Wealthy Minneapolis Executive Expected to Challenge Al Franken

According to POLITICO, a wealthy financial executive from Minneapolis is expected to declare his candidacy for Democrat Al Franken’s U.S. Senate seat sometime next week.

The challenger, Michael F. McFadden, is a co-chief executive officer of Lazard Middle Market, a division of Lazard Ltd., one of the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firms.   According to its corporate website, Lazard Middle Market specializes in “providing premium investment banking services to mid-sized companies.”

McFadden, who graduated magna cum laude from the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities — a college where the late Eugene McCarthy once taught — with a degree in economics and later studied at the London School of Economics before earning a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, enters the race at a distinct disadvantage in terms of name recognition.

His candidacy, however, didn’t come as a complete surprise to political observers.  McFadden had told Minnesota Public Radio last month that he was “in the process of talking with my family, friends, colleagues and party leaders” about mounting a bid against Franken.

McFadden’s candidacy nevertheless is welcome news for the Minnesota GOP, which has struggled mightily to find a top-tier challenger to the freshman Democratic senator next year.

Republicans are hoping McFadden can self-finance a portion of his campaign, helping to offset Franken’s advantage in the proverbial money chase.   Franken currently has more than $2 million cash on hand, according to his latest campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Several other Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, state Sen. Julie Rosen and former state Rep. Laura Brod, currently a member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, are reportedly also looking at the race.

In a disputed race that wasn’t finally settled until June 30, 2009 — eight months after the election — Franken narrowly defeated Republican Norm Coleman by a scant 312 votes out of nearly 2.9 million votes cast in 2008.  Former Sen. Dean Barkley, the Independence Party’s nominee, polled a whopping 437,505 votes, or 15.2 percent, in that razor-thin race.

Coleman, 63, has declined to run again, believing he can have much more impact heading the American Action Network, a center-right advocacy group founded by Fred Malek, a former president of Marriott Hotels and Northwest Airlines and one-time assistant to Presidents Richard M. Nixon and George H. W. Bush.