As Norm Coleman goes through with appealing the decision of the election contest court, which declared that Al Franken won the election and Coleman failed to prove otherwise, he can now count on the help of a group of D.C. lobbyists to fund the costs, Greg Sargent reports.

"We will raise as much as is necessary," said Dirk Van Dongen, who is president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, and a leading member of the "Team Coleman" group. "We'll keep raising money as Norm needs it. We continue to be active in raising resources for Norm to carry out this fight to the end."

Van Dongen said that to date, this group of lobbyists already raised "well over a million dollars" for the Senate campaign and the post-election events, and will keep on going.

Van Dongen rejected the accusation that this whole fight is only being done to bottle up a 59th Senate seat for the Democrats -- sort of. "That's a side benefit," said Van Dongen. "But this is all about us doing everything we can to be sure that Norm has had a fair election and to get him back in his Senate seat. We'd be doing exactly the same thing if the Republicans were in the majority."