Norm Coleman's Possibly Million Dollar Mistake

Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

For Sen. Norm Coleman, 1.1 seconds could cost his campaign thousands if not a million dollars.

The Minnesota Republican was caught violating campaign communications law in one of his recent commercials, failing to include the requisite amount of time for his own likeness and message.

The mistake, a seemingly involuntary oversight uncovered by the Minnesota blog MN Publius, could mean the Coleman ad no longer qualifies run on TV at the lowest ad rate. Should the stations choose to charge his campaign (and to some extent it is their discretion) the Senator could be billed an estimated $20,000 more. If, as argued by the Al Franken campaign, Coleman should now have to pay a higher rate for the remainder of the campaign, one Democratic media analyst who has worked in Minnesota said the cost could extend upwards of a million dollars.

All of which was entirely avoidable. As pointed out by the legal counsel to Franken, a candidate for office must include "no less than four seconds" of its ad to a "clearly identifiable photographic or similar image of the candidate." The spot Coleman launched this week (one of three on the air ) included only 2.9 seconds of his likeness.

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