Ambitious crusader
But Coleman has inspired some detractors along the way. "He's the best self-promoter we've ever had to deal with in our state," says Michael Erlandson, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL, as the Democratic Party is known in Minnesota. "I think that his career shows that he is ambitious and opportunistic, that nothing is beyond the realm."
A partisan view, no doubt. But just how does a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who loved the Dodgers and led student protests in college, who served as Bill Clinton's state campaign cochair in 1996, end up as a conservative, antiabortion Republican senator from Minnesota with a Hollywood-actress wife? "God only knows," Coleman says, laughing. "I've been lucky. Doors have opened for me."
Antiwar protester. Some see a gate-crasher rather than a door opener. But either way, it's a story full of twists. Coleman grew up on Avenue O in Brooklyn, one of eight children in a Reform Jewish home, and attended the same high school as New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. After graduating from Long Island's Hofstra University in 1971, where he led protests against the Vietnam War, Coleman got a law degree at the University of Iowa in 1976 and went to work in the human-rights section of the Minnesota attorney general's office.
In 1981, he married actress and model Laurie Casserly, whose mother, Lois, was one of the early leaders of the antiabortion movement in Minnesota. The couple's first child, Adam, died within weeks of birth from a genetic condition known as Zellweger syndrome. Nine years later, their fourth child, Grace, just a few months old, succumbed to the same ailment. The couple has two other children, Jacob, 18, and Sarah, 15.
The family tragedies had a profound effect. By the time he made his first foray into politics, seeking the DFL endorsement for mayor of St. Paul in 1989, Coleman was solidly antiabortion. Losing two kids "certainly strengthened my resolve to value every life," he says, and allowed him to gain some perspective. "I know what the worst thing in the world is," he says. "Everything else is manageable."
He failed to get the DFL endorsement in 1989, but in 1993 he challenged the party's choice in the primary and won, and was elected mayor in November. Very quickly, he managed to offend a number of other DFL constituencies. He clashed with teachers over vouchers and with municipal unions over privatization. So even though he got credit for revitalizing St. Paul's downtown, bringing a National Hockey League franchise back to Minnesota, and improving the city's credit rating, he was on the outs with his party. He didn't sit still: In December 1996, Coleman switched parties and became a Republican. "I've always wanted to change things, and for some reason, my old party became the party defending big government and fighting against change in government," he says.
A year later, Coleman ran for governor against his old boss and patron Hubert Humphrey III, the DFL candidate, and beat him. But in a wild three-way race, both of them lost to a political neophyte named Jesse Ventura. So Coleman went back to his job as mayor of St. Paul and before long had picked up the U.S. Senate seat.
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