The Wall Street Journal
Heard the One About Al Franken, Senate Candidate?
Comedian Plays It Straight In Minnesota Campaign; GOP Has Video Footage
By JUNE KRONHOLZ
September 7, 2007; Page A1
MINNEAPOLIS -- A man walks into a political campaign and calls his opponent for high public office the president's lackey -- no, actually, he says something cruder, more insulting. Could that help decide which party controls the U.S. Senate? The man is Al Franken, the 56-year-old former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and the bane of conservative talk-radio. The campaign is for the Senate seat now held by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman. And the question is no joke. Mr. Coleman is widely considered one of the Senate's most vulnerable members. His defeat would help secure the Democrats' control of the closely divided Senate.
Mr. Franken still needs to win the Democratic nomination before he can face Mr. Coleman. But with 15 months to go before the general election, he's competitive in the opinion polls. He has raised more money than Mr. Coleman has, with the help of contributors including comedians Dan Aykroyd and Robin Williams and cartoonist Garry Trudeau. His $3.3 million war chest puts him among the year's top congressional fund-raisers. But in a 30-year comedy career, much of Mr. Franken's humor has been bawdy and crude -- not the tight-lipped chuckles that Minnesotans tend to favor, says University of Minnesota political scientist Lawrence Jacobs.
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Mr. Franken has a ready response. "People should give Minnesotans credit for knowing what a joke is and what it isn't," he says before launching into examples of what a joke isn't, including the Iraq war, veterans' care and congressional earmarks. Lorne Michaels, the producer of "Saturday Night Live," adds that Mr. Franken's humor isn't out of step with a generation that grew up watching the show and its irreverent take on authority. "Nothing in his résumé seems that unusual if you're in the baby boom," he says.
(snip)
Mr. Franken says his humor was political but nonpartisan during the 15 years he wrote for "Saturday Night Live." That changed in 1995, he says, when the Republicans began to pare funding for social programs while also portraying themselves as the party of family values. His response was to write a string of books -- starting with "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" -- that relentlessly needled Republican Party luminaries and conservative talk-radio. He signed on as a talk-show host on the liberal Air America radio network, where he honed his outrage. He left that gig in February.
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Mr. Franken's chances of winning Mr. Coleman's seat are helped by the revival of the Democrats' liberal base, whose politics neatly mirror his own. He is also helped by Mr. Coleman's support for the Iraq war and for President Bush, who headlined a Coleman fund-raiser last month. In a July poll, market researcher SurveyUSA reported that Mr. Coleman led Mr. Franken by just seven percentage points, down from 22 points five months earlier. Mr. Coleman attributes his declining poll numbers to voter "cynicism and frustration" and defends his support for the war as doing "what I think is right." He defends his ties to the president by insisting that "those relationships benefit Minnesota," citing as an example the quick federal commitment to rebuild the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in August.
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