No Running Jokes Here

"A satirist . . . cuts through the baloney and gets to the truth," says Franken, here wooing Madison Firebaugh and her parents, Kim Norris and John Firebaugh, in Nashwauk, Minn. (By Sherri Larose-chiglo -- St. Paul Pioneer Press)

The applause is generous. Afterward, Franken is mobbed.

It's true that actors and even pro wrestlers (see: Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota) have crossed over to high office. But a comedian who once declared the 1980s "the Al Franken Decade"?

Franken says later that he decided to run because he's "worried" about the country; because he's tired of George Bush; and because he doesn't like Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent. Franken can sound especially bitter when he's talking about the senator. Coleman won the seat in 2002 after Democrat Paul Wellstone -- Franken's political hero -- died in a plane crash 10 days before the election, and Franken and Democrats haven't quite gotten over it during the past six years. "He's George Bush's number-one enabler," Franken declares.

To those who would dismiss him as a mere comedian, Franken has a ready response. Out on the stump, he disarms audiences with an oft-used line: "Let me tell you what a satirist does," he says. "A satirist looks at a situation and sees the inconsistencies and hypocrisies and absurdities, and cuts through the baloney and gets to the truth. And I think that's pretty good training for the U.S. Senate. Don't you?"

Franken, in fact, had been considering a run for several years. He moved back to Minnesota from New York in 2005. He then set about raising and giving away money for state Democratic candidates, many of whom have repaid him by endorsing his candidacy.

Franken's political consciousness predates that, however. "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels says Franken always harbored political passions, many of them barely disguised. Way back in "SNL's" earliest days, he remembers, he had to talk Franken out of heckling Spiro Agnew when the disgraced former vice president visited NBC.

Now, thanks to 15 seasons on "Saturday Night Live," his books (five bestsellers) and three years hosting a liberal talk show on the struggling Air America radio network, Franken has the name-recognition for a statewide run. He has money, too. He's raised some $10.4 million so far, in good part due to help from showbiz friends in New York and Hollywood such as Michaels, Tom Hanks and Paul Newman. Early polls show him running neck and neck for the Democratic nomination with Mike Ciresi, a wealthy trial lawyer. Coleman holds a slight lead over both in a head-to-head race.

Franken knows, however, that his past cuts both ways. After decades on TV and radio, he has a long and voluminous record of saying, doing and writing things that may not endear him to a majority of voters.

Minnesota Republicans have been quick to highlight some of Franken's more colorful opinions in an effort to paint him as "Angry Al," a hotheaded ideologue. Ron Carey, the state GOP chairman, has noted in newspaper op-eds that Franken once called former secretary of state James Baker a "lying scumbag"; blasted former attorney general John Ashcroft as "something of a nutcase"; and once said that only "[expletive] idiots" think that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th century. When Franken announced his candidacy in February, Republicans issued a press release pointing out that Franken, in a magazine interview last year, described Coleman with a term suggesting that he was sexually subservient to the president.

Franken also has been candid about his past drug use, particularly during the heady early years of "Saturday Night Live." In "Live From New York," an oral history of the program co-written by James A. Miller and The Washington Post's Tom Shales, Franken acknowledged, "I only did cocaine to stay awake to make sure nobody else did too much cocaine. That was the only reason I did it. Heh-heh."

Such negatives aren't likely to win Franken many votes among Minnesota's more socially conservative voters next year, says Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota. "The perception of Franken and how he's doing is much more positive on the East Coast and the West Coast" than in the state, he says. "Democrats in Minnesota are asking questions about whether he's electable, whether he can get past 47, 48 percent" in a statewide election.

For added irony, Franken, 56, has spent a good part of his adult life making fun of politics. Just a couple of years out of Harvard, Franken achieved pop-culture immortality as one of the original writers and longest-running cast members on "SNL." Among his many bits, he co-wrote the classic "Dukakis After Dark," in which he imagined the 1988 Democratic nominee conceding defeat to George H.W. Bush at a wild party. The skit aired a few weeks before the election. "You know," says the Dukakis character, "the one thing that really hurt us is that Reaganomics really works. It really does!"