Face to Face with Senator Norm Coleman

Although Norm Coleman is today chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the former US senator actually grew up rooting for the other team. Born in New York City in 1949, he graduated from Brooklyn’s James Madison High school — also attended by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who just passed away.

He was active in antiwar causes during the 1960s. After getting his bachelor’s degree at Hofstra and his law degree at the University of Iowa, he signed on to his first job in the Minnesota attorney general’s office, working as a prosecutor. That began his career in public service in the Gopher State. He entered politics and ran as a Democrat for mayor of St. Paul in 1993, winning his first campaign.

His stewardship of St. Paul brought him into conflict with state Democratic leaders, and in 1996 he switched parties. Running as a Republican, he won election to the US Senate in 2002. He served one term before losing to comedian Al Franken in 2008 by a margin of 318 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast. (Franken’s speckled career in the Senate ended in his resignation in 2018.)

Since leaving elective politics, Coleman has devoted his energies to the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and various nonprofit causes. He spoke to Mishpacha about the likelihood of his state, which last voted for a GOP presidential candidate in1972, tilting this year for Trump — and about the president’s improving chances nationwide. He also reminisced about going to school with Chuck Schumer, about his political conversion, and assessed the prospects of Jewish voters making the same switch he did in the current election.