Senator Franken?

He's good enough, he's smart enough, but doggone it, will people vote for him? To find out, Al Franken is moving his radio show back home to Minnesota to get ready to run against Sen. Norm Coleman.

By David Paul Kuhn

Apr 28, 2005 | The 265th pope is being announced, and Al Franken is watching it live on CNN. The Air America radio host has his back to the microphone, as he sits in a blue sports coat, jeans and white Nikes, staring at the television across the dimly lit studio. On the line is Franken's one-time "Saturday Night Live" comrade Father Guido Sarducci. The fictional Father Sarducci is supposedly live from Rome. But the comedian who plays him, Don Novello, the Vatican correspondent for "The Al Franken Show," is calling from San Francisco. (The Swiss Guard once arrested Novello for impersonating a priest in Vatican City.)

Then the news breaks: German conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is the next pope. "It's an inside job," Sarducci moans. "You won't see the pope involved in local politics in Poland, no more, it's going to be Germany. You are going to see the wall go back up." Franken is cracking up.

But the normally outspoken comedian won't comment about the new pope. "As a Jew," he explains later, "it's none of my business." It's a rare reticent moment for Franken. His job is to make everything his business. The restraint seems oddly decorous for the man who once, to his face, accused Fox News star Bill O'Reilly of lying about his credentials at a Book Expo, leading an infuriated O'Reilly to scream, "Shut up, shut up!"

But Franken is tiring of merely being a provocateur. Although in just a year his show captured 53 stations nationwide, including eight of the top 10 markets, the most recognizable face of Air America Radio is becoming restless, and ready for a new challenge.

Al Franken wants to be a senator.

"I'd rather be part of [the process] than commenting on it," he insists. But he pauses, shrugs indecisively, a boyish chuckle follows. "I think. I don't know. That might be part of the calculus of whether I go for it or not." Whether Franken will "go for it" in 2008, against freshman Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, remains to be seen. "I can tell you honestly, I don't know if I'm going to run," Franken continues, as we now sit 41 floors below his studio, in the skyscraper's courtyard. "But I'm doing the stuff I need to do, in order to do it."

That stuff includes moving home to Minnesota after three decades away. He's buying an apartment in Minneapolis, and moving his radio show to the Twin Cities. He's talking about political action committees and fundraising with key state and national Democrats, looking to raise money for candidates in the 2006 elections. After years of stumping for Democrats nationwide, he has some chits to cash in. "He has national reach; his name and who he is will attract small contributors and large contributors from all over the country, so a lot of little folks too," says Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who managed Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign. "In that way he's like the Dean campaign because he's really somebody that can energize not just Minnesota but around the country, to get involved and contribute."

For a man who exudes New York, who is an icon of the mythologized early days of "Saturday Night Live," who sips a latte now in half-lotus position (Franken happens to be an unusually flexible man), Minnesota may seem a world away. Then you meet Franken. You see he always wears sneakers. You notice he speaks too slowly to be a New York native. You listen as he talks about his Minnesota childhood from his first days in kindergarten, in a small town on the southern border, to his last days of high school in a middle-class suburb outside Minneapolis. And you finally realize: Like so many Midwesterners-turned-New Yorkers, Franken is an expatriate, in love with two lands.

"I feel comfortable in both places," the 53-year-old says, taking off his sports coat and setting it beside him. It's the first day in New York that feels like summer, over 70 degrees, the kind of day that makes adults consider playing hooky. "Remember, my parents stayed in Minnesota, so I went back all the time and I have certain friends that I see all the time that are really good friends, and I do feel like a Minnesotan. I am a Minnesotan and not just because I root for the Vikings and the Twins," he continues. "I like the Minnesota-nice sensibility. I like the liberal tradition; I like the Hubert Humphrey tradition fighting for civil rights."

But that's the Minnesota of Franken's youth. The purple Vikings now represent a purple state. Today, Minnesota has exactly as many Republicans as Democrats. Despite that, Franken feels ready to run. "Twenty years ago, I wouldn't have thought about it," he says. "But I've been thinking about it long enough that it doesn't seem so strange." Then he quietly chuckles.

He does that a lot. Franken cannot tell a joke without making himself laugh, but it's not a guffaw, a belly laugh or a giggle. It's a chuckle. He might do it a hundred times a show. But his candidacy, Franken insists, is no joke. The comedian might come off perpetually cheerful. His constantly crooked glasses, chubby face and dimples make him seem boyishly chipper. But Franken is serious when he cares about something. He wrestled in high school. During the 2004 New Hampshire primary, he pinned a man heckling Howard Dean. And in 2003, Franken upbraided Bill O'Reilly at a book fair, flustering the conservative commentator. (Neither O'Reilly nor Rush Limbaugh would comment for this article.)

"I do take politics very seriously even though I'm a comedian. I never thought there was a contradiction in it; I always thought that comedy and satire are a legitimate way of dealing with very serious things," Franken continues. "Having a sense of humor helps. If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor." But then he changes gears, a little. "Minnesotans take their politics seriously and running for Senate is a big deal."

It's certainly a big deal for the Minnesota Democratic Party. "Franken's viable, no question," says Minnesota Democratic strategist Wy Spano, who is also the director of the Center for Advocacy and Political Leadership at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. "There's lots of buzz about him. I really do think that Al Franken as a star will bring lots of folks, and lots of money to the party."

Next Page: To Franken, it was Norm Coleman who capitalized on Paul Wellstone's death

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