Al Franken, Giant of the Senate Read online

  Buck Jourdain, the long-standing chairman of Red Lake, took a hand mic out to the arena under the lights. It was turning dark and the heat of the afternoon had dissipated. The stars were out. The air was soft. It was an exquisitely beautiful northern Minnesota night.

  And I was very nervous.

  Buck started his introduction. We had met a few times before, and in the intro he called me a friend. That meant a lot to me, because I had been really impressed with Buck. He was in his forties, tall and handsome with a beautiful braided ponytail, and he carried himself with strength and dignity. My friends with ponytails were mostly people in show business: aging, paunchy, bespectacled Jews whose ponytails always seemed like a desperate affectation signaling unsuccessfully that the wearer is still young and cool despite their recent hip replacement. But on Buck, the ponytail looked good.

  Buck gave me a small man-hug and passed me the mic to polite applause. I took in the crowd for a moment, trying to get a read from the faces. Not much of anything. I thanked Buck and told the crowd they had a great chairman.

  I started in on how the federal government was failing to meet its treaty obligations in terms of fully funding Indian education and health care and how, if I won, I hoped to be on the Indian Affairs Committee and fight to change that. No reaction. Peggy was right. They’d heard this before. They’re going to expect you to be funny. I decided to call an audible.

  “So I guess if we don’t fulfill our treaty obligations, we should just give you all your land back and call it even.”

  That got something of a laugh, and a few nods. “And as far as education, I guess other Americans need to know that Indians are a contemporary people who like to celebrate their culture. Just like every other group. For example, I’m Jewish.”

  This got exactly the reaction I had hoped for: nothing.

  “Let me try that again,” I said, feigning offense. “I’m Jewish.” Laughter, applause, and cheering! “My God,” I thought. “Peggy’s a genius!”

  “And Jews like to celebrate our own heritage, just like you’re doing today.” The crowd was nodding and smiling. And in that very instant, I figured out the whole dancing thing.

  “Now, earlier a gentleman asked me to dance. Well, I’ll make a deal with you. I will dance. But only if all of you agree not to make fun of me after I leave.”

  More laughter.

  “So, I need a show of hands. How many agree not to make fun of me after I leave if I dance?”

  Everyone looked around at each other, and about two-thirds of the crowd raised their hands. “That’s not enough,” I said. “I need everyone to raise their hands.” More laughs. And sure enough, every single person there raised a hand.

  All right! I grinned, thinking how silly it was that I had been so nervous. Why, I’ve got them in the palm of my hand! I will dance!

  That’s when one of the drummers hit his drum. Joined on the second beat by another, then another, until all the drummers were drumming.

  Often what makes a really good joke a really good joke is that a number of ideas come together simultaneously. The moment that the first drummer hit his drum, he brought together several amusing notions. First, that, for whatever reason, I clearly had serious qualms about dancing. Second, that those qualms had something to do with my fear of being made fun of. Third, that I thought those fears would magically disappear if everybody agreed not to make fun of me after I left. And finally, that number three was based on my mistaken assumption that I would be dancing along with everyone else and not by myself in front of the entire crowd! Plus, cell phone cameras.

  So, it was a really good joke. And it was on me.

  Everyone in the bleachers was laughing at the drummer’s very clever joke. And staring at me, waiting for me to start dancing.

  How did I get myself into this? I thought. The drummers kept up the beat, the crowd grinning expectantly.

  Fortunately, I had paid attention after I told the gentleman that I might dance. And so I began: two shuffles from my left foot, two shuffles from my right, trying to stay in rhythm. As I started around the circle, I kept my head down, trying unsuccessfully to block out the crowd’s reaction, which I would describe as delighted amusement. I looked up to the bleachers and gave a smile, as if to share in the merriment and show that I was a good sport. But I’m afraid I wasn’t successfully hiding my embarrassment and, as I recall, self-loathing. My own cultural heritage was on display as well.

