Al Franken. Seriously.

The SNL scribe toiled in the trenches of late-night comedy until he became the Democrats’ answer to right-wing media. Now Al Franken wants not just your laughter, but also your vote. Why is this man running?.

by Nina Burleigh
March/April 2008, Page 78

Photograph by David J. TurnerAl Franken, January 2008.

Now 56 years old, Al Franken has been a television comedian for 30-odd years. He is also a film actor, radio talk-show host, and best-selling author who has perfected the art of lampooning conservative talkers such as Rush Limbaugh and . His run for Senate has come as a surprise to those who have only known him from characters such as self-love guru Stuart Smalley or the “One-Man Mobile Uplink,” a prescient parody of television journalism. But Franken has for decades straddled the border between satire and politics, and what is fascinating about his campaign is not just the sight of a famous comedian running for office—though that is part of it—but the evolution of a mostly funny man into a mostly serious one.

Standing on Roy Magnuson’s coffee table, Franken ends his speech with a well-crafted flourish: “I’m not afraid of Rush, Fox News, not even Cheney! Although, you know I don’t go huntin’ with him!” Franken pauses for the laughter to die down. “And I’m sure not afraid of Norm Coleman.”

Franken made his decision to run for Senate after the death of Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, who was killed in a small plane crash on October 25, 2002. Wellstone was a college professor whose first underdog campaign in 1990 was followed by two terms in Washington, where he was among the Senate’s most liberal voices, and Minnesotans loved his modest demeanor and political passion. Franken had campaigned for Wellstone, and the two had grown close; Franken would speak at Wellstone’s memorial service, held at an arena at the University of Minnesota and attended by some 20,000 mourners. After some speakers vocally promoted former vice president Walter Mondale as Wellstone’s replacement, conservative critics such as the Weekly Standard lambasted the memorial as a “[Democratic National Committee] pep rally.” Franken was furious. It was, he would say, “a perfect political storm for Republican opportunists.”

Later, “I gave a speech at the opening of a photo show on Paul,” Franken says. “It was emotional for me, and I gave an emotional speech. A couple people came up afterward and said, ‘You should think about running.’ That planted a seed.”

Minnesota has a long tradition of progressive politics, sometimes with a twist. The state Democratic party is known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party since a 1944 merger brought together Democrats and labor-oriented progressives. (Today, candidates seeking the DFL nomination must survive three sets of caucuses and a state nominating convention.) Minnesota has given the country iconic Democrats such as Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Mondale, and Wellstone. But Minnesotans also elected professional wrestler and political independent Jesse Ventura as governor.

Complicating this election is the fact that Minnesota is undergoing profound demographic change. No longer does the state look like a pastoral, Scandinavian enclave of dairy farmers and Paul Bunyans. The farms and timber tracts are still here, but anti-union meatpacking plants and other industries have attracted low-skilled—and low-paid—immigrants from Mexico. Minneapolis is home to large first- and second-generation Russian, Hmong (a Southeast Asian ethnic group), and Somali populations as well.

The I-35W bridge collapse in downtown Minneapolis last August that killed 13 people provoked Minnesotans to confront another major adjustment in self-image. “Having the bridge fall down was hugely troubling to people here,” says Wy Spano, a Minnesota Democratic political commentator. “For older folks particularly, there was the sense that Minnesota was the place that was well-run, where we did it right. Now, to be in the [national] leadership on the crumbling infrastructure issue is painful.”

Spano says that Franken may have arrived at just the right moment in Minnesota for an electoral novice, when voters are ripe for someone new and different. But not everyone agrees. Franken’s main competition for the DFL nomination is Mike Ciresi, a trial lawyer who, in 1998, won a landmark case against big tobacco, reaping billions for the state treasury. The most liberal candidate, and probably Wellstone’s ideological heir, is Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, an assistant professor of “Justice and Peace Studies” at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. But compared to his Democratic opponents, Nelson-Pallmeyer is significantly underfunded.

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