Sen. Coleman accused of ethics lapse for D.C. housing arrangement

1 Jul 2008 // Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman rents a Washington, D.C., bedroom from a friend and political consultant for $600 a month.

Since last year, there have been a few times that he's paid rent late; once his landlord neglected to deposit his rent check; once he sold his landlord some furniture to cover his rent; and he discovered this year there were two months he hadn't paid at all. When he and his landlord, political operative Jeff Larson, discovered the arrears, Coleman paid up and Larson cashed the checks.

It may be an unusual arrangement, but Coleman and Larson say the rental is perfectly aboveboard. Coleman says he pays the market rate to rent a cramped apartment from a friend.

But Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the deal is something else: "exactly the sort of appearance of impropriety that undermines the public's faith in government."

On Tuesday, the Washington-based watchdog group asked the U.S. Senate ethics committee to investigate whether Coleman violated the Senate's gift ban because of the rental.

Meanwhile, Brian Melendez, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, on Monday said the rental is a gift because $600 rent for a bedroom in Larson's $989,900 house is a "sweetheart deal."

Coleman's campaign press secretary said the allegations from CREW are politically tainted.

"This is a group with close personal ties to (Democratic Senate candidate Al) Franken, with close personal ties to Chuck
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Schumer and the DSCC, and that's the context of this complaint," said Luke Friedrich, of the Coleman campaign. "This isn't some independent group."

Schumer is a Democratic senator from New York who also is chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

CREW's executive director, Melanie Sloan, used to work with Schumer and other Democratic members of Congress and was a frequent guest on Franken's "Air America" radio show.

But Sloan said any claim that CREW is less than independent is baseless.

The organization, which has received funding from Democratic donors, also has filed ethics complaints against three Democratic senators recently.

"He is attacking CREW but failing to address the substance of CREW's complaint," Sloan said.

The Senate ethics committee may not jump on the Coleman allegation no matter who lodged it.

There is no timeline by which the committee is required to respond to requests to investigate, and sometimes it lets such internal investigations languish for years.

In any case, Coleman's relationship with Larson is a long and deep one. The two worked together to bring the Republican National Convention to St. Paul, Larson serves as treasurer for Coleman's political action committee, and Larson has long worked for Coleman's political campaigns as a consultant.

A review of Federal Election Commission data showed Larson's company, FLS Connect, and related companies are by far the largest recipients of Coleman's campaign cash in recent years.

Coleman's campaign committee has paid FLS Connect, FLS LLC, FLS-DCI and Feather, Larson & Synhorst — which do fundraising and telemarketing for Republicans — $835,448, according to records going back to late 2005.

Some of those payments were for rent for Coleman's campaign headquarters. Those rent payments, which are not at issue in the CREW complaint, stopped last year.

The National Journal calculated that FLS received about $1.6 million since 2001.