Al Franken

Al Franken (born May 21, 1951, New York, New York, U.S.) is an American Democratic politician, comedian, and political commentator who represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 2009 to 2018.

When Franken was four years old, his family moved from New York City to Minnesota, where his father ran a factory. The younger Franken earned a bachelor’s degree (1973) in political science at Harvard University; while there he met his future wife, Franni Bryson, and the couple later had two children. After graduation he returned to Minnesota to perform in Minneapolis’s Brave New Workshop comedy troupe, which in 1975 led to a job with NBC television’s Saturday Night Live (SNL). On the show Franken was best known for playing the character of self-help guru Stuart Smalley. Franken worked for SNL as a writer and performer until 1980, again during 1985–95, and briefly in 2008. He shared four Emmy Awards for writing on the show and received an additional nine nominations. He also did some acting, wrote and starred in a 1995 film featuring his Stuart Smalley character, and penned the screenplay for the dramatic film When a Man Loves a Woman (1994).

After leaving SNL in 1995, Franken became an outspoken political satirist for the left, publishing a number of books, including Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations (1999), Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (2004), and The Truth (with Jokes) (2005). He was also, from 2004 to 2007, the host of the Air America radio program The Al Franken Show (originally called The O’Franken Factor, which was a play on Bill O’Reilly’s conservative show, The O’Reilly Factor). Conceived by Franken as a weapon in the fight to get Republican Pres. George W. Bush “unelected,” the program used interviews and commentary to advance Franken’s progressive political views. The show’s final episode, on February 14, 2007, ended with a bang when Franken announced his candidacy for the Minnesota Senate seat. Franken gained respect—if grudging from some quarters—for his tireless campaigning. Running on the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party ticket, he emerged as a real threat to the incumbent Republican senator, Norm Coleman.

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Although in the initial count Coleman outpolled Franken by a narrow margin in the November 2008 election, a mandatory recount of 2.9 million undisputed ballots (along with thousands of other disputed and absentee ballots) left Franken ahead by 225 votes. Coleman contested the result, but on April 13, 2009, Franken was again declared the winner. Coleman then took his fight to the courts. After a statewide recount ended with Franken ahead by 312 votes, Coleman again appealed the result, but on June 30 the Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed the challenge and ruled that Franken was entitled to be certified the winner. Because Coleman’s term had expired on January 3, Minnesota’s Senate seat had been left vacant for six months while the matter played out in the courts. When Franken took office on July 7, the Senate Democrats (supported by two independents) acquired a filibuster-proof 60–40 majority.

As a senator, Franken consistently supported liberal causes. Fiscally, he advocated for an increase in the federal minimum wage and for higher taxes on the wealthy. In 2010 he voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a policy that barred openly gay men and women from serving in the U.S. military. He also supported same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and gun control. In addition, Franken was active in health care reform, and although he championed a single-payer system, he supported the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA; 2010). He was reelected in 2014. Franken later was a vocal critic of Pres. Donald Trump and notably fought to prevent the repeal of the PPACA. In late 2017 a number of women accused Franken of sexual harassment. The allegations came amid a growing sexual misconduct scandal within Congress, and there were calls—particularly from other Democrats—for Franken to resign. Faced with a loss of support from within his party, Franken announced in December that he was stepping down in the coming weeks. He officially left office in January 2018. The following year he returned to radio as host of The Al Franken Show, which aired on SiriusXM.

His memoir, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, was published in 2017.