For a breathtakingly close contest that consumed nearly eight months with vote counts, recounts and courtrooms, the race for Minnesota's second Senate seat ended in a flash.

Minnesota's Supreme Court swept aside Norm Coleman's appeal at the stroke of 1 p.m. yesterday, ruling Demo-crat Al Franken should be certified the winner. Coleman emerged from his St. Paul home within hours to concede, pulling the plug on a bitter contest decided by 312 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast.

By evening, Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the election certificate for Franken, giving the former Saturday Night Live comedian had a new and undisputed title: "Senator-elect."

"I can't wait to get started," Franken said outside his Minneapolis home. "I won by 312 votes, so I really have to earn the trust of the people who didn't vote for me."

Franken's victory gives Democrats control of 60 seats in the Senate - the critical number needed to overcome Republican filibusters. When Franken is seated, which could come as early as next week, his party will have a majority not reached on either side of the aisle in some three decades.

"The way I see it, I'm not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator, I'm going to Washington to be the second senator from Minnesota," Franken said.

Coleman could have carried his fight into federal court, but it was unlikely to overturn the state Supreme Court's decision. The prospect created months of intrigue over whether Pawlenty would sign an election certificate for Franken if Coleman was still pursuing appeals, a possibility that became moot with the concession.

"The Supreme Court has made its decision, and I will abide by the results," Coleman said outside his St. Paul home. Appearing relaxed and upbeat, Coleman said he had congratulated Franken, was at peace with the decision and had no regrets about the fight.

"Sure I wanted to win," said Coleman, who declined to talk about his future and brushed aside a question about whether he would run for governor in 2010. "I thought we had a better case. But the court has spoken."

After Coleman ended election night ahead by several hundred votes, he called on Franken to concede. The Democrat refused, and the thin margin triggered an automatic recount that put Franken ahead by 225 votes. Coleman challenged those results in January, but a review by a three-judge panel expanded Franken's lead to 312 votes by the time it ended in April.

Coleman appealed to the state's high court later that month, arguing election officials across Minnesota were inconsistent with rules on absentee ballots, unfairly robbing thousands of people of votes. But the state's high court soundly rejected that reasoning, voting 5-0 that there was no reason to apply a more lenient standard in judging absentees, as Coleman wanted, than the law required.

"I think what you had was 12 judges look at this through the canvassing process, through the recount and throughout the trial, and all agreeing unanimously that I won more votes than anybody else in the election," Franken said.