  About a quarter way around the circle, a little girl, I’d say four or five years old, jumped up and bailed me out. She grabbed my hand and the two of us danced a little farther until another child came in and took my other hand. And then another and another and another. The night was beautiful again. The adults came in and we all danced under the moon and stars.

  I became kind of a dancing fool.

  Four or five dances later, a woman sidled up to me and said, “You dance like a white guy.”

  “What about the deal?” I asked.

  “The deal was after you leave,” she smiled.

  At the end of the powwow, Buck approached me. “I talked with the rest of the tribal council. And they all agreed that we’ve never had a politician here who knows how to read a crowd as well as you.”

  I was flattered. Of course, it was a good bet that I was the only politician to visit Red Lake who had spent thirty-five years in show business. But also, I had to laugh, because the whole thing had lurched so badly out of control before landing on its feet.

  Buck took me by the arm and said, “I’d like to introduce you to my son and his friend, who’s in the Army.” We walked out to the parking lot, where we found the two young men leaning up against an old beat-up car.

  We all shook hands, and I asked the friend, “How long have you been in the Army?”

  “Oh, I was only there about a month,” he shrugged. “I got kicked out, ’cuz I can’t see very well.”

  I was puzzled. “You’re not wearing glasses.”

  He just shrugged. “The Army was gonna make me glasses. But they didn’t.”

  I was very confused. “What’s wrong with your eyesight?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  All of this was well outside my life experience. I asked an obvious question. “Have you gone to the eye doctor?”

  “Oh, we don’t have an eye doctor,” he said.

  One of the best things about running for office is that, if you do it right, you learn a lot about stuff you very likely would never have discovered otherwise. One of the worst things about running for office is that, if you do it right, you’re constantly switching gears. As soon as you’re done with one thing, you’re off to another. Which leaves you almost no time to process the stuff you just learned about.

  Leaving the powwow, I was overwhelmed—both with gratitude at how welcoming and generous Buck and the Red Lake community had been, and with shame at the conditions in which so many First Americans were living. But as Kris was in charge of reminding me, even in the car, there was more work to do: more phone calls to make, more notes to write, more events to prepare for. A candidate who’s sitting around and thinking is a candidate who’s losing.

  In fact, the day after that powwow, I had to fly right off to New York for a couple of fund-raisers in the richest place in America, the Hamptons. The Hamptons are the summer home of the top one-tenth of the top one percent. The ones with the waterfront estates are the members of the top one-tenth of the top one-tenth of the top one percent. The ones with the nicest, biggest waterfront estates in the richest Hampton of them all, Richhampton, are the members of the top one-tenth of the top one-tenth of the top one-tenth of the top one percent (the top one-thousandth percent). Every one of these people can go to an eye doctor pretty much anytime they want. Or, more likely, have an eye doctor brought to them for a full examination.

  There, at this lovely home in Richhampton, with delicious food and wine and surrounded by people with flawlessly corrected vision wearing the latest designer regal
ia, I felt that my donors needed to hear about Red Lake. So I told them the story I’ve just told you.

  I didn’t tell them the ending to the story, though, because the ending hadn’t happened yet. When I got to the Senate, I got a seat on the Indian Affairs Committee—because, in the Senate, anyone who wants to be on Indian Affairs gets on Indian Affairs.

  One of the things I fought hard for was allowing Indian tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians who commit acts of domestic violence. I was also able to get funding to replace a dilapidated, structurally unsafe high school on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota. We passed a new Indian Health Care Improvement Act.

  And Red Lake now has an eye doctor.

  But conditions in Indian country in terms of education, infrastructure, housing, and health care are still by and large disgraceful.

  The good news is that folks in Richhampton are doing better than ever.

  Chapter 18

  Tax-Dodging, Rape-Joking Pornographer for Senate

  Norm Coleman had a problem.

