Coleman, Norm (1949-…), served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2003 to 2009. Prior to becoming a senator, Coleman served two terms as mayor of St. Paul. Coleman spent much of his life as a Democrat but switched to the Republican Party in 1996. In the 2008 election, after a recount and two court challenges, Coleman lost his Senate seat to Democrat Al Franken, a former comedian.
Norman Coleman was born on Aug. 17, 1949, in the Brooklyn section of New York City. He attended Hofstra University, where he led protests against the Vietnam War (1957-1975). He graduated from Hofstra with a bachelor’s degree in 1971. Coleman earned a law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law in 1976. From 1976 to 1993, he worked in the office of the Minnesota attorney general, rising to the positions of chief prosecutor and solicitor general.
In 1993, Coleman was elected mayor of St. Paul as a Democrat. He served as cochair of Democratic President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in Minnesota in 1996 before switching to the Republican Party later that year. Coleman explained that he opposed abortion and held other views that did not fit in the Democratic Party, called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) in Minnesota. He was reelected mayor in 1997 as a Republican. He received the Republican nomination for governor in 1998 but lost the election to Jesse Ventura of the Reform Party. Coleman won election to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and took office in 2003.
Coleman ran for reelection in 2008. The 2008 election results showed a difference of only a few hundred votes between Coleman and Franken, and so Minnesota law required a recount of the votes. Election officials certified Franken’s victory in January 2009, but attorneys for Coleman challenged the recount results in court. In April, a three-judge panel dismissed Coleman’s argument that the election had been conducted unfairly. The panel recommended that Franken be certified the winner of the election, but Coleman appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court. In June, the Minnesota Supreme Court found the recount valid and declared Franken the winner of the Senate seat.
