ST. PAUL -- On the day Senate candidate Al Franken kicked off a recent campaign tour around Minnesota, Sen. Norm Coleman hopped a flight to Washington for his job on Capitol Hill.
Yet as Franken was traveling the state to tout his Democratic candidacy, Coleman announced a TV advertising buy that blanketed much of Minnesota with a message highlighting the Republican senator's bipartisan knack for getting things done.
Minnesotans already are seeing and hearing plenty from the candidates in this year's U.S. Senate race, a contest that could exceed $30 million and exhaust even the most ardent political observers.
That presence will only increase now that the general election battle is under way. The two major candidates received their party's endorsement -- Coleman's was a formality, Franken's a quickly settled contest -- and no Democrat has announced a primary challenge.
The candidates are defining themselves to voters and beginning to highlight their differences, University of Minnesota Morris political scientist Paula O'Loughlin said.
ADVERTISEMENT
"You don't want to let the opposition define you," she said.
Franken on Thursday concluded the four-day tour to more than a dozen cities and plans more campaign events in the coming weeks. Coleman has conducted similar statewide swings, and his campaign said he will continue to stump around Minnesota as the Senate schedule allows.
Both candidates have hit the airwaves, too.
Coleman's first TV ad of his re-election bid is a 30-second spot which attempts to emphasize his ability to bring people together. The campaign followed the TV spot with the Friday release of a radio ad to be broadcast in northern Minnesota and the Twin Cities. It is critical of Franken for comments in a recent Bemidji Pioneer interview in which he described some of Coleman's work for Walker and other rural Minnesota communities as "very small-bore stuff."
Franken communications director Andy Barr said Franken said "there's so much more that a senator should be doing" to help people in rural areas and elsewhere.
The Franken campaign ran ads before he was endorsed, but would not discuss future ad plans.
"That will happen when it happens," Barr said.
After this initial burst of campaigning, the pace probably will slow a bit, O'Loughlin said. "There probably will be a slight lull because Minnesotans are going to the cabins."
ADVERTISEMENT
The candidates eventually will take to the debate stage together. The Coleman and Franken camps both say they are eager for debates, but have not specified how many they will agree to and when they will start.
