Search results for ""author jay weiner""

On July 7, 2009, Al Franken was sworn in as Minnesota's junior U.S. senator-eight months after Election Night. In the chill of November 2008, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman led by a slim 215 votes, a margin that triggered an automatic statewide recount of more than 2.9 million ballots. Minnesota's ensuing recount, and the contentious legal and public relations battle that would play out between the Franken and Coleman lawyers and staff, simultaneously fascinated and frustrated Minnesotans and the nation-all while a filibuster-proof Senate hung in the balance.This Is Not Florida is the behind-the-scenes saga of the largest, longest, and most expensive election recount in American history. Reporter Jay Weiner covered the entire recount process-for which he was honored with Minnesota's most prestigious journalism award-following every bizarre twist and turn and its many colorful personalities. Based on daily reporting as well as interviews with more than forty campaign staffers and other participants in the recount, This Is Not Florida dives into the motivations of key players in the drama, including the exploits of Franken's lead attorney Marc Elias, some of the mistakes made by Coleman advisers, and how the Franken team's devotion to data collection helped Franken win the recount by a mere 312 votes.In a fascinating, blow-by-blow account of the historic recount that captivated people nationwide, Jay Weiner gets inside campaign war rooms and judges' chambers and takes the reader from the uncertainties of Election Night 2008, through the controversial State Canvassing Board and a grueling eight-week trial, to an appeal to Minnesota's Supreme Court, and finally to Al Franken's long-awaited and emotional swearing-in.This Is Not Florida presents an important and unforgettable moment in political history that proved that it's never really over until it's actually over

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Behind the scenes of Minnesota history, by way of the engaging life story of the state’s best-known and beloved political observer Professor Hy Berman (1925–2015) was, by most accounts, the face of public history in Minnesota for many decades—a peerless political observer and labor historian, popular lecturer and university professor, and familiar presence on the Twin Cities PBS show Almanac, dependably interpreting Minnesota history—and making some of his own. In Professor Berman: The Last Lecture of Minnesota’s Greatest Public Historian, readers encounter the Hy Berman audiences and students loved, telling stories as only he could—stories that are at once a close-up view of Minnesota history and a conversational self-portrait of a man who often found himself in the middle of that history even as it was unfolding. Berman came by his passion for history and politics naturally: as the “red diaper baby” of left-wing, Yiddish-speaking Polish immigrants in New York. With humor, sharp wit, and the insight of wisdom acquired over ninety years, he takes us back to that heady 1920s milieu that set him on a path that would one day lead to, among other adventures, a brush with the House Un-American Activities Committee, a role in a black student takeover on the University of Minnesota campus, and a lifelong alliance with Minnesota’s “Happy Warrior” for civil rights, Hubert Humphrey. Featuring an all-star cast of the state’s politicians (from Humphrey to Rudy Perpich, Harold Stassen, Arne Carlson, and Jesse Ventura) and full of engaging, often surprising anecdotes, Berman’s “last lecture” describes a rich life devoted to teaching that reached far beyond the classroom—and that found the professor translating history for an avid TV audience, helping to appoint the state’s first female Supreme Court justice, and testifying at Minnesota’s landmark tobacco trial. Edited and with an Introduction and Afterword by long-time Twin Cities journalist Jay Weiner, Hy Berman’s final lecture is a strong and powerful contribution to Minnesota’s story.

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