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Comedian Al Franken won the backing of Minnesota’s Democratic Party Saturday to challenge Republican Norm Coleman for his Senate seat in the fall. Franken’s unanimous endorsement comes after weeks of bad press stemming from some of his sexually explicit satirical writings and sketches on “Saturday Night Live” as well as questions about his tax returns. During Saturday’s convention of the Democratic-Farm-Labor Party, the formal name of the state’s Democratic Party, Franken apologized for his jokes. “It kills me that things I said and wrote sent a message … that they can’t count on me to be a champion for women, for all Minnesotans,” Franken said, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I’m sorry for that. Because that’s not who I am.” “I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them weren’t appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that,” he said, the paper reported. Franken has been the choice of national Democrats and was expected to get the party’s endorsement. The controversy of his jokes, however, left open the possibility that the convention might be divided and give challenger Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer a chance at securing the endorsement. But the party handed Franken its unanimous endorsement on the first ballot. Republicans are eager to take on Franken, hoping they can paint the comedian as an insensitive liberal. In particular, they point to a racy 2000 satirical article he wrote for Playboy magazine, entitled “Porn-O-Rama,” and a sketch he proposed in the mid-1990s for Saturday Night Live joking about rape. “For over 30 years, Al Franken has joked about rape and pornography, made fun of people’s appearances and viciously insulted those with whom he disagreed,” said Ron Carey, the chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota. “Al Franken is about as sorry for what he has said and done as he is qualified to be in the United States Senate.” But Democrats say Franken’s jokes will not affect him in the fall. “Look, we knew that from the get-go he had a previous career,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, expressing no regrets this week about his backing of Franken. “Here’s what all the polling data shows, you look at all the things that Al Franken said as a comedian . . . and then you say simply that Norm Coleman supports the war and supports President Bush 90-plus percent of the time, Franken wins by 10-points.” |
