Al Franken, Giant of the Senate Read online

  I was having fun. Eating a lot of beans. Drinking a lot of coffee. And discovering something about myself, which is that while I may not have been blessed with a lot of natural political talent, one thing I did have going for me is that I really like people.

  Now, I was fifty-five years old, so I kind of knew that about myself already.* But I didn’t realize that being an extrovert actually counted as a skill when it came to politics.

  For a lot of people who run for office, constantly having to talk to people is exhausting. For me, it was energizing. I really liked learning about people’s lives. I really liked hearing their stories. I really liked meeting their kids.

  And because it was clear that I was really enjoying getting to know these folks, they really enjoyed getting to know me. And they were maybe just a little bit pleasantly surprised about that.

  You see, Minnesotans are skeptical of people in show business—as well they should be. And because I had been on TV, some folks made weird assumptions about me. For example, that I had a trophy wife who was twenty years younger than me. Well, I did have a trophy wife: Franni, who is almost a full five months younger than me.

  If the fact that I was friendly and approachable challenged people’s assumptions, meeting Franni blew them away.

  Early on, we went to a bean feed in Minneapolis, and Franni decided to bake and bring an apple pie. When we arrived, the organizer looked at this gorgeous, massive pie, and said, “Oh, my! Let’s make this an item for the silent auction!” The pie got seventy-five bucks.

  Word got around about Franni’s pies. Lori Sellner, the DFL chair for southern Minnesota, bought one for a hundred bucks at a bean feed at the Jackpot Junction casino near Redwood Falls. The next time I saw Lori, she raved and raved about Franni’s pie. Having once been in show business, I decided to make a thing out of it. At every event in Lori’s district, I’d auction the pie immediately following a short bit of shtick with Lori.

  “So, Lori, you bought this pie at the bean feed at Jackpot Junction?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how was it?”

  “Unbelievably good! The most delicious apple pie I’ve ever had.”

  “Uh-huh. And this is a big pie, right?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “How many people did this pie feed?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Eighteen people. And those were big pieces?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, Lori, I understand you are not a crust person.”

  “No, I’m not. I normally don’t like the crust that much.”

  “But tell me about this crust.”

  “Well, it was light and flaky. And delicious. I couldn’t get enough of this crust.”

  Then I’d auction the pie. It was not unusual to raise two, three hundred dollars. Which could help get a lot of voters out to the polls in local races where a few votes can make all the difference.

  Franni baked well over a hundred apple pies over the next couple years—for volunteers, for state legislators, even for Walter Mondale.

  During a crowded bean feed in Princeton, I watched a guy in his sixties pointing to Franni and asking a friend, “Who’s that?”

  “That’s the pie lady.”

  “Oh! The pie lady!”*

  If 2006 was a test run for a potential campaign, the results couldn’t have been more encouraging.

  We raised more than a million dollars for Midwest Values PAC and helped elect dozens of candidates in Minnesota and around the country. DFLers across the state kept telling me they hoped I would run, and the crowds that showed up at bean feeds made me feel like I’d have plenty of support if I did.

  So not only did running feel like it might be a lot of fun, it felt like I might just have a good chance at pulling it off. And more important, the more time I spent talking with Minnesotans, the more I wanted to be their senator.

  All year, as I met with teachers and nurses and farmers and folks from all walks of life, I appreciated how decent, hardworking, loving, innovative, and compassionate they were. And as I did, I couldn’t help but get excited at the prospect of working for them in Washington. The idea of running had become less and less about beating Norm Coleman, and more and more about improving people’s lives.

  As Democrats celebrated their big win in November 2006, it was time for me to make a final decision about running. If I was going to beat an incumbent, I’d have to start early.

  Franni was all in. But, of course, we wanted the kids to have a say.

  “Everyone has a veto,” I announced at Thanksgiving dinner. We discussed the pros and cons. Joe expressed some qualms about the time I’d be away from the family, especially if I won. “What do you want me to do?” I asked. “Give speeches for a lot of money and write a book now and then?”

  “That sounds pretty good,” Joe said, only half kidding. But both kids were on board. I think they could see how badly I wanted to do it.

  “Okay,” Thomasin said. “But if you have something to tell us, tell us now.” Essentially, my daughter was saying, “I’m all for this, unless you’ve done something horrible that we don’t want to know about.” But aside from the chainsaw massacre Franni and I had participated in years ago on the way to a Satanist orgy, we were clean.

  So I had everyone’s blessing. Now it was just up to me. Did I really want to do this? Did I really want to spend every minute of my life making phone calls to raise money, running around the country to raise money, and running around the state to raise money? And what about that public opprobrium thing my friend in New York had mentioned?

  The time had come to look up “opprobrium” in the dictionary. Trembling with anxiety, I went to the family dictionary on our dictionary stand and thumbed to the O’s. “Opprobrium,” I read: “harsh criticism or censure.”

  Oh, was that all? I could handle that! After all, I had written Stuart Saves His Family and produced SNL during the Anthony Michael Hall season. I had nothing to fear from public scorn.