  When he’d first gotten to the Senate in 2003, President Bush was extremely popular. That’s why, when he apologized for saying he was a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone, Norm explained that he had meant a 99 percent improvement in terms of supporting George W. Bush. He happily fell in line as a loyal Bush ally, supporting the president’s agenda at every turn and serving as one of his attack dogs in the so-called “truth squad” during the 2004 campaign against John Kerry.

  But then Democrats had taken back Congress in the wave election of 2006. And with President Bush’s approval ratings circling the drain, Coleman had begun eagerly seeking out opportunities to vote with Democrats on meaningless procedural matters. Tip O’Neill had a line about politicians like Norm who feigned at bipartisanship: “He’s always there when we don’t need him.”

  The upshot of all this was that when it came time to face the voters again in 2008, Norm’s record consisted of four years of sucking up to President Bush, two years of running away from him, and not much in the way of actual accomplishments on behalf of the people of Minnesota. But that was okay. Because Norm’s best argument for being reelected—the core message of his campaign—wasn’t about him. It was about me. Specifically: “Al Franken is an angry, divisive, profane, tax-dodging, rape-joking pornographer.”

  Winning the DFL endorsement had been a sixteen-month marathon from my announcement to the convention. The general election, on the other hand, would be a twenty-one-week sprint to election day. And while earning the support of DFL delegates had been a slow, methodical process of building and organizing, the race was about to turn into a chaotic festival of mud-slinging.

  For Stephanie Schriock, getting our campaign ready for the nastiness to come started with establishing her authority, which she did instantly with her mere presence.

  Being a campaign manager, I’ve come to realize, isn’t just about managing a staff and a budget. It’s about managing a candidate. Indeed, the most important cubic foot in any campaign is the one inside the candidate’s skull. And as messed up as that cubic foot had been during what I unaffectionately call “porn and rape joke week,” the calm aura of order Schriock created reshuffled my emotional deck. And just in time, too.

  You see, the DSCC had gotten cold feet in the wake of the near disaster at the convention. In early July, Schriock got wind that someone had been polling in Minnesota, testing the names of two other potential DFL candidates: attorney Kathleen Flynn Peterson and former governor Arne Carlson, who was actually a moderate Republican but had been left behind when his party lurched to the right.

  Yes, I already had the DFL endorsement. But anyone who filed for the race by the deadline on July 15 would appear on the primary ballot in September. And the fact that this poll was in the field suggested that someone was interested in finding out whether a DFLer who took the extraordinary step of jumping into the race at the last minute could successfully knock off the party-endorsed candidate in the primary.

  When Chuck called me to acknowledge that, indeed, the DSCC was shopping for a new candidate, I happened to be in San Francisco, helping to raise money for… yup, the DSCC. I didn’t really know what to say. But it was some serious chutzpah on Chuck’s part, and Schriock went appropriately berserk. “If you ever do anything like that again,” she told the DSCC’s executive director, J. B. Poersch, in a phone call, “I will destroy you. It may not be now. But someday.”

  Schriock can be scary. But the truth was scarier. As the general election got under way, I was down by anywhere from eight to fourteen points, depending on the poll.

  Schriock and I flew out to D.C. for another awkward meeting with Chuck and Harry. Harry was in a bad mood. But when we showed him a poll we’d done—which suggested that telling voters about some of Norm’s ethics lapses, such as the sweetheart deal he’d been getting from a Republican fixer on his D.C. apartment, could bring me back to a tie—he grumpily acknowledged that it was a pretty good hit.

  Then he departed, leaving us with Chuck.

  We could pull to within five points by Labor Day, we promised him. But it would take everything we had—we would have to empty our war chest just to get close. Would the DSCC be willing to then carry us over the finish line?

  Chuck wanted to say yes. But what if our strategy didn’t work? What if I wasn’t within five by Labor Day? Would I be willing to drop out?

  I said I had to call Franni, and stepped into another room.

