#4 The US Senate Class II Seat from Minnesota

During the 1960s, the term "Jewish seat" was widely used to describe the second associate justice seat on the US Supreme Court. The four men who held the seat from 1932 to 1969 were all Jewish: Benjamin Cardozo (1932-1938), Felix Frankfurter (1938-1962), Arthur Goldberg (1962-1965), and Abe Fortas (1965-1969).

With Al Franken's election to the US Senate, Minnesota's Class II seat can safely be called the "Jewish seat." Although only 1% of Minnesota's population is Jewish, four of the last five Senators holding this seat have been Jewish.

Republican Rudy Boschwitz served from 1978 to 1991, during which time he was known as the "rabbi of the Senate." In 1990 he lost his bid for reelection to Democrat Paul Wellstone, a liberal political science professor whose original family name was Wexelstein.

Shortly before that election, Boschwitz sent a memo to "Friends in the Minnesota Jewish Community" in which he accused Wellstone of having "no connection whatsoever with the Jewish community" because he had married a shiksa and their "children were brought up as non-Jews." Wellstone responded by accusing Boschwitz of having a problem with Christians. In a state where over 95% of the population is Christian, this charge proved to be devastating for Boschwitz's re-election hopes.

Boschwitz ran against Wellstone again in 1996, and was defeated a second time. He now devotes much of his time to various Jewish political organizations. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and is an AIPAC Board Member.

Wellstone was killed in a tragic plane crash just 11 days before the 2002 election. Republican Norm Coleman - who, like Wellstone, has a shiksa wife - narrowly defeated Walter Mondale, who was brought in to replace Wellstone on the ballot at the last minute.

Coleman, who has said he grew up in a "liberal Jewish Democratic family from Brooklyn," was elected mayor of St. Paul in 1993 as a Democrat. He changed his registration to the Republican Party in 1996.

The 2008 election again featured two Jewish candidates, as Coleman was challenged by comedian and political commentator Al Franken. During the campaign, the GOP attacked Franken for a column he had penned in Playboy in 2000 called "Porn-O-Rama!" in which the former Saturday Night Live comedian wrote about visiting a made-up sex institute where he takes part in sexual acts with humans and machines.

The election was extremely close, and after months of recounts and court challenges, Franken was declared the winner. He assumed office July 7, 2009. Coleman now works as an advisor to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Since 1978, the lone gentile to serve in Minnesota's Class II Senate seat was a Lutheran named Dean Barkley. Barkley was appointed by Governor Jesse Ventura following the death of Paul Wellstone, and served only a matter of weeks.

Ventura had initially declined to appoint a replacement for Wellstone, but after being disgusted by the overtly political tone of Wellstone's memorial service he decided to stick it to the two established political parties by appointing Barkley - a perennial fringe candidate who finished in a distant third place in the 1996 election on the Reform Party ticket.