Decision on Minnesota Senate Seat Goes to Panel of Judges

Coleman is still paying his campaign staff, in addition to a team of high-priced lawyers. Raising money for the recount "got much more difficult in the new year," campaign manager Cullen Sheehan said.

"As time progresses and legal bills mount, we've gone from 30 people to 10 or fewer," Sheehan said of Coleman's staff. "The general public has over time become less and less interested, and they're just wondering when it's going to end."

The dispute over the seat tumbled into state court when Coleman, a Democrat-turned-Republican elected in 2002, challenged the Jan. 5 decision of the bipartisan state canvassing board to declare Franken the winner.

The two sides took markedly different approaches in the trial.

Franken's team carefully, and sometimes numbingly, focused on individual absentee ballots and how they were filled out. The lawyers presented dozens of witnesses and argued that decisions must be made case by case. Franken's troops managed to widen his leading margin by at least several dozen votes even before the court has ruled on the validity of larger groups of absentee ballots.

Coleman's attorneys offered a broader argument and fewer details. They contend that approaches to reviewing ballots varied widely from county to county and that the standards set by the court on Feb. 13 are not the same as the ones used on Nov. 4 or during the recount, making them unfair.

The Franken forces "fear that counting all the votes means they don't win, so they're very much goal-oriented," said Ben Ginsberg, a Coleman attorney who also represented George W. Bush during the 35-day Florida recount in 2000. He also describes the inconsistencies as equal protection violations, which would open the way to a potential federal challenge.

Franken attorney Marc Elias said Coleman and his attorneys reversed field after the canvassing board, which included two state Supreme Court justices, put Franken in front on Jan. 5.

"Their newfound zeal is that of the converted," Elias said Thursday. "For the bulk of this recounting process, they opposed counting any absentee ballots. It was only when they found themselves trailing that they took the opposite position and said any should be counted."

In their courtroom pitch, Franken's attorneys declared themselves similarly unimpressed.

"The failure of proof is simply breathtaking," Franken attorney Kevin Hamilton told the judges last week during closing arguments. "To put it charitably, contestant's advocacy has rather dramatically outrun their evidence."

Hamline University professor David Schultz, who has been watching the case closely, described the judges as "unsympathetic" to Coleman's arguments that thousands of absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and that others were counted twice.

In a universe of about 1,400 ballots that Schultz considers most likely to be counted, he thinks that there are not enough eligible votes to reverse the results.

Nothing is sure either way until the judges rule, and even then, an appeal to the state supreme court is virtually assured, Coleman staffers say.

As the case dragged on, Franken stayed away. A spokesman said he has been studying policy and the ways of the Senate in preparation for becoming its 100th member.

Coleman, however, often attended the trial, taking notes and conferring with the lawyers.

The other day, Coleman's staff sent him a stack of greeting cards that had arrived in the office mail "just to energize him."

"When you go from a lead on Election Day to the canvassing board saying Franken got more votes, to a [court] contest, it can be tough," Sheehan said. "It's a day-to-day thing. You just have to ride that roller coaster."