It starts for many of us at the Minnesota State Fair. You can pick up signs at a candidate's booth, and I visited Al Franken's to take care of business. In the image below, it appears someone is lecturing Al's volunteers; we have had enough of that!
The State Fair is also a place to observe the "seed art" of Minnesotans (several examples are in this post). In recent years, some of it has been political, like this one imploring Minnesotan's to "Spare Us the Norm."
I also visited the Democratic State Farm Party's booth, and they had a board where people could volunteer reasons why we should dump Norm. Examples included Coleman's opposition to healthcare reform and not investigating spending abuses for no-bid contracts in Iraq.
We put up our signs, worked the phone banks, and voted. As seen below, the photo of my ballot demonstrates that I was not one of the Lizard People.
But after the election, we didn't have a winner. At the end of the original count, Norm was ahead, but a recount was triggered by the close vote. It doesn't take long after election day for winter to arrive, and in Minnesota, that means snow. They say that Eskimos have 7 different words for snow; In Minnesota, we found all 7 kinds covering our Franken signs.
In January, I was watching the vote-count live on TheUptake.Org and I and thousands of others saw Al take the lead for the first time.
There was zero probability that Norm would lead again, but the delay tactics started. The grass started growing. Another season was passing.
It was time for the May Day parade, and Al's supporters, and Minnesotans in general, were thinking it was past time for Minnesota to have a second senator.
And Today we learned that it finally did end. Senator Al Franken. It sounds good to say that.
I hope Senator Al Franken can start soon cleaning up after the previous residents.
I really enjoyed this photo essay about the resilient Franken Sign that withstood the test of time and did not fail through snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night.
I also watched the recount on TheUptake.org and spent my birthday on January 5 attending the official recount certification at the Minnesota State Capitol. Party on!
And thanks for including my two crop art pictures (the Al Franken portrait and "Spare us from the Norm") that I did for the Minnesota State Fair.
Posted by: Kim Cope | July 18, 2009 at 02:24 AM