  I gave myself till the new year to make the final call. In the meantime, as I had done the previous three Christmases, I went with the sergeant major of the Army’s USO tour to Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan for two weeks. It seemed like as good a place as any to do a gut check.

  Many of the troops we met that year were on their third, fourth, or fifth tour of duty and had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Confirming the reports we’d heard back home, many told us that neither war was going well.

  The toll on our troops was mounting. More than three thousand of our men and women had been killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those who came home, many were returning with limbs missing and suffering from traumatic brain injury, the signature wound of the post-9/11 wars.

  The emotional wounds were mounting, too. The chances of post-traumatic stress rose exponentially with each deployment.

  But we learned that more than explosive devices, more than bullets, more than anything else, what our troops feared was a “Dear John” letter. Something they probably had in common with military men from previous wars, though now a “Dear Jane” letter was also a possibility. On some bases, soldiers taped their letters up on a wall of heartache.

  This was our fourth year of shows with the sergeant major of the Army. The first year our show was two and a half hours, which we worried was too long. It wasn’t. The second year it was three hours. The third year, three and a half hours. That fourth year, we did a four-hour show. And they loved every minute of it, even if, like at the show at Camp Phoenix in Kabul, it meant standing in 29-degree cold for four long hours.

  At the end of each show, the Army band played a number of tunes that we all sang along to: “God Bless America”; “Stand by Me”; and a Toby Keith song, “American Soldier.”

  Oh, and I don’t want to die for you, but if dyin’s asked of me

  I’ll bear that cross with honor, ’cause freedom don’t come free

  I will never, ever forget the feeling I had singing that song, watching
our servicemen and -women swaying back and forth, arm in arm, belting out those words, and meaning them with every fiber of their being.

  It made me feel a little silly for being so worried about the long days, or the nights not spent sleeping in my own bed, or the nasty attacks on my character, that would come with running for Senate. If you replace the word “die” in the song with “be insulted personally,” you’ll note that it loses much of its power.

  From that day forth, I resolved, I would never complain about any of the inconveniences or indignities that might come with running for office.

  No, that’s not true. I complained a lot. I still complain a lot. A lot of this book is in fact me complaining.

  But, hell, I felt like I could do some good. And spending two weeks with all these men and women who were risking far more than I would ever have to risk made me even more motivated to do as much good as I could, even if it would never compare to the sacrifices they were making for me and my fellow Americans.

  As it turned out, it was actually a pretty easy decision. I was going to run.

  Chapter 9

  The DeHumorizer™

  In the rare cases where running for the Senate is someone’s first foray into politics, the candidate has generally had some notable success in another field, most often business or the Spanish-American War. These first-time Senate candidates generally fall into one of two categories.

  Category 1: “I’ve been successful because I’m incredibly smart, I’ve always followed my own instincts even when people said I was wrong, and I know what the hell I’m doing. I don’t need to listen to anyone’s advice!” This apparently only works when you’re running for president. And get help from the Russians.

  Category 2: “I’ve been successful in my field, and one reason I’ve been successful is that I know what I don’t know and when I should rely on expert advice. One thing I definitely know is that I have no idea how to run for office. I better get some advice from experienced people!”

  I fell squarely into Category 2. As I would have ample opportunity to prove throughout the campaign, my own political instincts were not foolproof. But at least they were good enough to indicate from the jump that I’d need a lot of help to pull this off.

  This worried many of my friends who knew that I was thinking of running. “Please, Al!” they’d beg me. “Whatever you do, don’t listen to those political consultants! They’ll just make you sound like every other candidate!” Or: “Please, puh-leeeeeze don’t hire a bunch of political consultants! Political consultants are just Beltway whores!”

  One friend who didn’t feel that way was political consultant Mandy Grunwald. I first met Mandy in 1993, when she was working for President Bill Clinton. Since then, she had made ads for both Paul Wellstone and Amy Klobuchar, so she knew Minnesota.

  When I floated the idea of running for the Senate to Mandy, she said, “Don’t. It’s a horrible life.” So my friends needn’t have worried: I was perfectly capable of rejecting advice from a political consultant.

  Mandy agreed to help me with my campaign, but she cautioned that she’d be very busy with her work for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential race. In fact, as I discovered in trying to find a campaign manager, a lot of the political talent in the country had already signed up for a presidential campaign, be it for Hillary, for Barack Obama (who landed Jeff Blodgett), or for John Edwards, who at the time seemed like a fine fellow.

  Heading into 2007, the closest thing I had to a campaign manager was Andy Barr, a whip-smart * baby-faced twenty-three-year-old who had been working for me since he was a sophomore at Harvard. Andy had been a key member of TeamFranken, the ragtag gang of goofballs who’d helped research Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

  After graduating, Andy joined the radio show, and at 2 p.m. central he would shift from soundboard engineer and radio sidekick to political director of Midwest Values PAC, which meant he fielded requests for appearances and donations and acted as my body man at bean feeds.*

  MVP’s other staffer was the whip-smart † David Benson, twenty-six, who had some actual campaign experience—about eighteen months’ worth, some of it working for South Dakota senator Tom Daschle.

