Elections 2010

Minnesota may be heading toward another drawn-out recount battle, this time with the race to succeed two-term governor Tim Pawlenty. Politics Daily reports:

Six days after the election, no winner has been declared in the race for governor of Minnesota, even though the Democratic candidate, Mark Dayton, was leading his Republican opponent, Tom Emmer, by 8,751 votes on Monday.

Under Minnesota law, an automatic recount must be conducted at public expense if the margin of victory is less than a half of one percentage point, or in this case about 10,500 votes, according to The Associated Press. But a trailing candidate can choose to waive the recount. About 2.1 million ballots were cast in the election.

Emmer's attorney, Tony Trimble, was asked Monday if the candidate was giving any thought to waiving the recount. "None whatsoever," was Trimble's reply.

Emmer campaign spokesman Carl Kuhl spoke with THE WEEKLY STANDARD in a phone interview today about the automatic recount. "We're going to see that process through," Kuhl said. "We see a real possibility here." Kuhl referenced misreported numbers in Hennepin County, the state's most populous county, where he said "the numbers just don't add up." Also awaiting to be counted, he said, were the absentee ballots -- specifically, the military ballots.

Kuhl declined to say where specifically in the state the Emmer campaign expects to pick up the nearly 9,000 votes it needs to win the race. "We're going to take this one step at a time," he said. He also declined to say whether or not the campaign believed there was any foul play involved in counting the votes.

The Republican challenger to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank was interviewed last night by Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel:

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Alexi Giannoulias is no stranger to controversial business relationships: As chief loan officer at his family’s Broadway Bank, the Illinois Democrat running for President Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat authorized loans to convicted organized crime leaders like Michael “Jaws” Giorango (a pimp and bookmaker) and Demitri Stavropoulos (an illegal gambling operator). Giannoulias also serviced loans for convicted felon Tony Rezko.