  She was pissed. I told her, “Honey, it’s okay. They haven’t even asked Kathleen or Arne whether they’re interested in running. No one’s going to jump in by the fifteenth. Even if I don’t get within five by Labor Day, they’re still going to be stuck with me.”

  “So it’s a bluff?” she asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. And who’s bluffing—us or them?”

  Good question. “I think both of us,” I answered.

  “I’m very proud of you, honey,” Franni laughed.

  And then I went back in the room and made the deal.

  That summer, for the first time, our campaign started to look like a normal campaign: stump speeches, press conferences, rallies, and lots and lots and lots of fund-raising. We ran some positive ads talking about my work on behalf of the troops and my ideas for reforming Washington, and many more negative ads beating up on Norm for being such a stooge for President Bush.

  And it worked. On August 22, Minnesota Public Radio released a poll showing me leading the race by one single, beautiful, life-affirming, Chuck-reassuring point.

  Republicans realized that in order to stop my momentum, they would need to double down on their strategy of destroying me and dragging the corpse of my character through the city square. And as soon as the state fair was over, that’s exactly what they set out to do.

  In mid-September, Minnesotans were treated to this ad, courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC):

  Is Al Franken fit for office? Franken writes about committing rape. Writes pornography so vile Democrats denounced him. His profanity-laced anger… followed by violent outbursts. He physically assaulted a protestor. Then there’s the $70,000 in unpaid taxes. Al Franken, degrading to women… to us all. Al Franken, frankly unfit for office.

  It was a masterpiece. Forget about the DeHumorizer™—this was the work of a DeHumanizer™, portraying me not just as a foulmouthed comedian, but as an actual monster.

  After all, “Franken writes about committing rape” sounds an awful lot like I committed rape and then wrote about it.* And “physically assaulted a protestor” sounds kind of unsenatorial, too.† To really drive home the point, the ad depicted my face with parallel lines running across it, a subtle suggestion of jail bars, as if I had done time (or should do time) for my history of raping women and beating up dissenters.

  There were a lot of ads like this as Coleman realized his only chance of winning was to reduce me to a small pile of smoking rubble. One of my favorites mad
e use of this underrated joke from “Porn-O-Rama”:

  The Internet is going to be a fabulous learning tool for kids. For example, my son used the Internet to do a great sixth grade report on bestiality. He downloaded a lot of great visual aids, and the kids in the class just loved them. Because, you know, at that age, they’re just sponges.

  The point of the joke, of course, was that parents should consider monitoring how their children use the Internet. A pretty conservative, pro-family idea, don’t you think?

  But then the DeHumorizer™ got ahold of it. And to the litany of horrors featured in Republican ads was added the word “BESTIALITY,” zooming in at you from infinity while scary horror movie music droned over a disgusted narrator. My mother-in-law, Fran, cried when she saw that one.

  Meanwhile, we were trying to keep the focus on Norm’s record. On September 22 (the same day the NRSC ran its “Franken writes about committing rape” ad), we released an ad taking Coleman to task for his oversight failure as chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an ad that began with the ominous message, “This may be the worst thing Norm Coleman’s done.”

  I held a press conference to show off the ad. We were desperate to get reporters to pay attention to the story, which I thought was a perfect illustration of how Coleman had abdicated his responsibility in favor of being a lickspittle for the Bush administration. But the press still shrugged.

  Somehow, the lurid intimation that I was a rapist proved more effective than my indignation over Norm’s failure to perform oversight. On September 17, we had run our first internal tracking poll. It showed me with a one-point lead: Franken 41, Coleman 40. Independent candidate Dean Barkley, who had actually served in the U.S. Senate for a few weeks in 2002 after Governor Jesse Ventura appointed him to finish Paul Wellstone’s term, was at 14 percent.*

  But just one week later, on September 24, the same poll found me three points down: Coleman 41, Franken 38, Barkley 17.