Al Franken waging serious challenge for Senate seat

When the comedian Al Franken launched a Democratic challenge to incumbent Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman two years ago, many viewed it as a joke.

But with less than a week to go before Election Day, the 57-year-old comic best known for his Saturday Night Live skits, is leading in some polls in what has become one of the tightest and most expensive races in the country.

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It didn’t start out as a high-profile contest. For months, Coleman, a onetime Democrat who had co-chaired President Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign in Minnesota, maintained a double-digit lead. Many thought he was a shoo-in, especially after questions were raised about Franken’s entertainment company’s unpaid taxes and a Playboy humor column he had written in 2000 describing a visit to a fictional sex institute.

Al Franken

But then the economy tanked, and almost overnight, the race turned into a referendum on the Bush administration, which Coleman has vigorously supported.

The race has attracted big-money contributions from all over the country after being targeted by Democrats seeking to regain a Senate majority. According to the latest campaign filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, Coleman has raised almost $18 million; Franken about $17 million.

And they have used that money to blitzkrieg Minnesota voters. Franken’s ads accuse Coleman of signing off on wasteful contracts in Iraq. Ads by Coleman’s campaign and the GOP characterize Franken as angry, obscene and unfit for office.

The contest has also featured appearances by nationally-known politicians, including New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for Franken, talking about how a Democratic majority could help a newly-elected president, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for Coleman telling voters, “There are enough comics in Washington.”

Further complicating things was the recent addition of third-party candidate Dean Barkley, who announced he was running in July. Barkley, 58, filled out the last two months of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s term, after the two-term Democrat died in a plane crash 11 days before the 2002 election against Coleman.

An interesting biographical note: Both Franken and Coleman originally hail from New York City.

Coleman, who grew up in Brooklyn, attended James Madison High School as a classmate of New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat. Coleman settled in Minnesota after graduating from University of Iowa Law School, and was elected mayor of St. Paul as a Democrat in 1993. In 1996, he switched his party enrollment and was re-elected as a Republican. He won election to the Senate six years ago, narrowly defeating former Vice President Walter Mondale, who had entered the race after Wellstone’s death.

For his part, Franken was born in New York City, and relocated to Minneapolis with his family as a young child. Besides writing and appearing on SNL for several years, he has written five best-selling books, and once hosted a talk show on Air America Radio.

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