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US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Comedian locked in costly battle for Minnesota seat

There’s no joke about it: One of the costliest and roughest senate races in the US is between comedian and Democratic activist Al Franken and an incumbent Republican using all his old lines against him.

One of the original writers for the iconic comedy show Saturday Night Live, Franken is now best known for the political commentary of his bestselling books and syndicated radio show.

And after a rough campaign, where he has been attacked for failing to pay his taxes and writing a raunchy article in Playboy magazine, Franken is currently running neck and neck with Norm Coleman to represent Minnesota in the US senate.

Coleman won his seat in 2002 after Franken’s friend and long-time Democratic senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash 11 days before the election.

Franken has skewered Coleman for voting with unpopular US President George W. Bush nearly 90 percent of the time and for accepting free trips and discounted rent from lobbyists.

Coleman has chided Franken for his “vicious” and “dirty” campaign smears — including tying him to a lawsuit alleging that a top donor funneled money to Coleman’s wife — and used expletive-filled clips from Franken’s radio program to declare him “out of control” and unfit for office.

The candidates have spent more than US$30 million on the race, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and millions more have poured in from the national parties and independent groups as Democrats vie to gain a majority in the senate and Republicans struggle to block them.

Minnesota is no stranger to electing unorthodox entertainers, having tapped former pink-boa wearing professional wrestler turned actor and commentator Jesse Ventura as governor in 1998. Franken has mostly eschewed comedy on the campaign trail, focusing on policy proposals and the problems with the Republican administration and his plans to rebuild the “middle class economy” and make college and health care more affordable.

Born in New York in 1951, Franken moved to Minnesota when he was four years old.

He mixed comedy with politics at an early age, running for president of his seventh grade class with the slogan: “Never spit in a man’s face unless his mustache is on fire.”


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