In the end, the bespectacled buffoon Al Franken beat the John Kerry-caricature Norm Coleman by a paltry 225 votes, but, with over two months having passed since election night, the process took even longer than expected. Owl and Bear has an exclusive look into what happened.
Franken, perhaps best known for his role as Stuart Smalley on SNL (called Saturday Night Live in those days) and the 1995 drama Stuart Saves His Family, has won a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota, defeating Coleman, the Republican incumbent. Not satisfied with the results, Coleman is suing the state, demanding a recount of the recount and effectively leaving Minnesota one senator short for an indefinite period of time.
Whatever the result of the re-recount, Franken will be able to empathize with Coleman when it comes to losing something and then winning it after all, and vice versa. Before he was a winner, Franken was a loser, but then in a surprise turn of events, Coleman became the pathetic wiener who couldn’t even win a simple senatorial election.
The first recount was not without its obstacles, and some tired Minnesotans aren’t looking forward to a second one.
According to one local official, “We had to restart the process several times because the sheriff’s deputy kept flicking the counter’s ears, and we lost count.” When asked about the process itself, he said “The fact that we did a digital recount made it all the harder…Wouldn’t ya’ know it took a long while to gather up enough fingers to count on. Plus, [Minnesota’s] lax fireworks laws make it tough to find volunteers with a good amount of fingers.”
Some say that Franken’s win has paved the way for “Sandler versus Brownback in 2010.”
Just yesterday, upon hearing news of Franken’s victory, Sol Markman of Kansas registered the Sandler for Senate PAC exploratory committee. When asked to comment, Markman said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have both Franken and Sandler ripping SBDs and acting like children in the Senate, like all the other senators.”
Franken and—with luck—Sandler would join the ranks of other entertainer-politicians such as Jesse Ventura (former governor of Minnesota), Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Clint Eastwood (who briefly served as mayor of Carmel, CA, until he changed the town’s name to “Hell” and literally painted it red, and then left town).
Franken downplayed his success, saying that the ultimate honor is not merely the title of senator. “I’ve already been added to the Wikipedia page that lists actor-politicians, and my bio page’s discussion section is going nuts.”
Wikipedia makes no distinction between actor-politicians (i.e., actors turned politicians) and politician-actors (i.e., politicians turned actors), such as Jerry Springer.