Profile of Al Franken, 2008 Senate Candidate from Minnesota

One of the most colorful, and hotly contested, 2008 Senate races will be in Minnesota, where author/comedian Al Franken hopes to unseat one-term incumbent moderate Republican Norm Coleman, a former Democrat with a glamorous model/actress wife.

But Franken first must win Minnesota's Democratic primary on September 1, 2008... and that may prove more challenging than meets the eye.

Franken's main opponent will be Mike Ciresi, a prominent trial lawyer best known for winning $6 billion in 1998 from the powerful tobacco industry. Ciresi also served as legal counsel for the citizens of India against Union Carbide over the ghastly 1984 Bhopal industrial accident.

On July 9, Franken's campaign announced that in the second quarter 2007, Franken raised almost $2 million, of which "more than 95 percent of his contributions in the last reporting period were $100 or less," reported AP . During the same period, Sen. Coleman pulled in $1.6 million, and Ciresi added $625,000 to his coffers.

Despite a brlliant comedic career that includes 15 years as writer/actor on Saturday Night Live and four bestselling books of biting political satire, Al Franken is a bright, serious intellectual and avid progressive. From March 2004 to February 2007, of course, Franken hosted the daily flagship program of liberal talk radio station Air America.

I believe that Franken would make an outstanding activist senator in the progressive tradition of his close friend, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone. But given his forceful, in-your-face humor, and that messy admission of cocaine while at SNL, Al Franken may find the road to D.C. to be rocky...

Start getting ready for the 2008 Senate races by reading my Profile of Al Franken, Comedian and 2008 Senate Candidate.

(Photo: William D. Bird/Getty Images)