Aside from all the legal challenges, that is. Not sure why Minnesota has a law stopping a duly elected public servant from taking office until all challenges are dispensed with--it seems to me that this would be frequently abused by sore losers.
I often wonder whether such displays of poor sportsmanship hurt candidates for future runs for office. Dino Rossi kept the legal process going for nearly a year after he lost the Washington state governor's race in 2004, which I would think would have made people tired of the sight of him, but he was actually comptitive in this year's rematch (which he lost by a wider margin). Of course, in Minnesota there was a third party candidate that won a good chunk of the vote, and Coleman only got around 40%, so about 60% of the public didn't want him elected. That's a smaller base than around 50% like Rossi. The fact that 60% of his constituents didn't vote for him ought to send Norm Coleman a clue: he's worn out his welcome.
Of course, if the Dems had gotten behind someone like Rep. Betty McCollum, it's likely that this race would have been like Santorum in 2006.
