Democrat and former comedian Al Franken won the recount of ballots for a Minnesota senate seat but the contentious battle was set to drag on for weeks or months as his Republican rival vowed to contest the results.
The legal challenge will leave the seat empty and weaken the Democratic majority as president-elect Barack Obama works to implement a massive economic stimulus package and ambition legislative agenda.
Election officials certified the recount results which handed Franken victory with a margin of 225 votes out of nearly three million ballots cast in the November 4 election.
But the former political commentator and Saturday Night Live star will not officially win the election until the legal battle is over and the governor issues an election certificate.
Franken vowed to get to work immediately as he celebrated a "humbling" victory with "tremendous gratitude."
"After 62 days of careful and painstaking hand inspection of nearly three million ballots and hours and hours of hard work by election officials and volunteers across this state, I am proud to stand before you as the next senator from Minnesota," he told reporters.
Early tallies had Republican incumbent Norm Coleman ahead by a few hundred votes but that lead was eliminated amid a series of hand recounts in which rejected ballots were reexamined.
Coleman's attorneys called the certification "preliminary" and said "an election contest is now inevitable" because of serious problems with the recount.
"The Coleman campaign has consistently and continually fought to have every validly cast vote counted, and for the integrity of Minnesota's election system, we will not stop now," campaign lawyer Fritz Knaak said in a statement.
"The fact that the Franken campaign now rejects the notion of every valid vote being counted so they can attempt to declare victory on the basis of a broken process, and an artificial lead built on double counting of votes should concern all Minnesotans."
Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell supported Coleman's decision to file a legal challenge on Tuesday and warned Democrats that the race "is not over."
"I think it is safe to say that the election in Minnesota has not yet been determined," McConnell told reporters. "It needs to be decided in Minnesota and not in the US Senate."
Democratic senate majority leader Harry Reid dismissed Coleman's challenge, saying "there comes a time when you have to know that the race is over."
"Al Franken has won," Reid said. "Based on any of the allegations that Senator Coleman has made, there's no way he can catch up. That race is over."
One of the original writers for the iconic comedy show Saturday Night Live, Franken is now best known for the satirical political commentary of his best-selling books and syndicated radio show.
Franken mostly eschewed comedy on the campaign trail, focusing on policy proposals and the problems with the current Republican administration.
Minnesota is no stranger to electing unorthodox entertainers, having tapped former pink-boa wearing professional wrestler turned actor and commentator Jesse Ventura as governor in 1998.
Born in New York in 1951, Franken moved to Minnesota when he was four years old.
He mixed comedy with politics at an early age, running for president of his seventh grade class with the slogan: "never spit in a man's face unless his moustache is on fire."
Franken began working in comedy after graduating from Harvard and spent two decades at the Emmy-award winning Saturday Night Live as a writer and then performer.
His creations ranged from the silly self-help guru Stuart Smalley to a bitingly satirical portrayal of religious right leader Reverend Pat Robertson.
His first serious political work was in 1988, when he hit the campaign trail as a celebrity surrogate for Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis.
Franken published his first best-selling attack on Republicans in 1996, a year after Republicans took over Congress amid a bitter culture war.
Franken joined the liberal backlash against conservative talk radio in 2004 with a five day a week, three-hour show on the newly launched Air America Radio station.
He was soon ranked among the most influential radio talkers in the country with his sarcastic attacks on the right.
