Commending Coleman
Floor Speech
COMMENDING COLEMAN -- (Senate - July 09, 2009)
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Mr. REID. Madam President, I don't know much about the State of New York or the city of New York. I do know there is a high school there called James Madison High School, which has some pretty prominent graduates: Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, and Senator Norm Coleman from Minnesota was a graduate of that school. I believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of the Supreme Court, also graduated from that high school. I am sure there are others.
My message to Norm Coleman is that I have been involved in close elections. I lost an election for the Senate many years ago by 524 votes. I won one not too many years ago by 428 votes. So I have some appreciation for what Norm Coleman and his opponent, Al Franken, went through.
My thoughts during the past 8 months have been directly toward the difficulty they have had in their lives as a result of that close election. One of my elections--the one I won by 428 votes--took 6 weeks. I cannot imagine one taking 8 months. It was a hard-fought campaign. Almost 3 million people voted, and it was decided by 312 votes.
I appreciate, as I think do the people of Minnesota, the Senate, and the country, Norm Coleman not taking this to the Supreme Court or a higher court. He could have done that. That speaks well of him.
Norm has a lot of fans, of course, in the State of Minnesota, but he is also a friend of a close personal friend of mine from the State of Nevada, Sig Rogich. Sig Rogich and I have been very close personal friends for a long time. He is a man of accomplishment. Having been born in Iceland, he came to America and was raised in Henderson, where I was raised. Actually, he is a wealthy man now, a very prominent businessman. One of Norm's biggest supporters around the country is Sig Rogich; he has a great pedigree. He was part of the Tuesday team of famous media developed for Ronald Reagan. He worked in the White House for the first President Bush. He is a very personal friend of the first President Bush and also is well known and was part of the second Bush team and knows him very well. My understanding of Sig Rogich's relationship with Norm Coleman is that they are friends. That speaks well of both of them, that they have such high-quality friends.
Norm Coleman's relationship with me--myself being a Democrat and he being a Republican--was always very good. We spoke to each other often. He was always very courteous and always a gentleman with me. I never heard him say a negative word about me. I cannot ever recall saying anything negative about him. To show that he did do some legislation that I watched very closely, one piece of legislation he did was one that would allow people, when filing their income tax return, to designate part of their return to go to the National Guardsmen or Reservists, those who lose their jobs as a result of going into combat and their families are having trouble making the grade. The few dollars they get from the military doesn't make up for what their house payment is and everything. This would allow money to be put into a fund to be administered and allow this money to go toward the families of these people fighting overseas. I thought so much of that legislation that I have sponsored it. It is working its way through the Senate, and it is a fine piece of legislation. I acknowledge that I plagiarized this from Norm Coleman. It came from his friend and my friend, Sig Rogich.
I wish Norm and his family the very best. Recognizing that these campaigns come to an end, he is a relatively young man, and I am sure with his educational background and his notoriety in Minnesota, he will have a bright future.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
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