The Norm Coleman Vs. Al Franken Scanda-List

Who Are They?

• Norm Coleman, Senior Senator of Minnesota and Republican. Coleman is running for re-election this year.
• Al Franken, former Saturday Night Live actor/writer and author of Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot. Franken is Coleman’s Democratic opponent.

Why is everyone talking about them?

• The battle between Coleman and Franken was one of the ugliest and most aggressively fought congressional elections this year.
• With 99% of the polls counted, Coleman was ahead of Franken by only 571 votes. By law, the state must recount all votes if the margin between the top two candidates is less than half of a percent. The recount, which would not even begin until mid-November, could take well into the following month. Coleman has claimed victory, asking Franken to abandon the recount. Franken has no plans to do so.

• Coleman is suing Franken for defamation of character, in response to an ad tying the Senator to oil interests. Coleman officially refused to run negative ads in October, but outside groups funded several high-profile spots against Franken, accusing him of mocking minorities and writing pornography in his satirical work.
• Lawsuits alleging that a Republican supporter funneled money to Coleman’s wife were filed days before the election. The senator has dismissed the suit as ‘sleazy politics.’

Norm Coleman & Al Franken Fun Facts!

• Despite being an avid pot smoker in his youth, Coleman is against all legalization efforts, including medical marijuana.
• Franken, whose extensive drug use on SNL is a matter of public record, co-wrote the film When A Man Loves A Woman, based in part on his wife’s battle with alcohol addiction. He now claims to take illegal drug use “very seriously.”
• Coleman celebrated his 20th birthday at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969.
• Franken was endorsed by Republican writer and fellow Jewish comedy actor Ben Stein.
• Coleman was elected the Democratic mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota in 1993, but switched to the Republican party three years later.
• While no longer directly related to the program, Franken advised Saturday Night Live on an anti-McCain sketch earlier this year.
• Coleman’s opponent in his first Senatorial campaign, Democratic incumbent Paul Wellstone, died in a plane crash just over a week before the election. Wellstone was replaced on the ballot by former presidential candidate Walter Mondale, who held a senatorial seat in Minnesota from 1964 to 1977. Coleman won the election by a slim margin—though one much wider than this year’s.
• Dean Barkley, an independent candidate running against Coleman and Franken, won 15% of the vote Tuesday. Ironically, Barkley filled Wellstone’s senatorial seat for the remaining two months of his term in 2002, before the election of Coleman.

[Photos: Getty Images]