A couple good stories today that were overshadowed (intentionally?) by Coleman choosing to
During the first 18 months of this election cycle, Kazeminy and his wife have made at least $55,700 in political contributions, almost exclusively to Republican candidates and causes. (The one exception: $2,300 to Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign.) This includes $20,000 to the Republican Party of Minnesota and $20,000 to Coleman’s Northstar Leadership PAC. This ranks the household 19th on the list of the state’s most generous political donors.
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His ties to Coleman go back even farther. The Kazeminy family made $4,000 in contributions to the then-St. Paul mayor’s 1997 re-election campaign. Three years later Kazeminy footed the bill for Coleman to fly to Jordan for a global trade conference. Since joining the Senate in 2002, Coleman has taken at least two more trips at the businessman’s expense. In 2004 the senator and his wife flew back from Paris on a private plane owned by Kazeminy, a $2,870 value. The following year Coleman and his daughter used Kazeminy’s plane to jet off to the Bahamas, a trip valued at $3,960. “It’s a friend with a plane,” Coleman explained to the Star Tribune after the subsidized trips came to light in 2006.
Yet the relationship is deeper than that. When Coleman was mayor of St. Paul (from 1994 to 2002), the city gave a $425,000 loan to help renovate the St. Paul Athletic Club, a project Kazeminy was an investor in. When the new gym opened, Coleman became the first member.
Between his stint as mayor and senator, Coleman joined a law firm, Winthrop and Weinstine, retained by Kazeminy’s company. Coleman was paid $140,000 during that brief time period, even though his law license was suspended at the time of the hiring because he’d failed to pay his dues to the Minnesota State Bar while mayor. Coleman initially declined to disclose the terms of the contract, telling the Minneapolis Star-Tribune it was “between the firm, me and my wife.”
Hum… no wonder he was looking for a distraction and then turned around and said he wasn’t going to answer any more questions bout it.
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