Did Coleman's Financial Straits Force Him To Solicit Donor Favors?

Did Norm Coleman's financial problems compel him to turn to friends and GOP donors for help with his living situation?

That's what a new story out of Minnesota alleges. Friday morning, a local Fox News affiliate reported that at the time that Coleman allegedly received $75,000 in unreported payments from a prominent Republican businessman, he was also struggling to make payments for the restructuring of his home.

Good government officials wondered whether there was something more than coincidental to the financial exchange. And, indeed, there is other compelling -- and up to this point, unnoted -- evidence to suggest that Coleman was soliciting monetary favors from his GOP backers.

Around the same time that Coleman and/or his wife were allegedly receiving three $25,000 payments from businessman Nasser Kazeminy, the Senator was also getting cheaply discounted rent from a major Republican figure who served as his landlord in Washington D.C.

In July 2007 -- months after lawsuits assert that $75,000 was secretly funneled to the Colemans -- the Senator began paying $600 a month rent on his one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill, way below market value. His landlord, Republican operative and communications guru Jeff Larson, also was covering Coleman's utilities (under an apparent agreement that the Senator would be billed with an estimate once the year was over).

At the time, the D.C. arrangement raised a variety of eyebrows, mainly because Coleman had helped Larson secure millions in business related to the Republican Convention in St. Paul. The new revelations, however, suggest that the rent may have been more a favor that Larson was offering to Coleman than any sort of bribery.

Indeed, in two separate lawsuits that emerged this fall, it is alleged that, around this time, the Colemans (one of the Senate's least rich families) were in financial straits. According to one of the lawsuits in March of 2007, Kazeminy said that "U.S. Senators don't make s---" and that he was going to try to funnel money to the Minnesota Republican. From there, it is alleged, Kazeminy arranged for the three $25,000 payments to be made from his Texas-based Deep Marine Technology to Hays Companies in Minnesota for "insurance." Laurie Coleman is, officially, an employee at Hays. But she is not a licensed insurance agent.

Records provided by the Coleman campaign to the local Fox affiliate show that, during the same month that Kazeminy made his profanity-laced statement about Coleman's financial situation, the Senator refinanced his home. He and his wife had to cover construction costs on his home, which had jumped from $328,000 to $414,000 months earlier.

Comments

[iver]

What we need here is a Federal bailout that actually helps the little guy on Main Street. If Norm got help with his mortgage from the Federal government TARP bailout, he would not have to look for other financing options.

[Claudiadesigner]

All and I mean A L L you guys against NORM, --- why don't you be quiet and let the recount go the way it is suppose to. D e m o ------------ please shut up !!

[iver]

Oh, so we don't get to exercise our First Amendment rights, especially about our elected officials? I thought that is what democracy is all about. I guess I'll just shut up, so I won't make you sad.

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

Oops, forgot to add, FISCAL CONSERVATIVE my a$$!

[rue]

Government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy could more easily be tolerated if it weren't so "expletive" incompetent. These people can't manage their own finances, never mind those of the nation.

[drayak]

I agree, we get rich, usually attorney's, as our government leaders. The average person just cannot afford to run for high public office. Once, elected, politicians seem to lose any idea to keep a balaced budget ie: Ted Stevens R-Alaska, earmark, paint a Salmon on an Alaskan Airline plane for advertisement? Cost $1,000,000. Boy are glad we got such a bargain, and a private company really needed our (taxpayers) help. Murtha D-Pennsylvania, earmark, build an Ethonal Plant in PA. Like we have corn fields all over the state, now we have to pay to have corn shipped from Neb, Ill, In, N/S Dakota, Iowa, etc. What a bargain.

I'm pretty sure our forefathers are wondering why we tolerate these bums. Our Grandchildren, certainly will.

[princessk]

Hey, Norm...did anybody ever tell you that with your law degree you could make a lot of money in the private sector?

Really, we'll be just fiiiine without you.

[TommyMcCarthy]

See?
There's no corruption here.......just another innocent victim of the morgatge crisis.....

Too bad the rest of us can't get a bailout from rich Republican friends

COUNT 'EM ALL!

Go Al
tm

[Pumpski]

It is obvious Coleman is dirty. He should just drop out but his pride is getting in the way. He can't back down now then he will look fearful. He says he wants this investigation. But the truth is he doesn't. He can't play this off and somehow create his innocence with me. This confidence game to look as if he did nothing wrong doesn't hold up at all. I see right through it. And the FBI will also. He's a goner.

[sueinmn]

Its Colemans problem he morgaged his simple ugly two story yellow house to the tune of 770K. The appraiser and lender doing this favor should be fired!! It simply doesnt make sense to put a lavish interior to a house in a not so lavish area. coleman your in pretty deep and I hope you sink fast and hard!!

[indypete]

Although I'm quite sure Coleman's been up to all sorts of rannygazoo and so far the surface has barely been scratched, I hope there's something substantive that can be proved with iron-clad certainty behind it all. The speculation and kneejerk opinionating about it is all good fun but goes against the grain a bit. I prefer to leave the guilty-till-proved-innocent attitude to the RW howlers. If the solid proof comes out, I will break out my cleats and sharpen them for the ceremonial stomping.

[onenation]

Yea, he was FORCED??
Repairs went from 300,000 to 400,000? And I'm supposed to feel how?
Does he know what a fool that makes him? A giant remodel with no over run fund?
So we know for sure that he is a FOOL trying to convince Minn he is capabile of leading.

[LiarLiarIraqsOnFire]

Too bad for Norm, VECO doesn't operate in Minnesota.

[bayside]

Is this like a Ted Stevens gift? We have lot of stevens gifts in our congress..

[drayak]

We certainly appear to have a lot of rich people in high office with rich friends helping in ways the greater majority of society does not. In fact we now have a President elect with rich friends helping to purchase them a home, and don't forget Senitor Chris Dodds sweetheart deal on his mortgage.

[Bren55]

Politicians are corrupt; dems and repugs are stealing us all blind, giving their buddies and family members jobs, favors, greasing the backs of big business. Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. Lets clean up Washington by firing all of these crooks. I hope Obama can do some good before the dump truck pulls up and begins to fill with his scandalous garbage-politician/honesty-nope, doesn't exist.

[TheIndependenceParty]

The ego of such men has no bounds. It fuels the sense of self-importance and entitlement, and that in turn puts them in a position of needing more money, ... and asking the wrong sources.

Such men seem to have no compunctions about voting against the UAW workers for making too much money. It is as though they view themselves as an entirely different species than the rest of us!

[iver]

Don't you just wonder if he used a union contractor for the remodel. Probably not, because it would have been done on time and on budget.

[BabsfromKansas]

So when will we start hearing about the women and the powder habit?

[indypete]

Whose? Mine? Can't keep that within the 200 word limit.

[MarsAmbassador]

Norm Coleman has the worst fake teeth American politics have seen since the Founding Fathers and their walrus-bone and ivory teeth implants.