U.S. Sen. Al Franken and his Republican challenger Mike McFadden both remain on the campaign trail and on the offensive with one week remaining until Election Day.
McFadden is working his way back to the Twin Cities from a Northeastern Minnesota tour with a morning stop in Moorhead alongside Seventh Congressional District Candidate Torrey Westrom, followed by stops in Alexandria, Sauk Centre and St. Cloud.
In the meantime, his campaign has waged further criticism of Franken's stance on containing the spread of the Ebola virus, with 30,000 phone calls across Minnesota since Saturday criticizing Franken for leaving a Sept. 16 Congressional hearing on the Ebola crisis. Franken left the hearing to deliver a floor speech on student loan reform. The campaign has also sent out mailers and launched a radio ad featuring audio from last week's debate when Franken was asked whether he supports a travel ban. McFadden said he backs the ban, and Franken previously said he would consider it if the concerns of aid workers and Minnesota's Liberian community were taken into account.
Franken has deflected McFadden's criticism about his handling of the Ebola crisis, saying he has pushed for increased screening at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and led efforts to ensure that Minnesota health care providers have the necessary federal resources to fight the disease, which has already claimed more than 4,500 lives, primarily in west African nations.
Meanwhile, Franken, who is hosting grassroots Get Out the Vote events Tuesday at Mankato State University and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, is continuing his own offensive on McFadden's alleged ties to a restructuring deal that resulted in the closing of a Montana mill. McFadden has denied involvement, saying it was his parent company, Lazard Fréres, and not Lazard Middle Market, where he was CEO until he took a leave of absence during his U.S. Senate bid.
However, the Franken campaign says the deal was mentioned on Lazard Middle Market's website until the the Franken campaign ran an ad criticizing the deal. McFadden also hesitated at Sunday's debate when asked why mention of the deal was taken down from the website.
The undisputed fact is that Mike McFadden's company took credit for the deal until our ad criticized him for it," said Alexandra Fetissoff, Franken campaign spokesperson. "The press wrote about the deal 18 months ago. McFadden didn't correct the stories. And his company didn't take it off their website. Minnesotans deserve to know: were they telling the truth then or are they telling the truth now?"
