean the Secretary of State here was talking about 80 percent turnout which ?

[BOTH AT ONCE]

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Eighty percent, wow.

TOM SCHECK:

? 80 percent is pretty high.

ADAORA UDOJI:

Wow.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Now, is the national race driving this or is the Norm Coleman-Al Franken race driving this?

TOM SCHECK:

Well, the presidential race is driving it, but it’s not as much in terms of who’s gonna win anymore. Barack Obama in polling has been polling between anywhere ahead of John McCain between 5 and 20 percentage points.

The Senate race, this race between Republican Senator Norm Coleman, the incumbent, Democrat Al Franken, the former Saturday Night Live comedian and there’s also a third party candidate Dean Barclay, with the Independence Party. That’s Jesse Ventura – remember him, the governor of Minnesota.

[BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

He ? the ? he, Dean Barclay is also running in this race and he’s polling at about 15 percent, which means it’s pretty much about a 50-50 race. I think both are polling around 40 percent between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Is there ? is ? is Minnesota a runoff state?

TOM SCHECK:

It is not a runoff state. So it’s plurality. So whoever gets the plurality of the vote will, will win and go back or go to Washington. I was talking to one of the folks with the Coleman camp today and I said, you know, how’s this gonna turn out? And they said, it’s gonna be really close. And then he said, I hate to say this, but it could be recount close.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

So let’s talk about the polling then. Who is the Republican drawing, who is Al Franken drawing and who is Barclay drawing?

TOM SCHECK:

Well at this point, the Repub ? Norm Coleman is drawing mostly from his Republican base. And over the last day, he’s been really talking about well, core Republican principles ? Second Amendment rights, abor ? you know, he’s against a ? abortion.

He’s talking about keeping taxes low. Now Al Franken is talking a lot about, you know, the change we need. He’s trying to get on Barack Obama’s coattails. But the problem is, is there’s a lot of more moderate conservative Democrats who are looking at Franken and they’re saying boy, I just don’t know if I can vote for this guy. I don’t know if he’s serious enough to be in the Senate.

And then there’s a third ? the third party candidate, Dean Barclay’s really drawing on the fact that there’s a lot of folks out there who are just sick of the negative ads, sick of the ugly campaigning that’s going on. And they’re kind of trending towards him.

Now, in the last couple of elections, those folks have kind of ? went back almost to the chickens come back to roost so to speak, where they’ll either vote for the Democrat or the Republican in a sense. But we’ll, we’ll see what happens. I mean, there’s a lot of folks who are just not happy with the ugliness in this race.

ADAORA UDOJI:

Tom, who’s got the better ground operation – at least from what you can tell, at this point?

TOM SCHECK:

Well, Republicans traditionally have the better ground game and they’re ? they’ve been bragging about that for a couple of weeks. But the Obama campaign said, hey, we got the biggest and baddest get-out-the-vote effort the state has ever seen. We’re gonna turn out voters in north Minneapolis. That’s a, a ? a lower poverty area in the state. They’re gonna turn out a lot of African-American voters, they’re gonna turn out voters in the suburbs who traditionally don’t vote for Democrats.

And they’ve been bragging that they’re gonna turn out also a lot of students, college students who, who haven’t turned out since 1998, the year that Jesse Ventura won.

JOHN HOCKENBERRY:

Well, Minnesota certainly has a reputation for doing the unexpected, even though it’s predictably in the national race, a ? a Obama-column state. Tom Scheck, thanks so much for joining us from Minnesota Public Radio.

TOM SCHECK:

You got it.