  David proved extremely capable when it came to the nuts and bolts of campaign management: things like budgets, campaign finance regulations, and human resources. For example, he was the one who realized that we needed a frank and somewhat grim employee handbook, covering things like how to report expenses or bomb threats. And how to act outside the office:

  You work for a political campaign, which means that, whether you’re on the clock or not, your actions leave an impression and ultimately affect people’s perception of Al and of our organization. Sucks for you, but this is the life you chose.

  Traveling around the state with me in 2006, Andy had gotten to know the young organizers who worked for the state party or for other campaigns. Several soon joined our team—like the burly, bald, resourceful Dusty Trice, who always knew a terrifying amount of Minnesota political gossip and couldn’t be stumped by any logistical request. Need three hundred red, white, and blue kazoos by midnight? Looking for a DFL-friendly coffee shop for an event in Beltrami County? Want a couple donkeys to march in your July Fourth parade? Dusty’s answer was always the same: “I got a guy.”

  The next iteration of TeamFranken was coming together. What they lacked in experience, they made up for in youthful enthusiasm and general whip-smartness. Campaign manager or no campaign manager, I was ready to get started.

  You cannot be a candidate for public office and have a radio show on the air. At least not according to the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. And so in a nod to my commitment to adhere to federal law, I announced that I was running for the United States Senate on February 14, 2007—Valentine’s Day—as I signed off the air for the last time.

  Then Franni and I went home and spent a romantic evening calling friends for money.

  Meanwhile, we released a seven-minute web video featuring me talking directly to the camera—telling Minnesotans my story and Franni’s, assuring them that I was ready to take seriously the responsibility I was asking for, and explaining that I was running to restore the middle class.

  Not for the first or last time, I invoked Paul Wellstone’s words: “The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.”

  That afternoon, the chairman of the Minnesota GOP, Ron Carey, held a press conference. “In the spirit of Minnesota Nice, and in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I’d like to welcome Al Franken into the race, and offer a gift basket to Al on behalf of the Republican Party of Minnesota.”

  I know what you’re thinking: “That was awfully sporting of him. I guess people are nice in Minnesota!” But hold on. See, the basket was filled with stuff like a map of the state, because “for over the last thirty years, Al has largely lived in Los Angeles and New York City.” Which was true, except for the Los Angeles part.

  To “help Al with his anger,” there was also a DVD copy of Anger Management, starring “his sidekick, Adam Sandler,”* and to “help Al keep up with what is happening in Hollywood,” there was an issue of Entertainment Weekly.

  There were a bunch of other things that he had picked up at CVS, but you get the idea.

  In addition to painting me as a short-tempered carpetbagger, Carey also released to the press the first of what would be hundreds of research documents detailing examples of stuff I’d said or written over thirty-five years in comedy that Republicans said proved I was profane, rude, and just plain out of touch with Minnesota values.

  This was my first brush with the DeHumorizer™, a $15 million machine Republicans built using state-of-the-art Russian technology. The DeHumorizer™’s function was to take a joke and strip away everything that made it, well, a joke.

  When you do satire, you make use of things like irony: saying one thing while clearly meaning its opposite. And I’m pretty sure Republicans know what irony is, be
cause Ron Carey made extensive use of it in his press conference.

  But with the DeHumorizer™ stripping away anything that made it clear I was engaging in irony (or hyperbole, or ambiguity, or any number of other comic devices), Republicans could simply present my words to Minnesotans at face value. Without their comedic context, those words often weren’t funny anymore. And in fact, they could appear downright offensive.

  Here’s an example. In Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot, I was satirizing Republicans’ willingness to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly (as well as their chronic underfunding of NASA), and I jokingly suggested that we kill two birds with one stone: Just start sending the elderly into space and don’t worry about whether we actually get them back. Continuing to riff on this modest proposal, I added another idea:

  Every Sunday, we put an elderly (or terminally ill) person in a rocket, fire it over the Snake River, and put it on pay-per-view. The revenues go straight into reducing the debt.

  Did you laugh at that? No? Hmm. Well, did you at least understand that I wasn’t actually proposing to murder elderly Americans? Okay. Good.

  But the DeHumorizer™ removed the setup that made it clear that I was engaging in irony to further a satirical argument that was actually making a serious point. And in the Republicans’ research document, it just read:

  FRANKEN PLAN TO REDUCE DEBT: BLAST THE ELDERLY IN ROCKETS OVER SNAKE RIVER AND PUT IT ON PAY-PER-VIEW. “Every Sunday, we put an elderly (or terminally-ill person) in a rocket, fire it over the Snake River, and put it on pay-per-view. The revenues go straight into reducing the debt.”

  The DeHumorizer™ was up and running.

  Fortunately, so was the Franken campaign. The day after the announcement, I visited a health clinic in Minneapolis where my friend Dr. Margie Hogan worked. I spent time meeting with health care providers and patients and listening to some of the horror stories that were commonplace before the passage of the Affordable Care Act.