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Coleman, a Republican, said the unstable economy demands that the race focus on issues. He said he would also ask independent groups advertising on his behalf to pull negative ads.
“I decided I was not all that interested in returning to Washington for another six years based on the judgment of voters that I was not as bad as the other guys,” Coleman said. “I want folks to vote for me, and not against the other folks.”
Coleman said it could take a few days to pull negative messages from the airwaves, the Internet and direct-mail pleas. He also left himself room to draw contrasts “in experience, judgment and temperament.”
The Franken campaign has no immediate plans to follow suit, spokesman Andy Barr said.
He called Coleman’s decision “a cynical ploy designed to change the subject and avoid scrutiny of his own record. It’s like an arsonist burning down every house in the village and then asking to be named fire chief.”
Dean Barkley, the Independence Party candidate who is running a healthy third in recent polls, said Coleman’s decision came “a year and a half too late.”
“This has been one of the most negative campaigns in history. It’s been disgusting,” Barkley said in an interview on Minnesota Public Radio. Barkley has run only radio ads.
While Coleman led in polls most of the last year, several in the last week have shown Franken pulling slightly ahead. In a Minnesota Public Radio News/University of Minnesota poll released this week, respondents by a more than two-to-one margin blamed Coleman more than Franken for negative advertising in the Senate race.
Between them Coleman and Franken have raised about $30 million for the race, and in recent weeks, Minnesota airwaves have been filled with negative messages. Neither side has hesitated to attack the other, but Coleman and Republican allies in particular have assailed Franken’s character.
One Coleman ad asks, “Does Al Franken have the temperament to be U.S. Senator?” before playing clips of Franken gesturing angrily and cursing. Another Coleman ad featured an actor mocking Franken for writing “juicy porn” based on a risque article he wrote for Playboy in 2000.
The harshest ads from both parties have come not from the campaigns but by outside political groups, particularly the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. By law the Senate campaigns are not supposed to coordinate their messages with these or any outside groups, but Coleman said he spoke to the head of the NRSC and said he did not want negative ads aired on his behalf.
“If there’s an ad run by anybody on my behalf that’s an attack ad, I will publicly disavow it,” Coleman said.
Coleman said he wouldn’t demand his opponents follow suit. “They will make whatever decision they want to make,” he said.
Barr said the Franken campaign “will continue to focus on our competing views of how our country has gone in the wrong direction.”
Coleman said he made his decision after three days of campaigning around Minnesota and realizing the depth of anxiety tied to the economy and instability in the financial markets.
“I think the level of fear and anxiety is beyond what I’ve experienced in 32 years of public service,” Coleman said. “We shouldn’t be feeding it.”
In announcing the suspension of negative ads, Coleman also publicly raised and then denied what had been a thorny subject for his campaign in recent days: A report on a Harper’s Magazine blog alleging that Nasser Kazeminy, a Minnesota businessman and Coleman friend and political donor, had purchased suits for Coleman at the Neiman Marcus store in Minneapolis.
Initially, Coleman and his campaign refused to explicitly confirm or deny the report, replying only that Coleman had always complied with Senate ethics rules requiring senators to disclose any gift that exceeds $250.
But in decrying what he called a “baseless, unsubstantiated claim,” Coleman said the report was untrue.
“I will say as clearly as I can: Nobody except my wife and me buys my suits,” he said.
