Pawlenty freeing his hands to block Al Franken?

Yesterday, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard arguments from the lawyers of Al Franken and Norm Coleman about the latter's challenge to a previous, unanimous court ruling determining that Franken had won last November's Senate election. As the Star Tribune reports,

the justices [..] leveled their toughest questions at a lawyer for Coleman [..]. "You're offering little more than ... Coleman's theory of the case but no concrete evidence to back it up," said Associate Justice Christopher Dietzen.

If the Court rules that Franken did in fact win, Governor Pawlenty will have to decide whether to certify Franken the winner or not. If he doesn't, he will piss off Minnesotans; if he does, he will piss off national Republicans.

Well, today, right on cue, Pawlenty announced that he will not run for reelection in 2010. And as Jonathan Chait notes, "Siding with Coleman could endanger Pawlenty's popularity in Minnesota, but now that he's not running in 2010, he's free to carry water for the national party."

Hence the rather alarmed reaction from Donald McFarland of Americans United for Change:

“Gov. Pawlenty, the Iowa caucuses can wait — the people of Minnesota need you now. ... We implore the governor to sign the election certificate should the Minnesota Supreme Court rule in Al Franken’s favor.”

You'd sure hope so, but it doesn't look good, does it?

If Pawlenty puts his party's interests over those of his state, as he is now freer to do, the issue gets passed on to the Senate. Richard L. Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at Loyola Law School, lays out in the LA Times why the U.S. Senate should not wait for the outcome of a new federal lawsuit before seating Franken provisionally in that case.