Ex-senator seeks new role in shaping public policy
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly a year after he resigned his U.S. Senate seat amid sexual misconduct allegations, Al Franken is testing whether he can make a comeback in the #MeToo era.
The former “Saturday Night Live” funnyman released a podcast on health care last week, just days after a Thanksgiving Day Facebook post in which he mused how much he missed “being in the fight every day.”
“When I left the Senate, I said I was giving up my seat but not my voice, and after the midterm elections, I thought I’d start experimenting with ways to make my voice heard,” Franken said as he opened the podcast. He ended by saying: “Maybe I’ll do another one, I don’t know.”
Franken was a safe bet for re-election before a radio host last year accused him of forcibly kissing her during a USO tour in the Middle East in 2006, and circulated a photo in which he can be seen pretending to grope her breasts. That was followed by allegations from several women that he groped them while posing for photos.
Several female Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called on Franken to step down, and he announced his resignation last December, even as he maintained that some of the accusations were untrue and disputed details in others.
Franken, 67, was among the first politicians who fell amid the rise of the #MeToo movement. But others have survived misconduct allegations since then, including Rep. Keith Ellison, who was elected Minnesota’s attorney general despite an ex-girlfriend’s claim of domestic abuse. And Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court despite an allegation of attempted sexual assault.
Many liberal activists and donors nationally have said Franken was treated too harshly. Comedian Bill Maher recently argued on his HBO show “Real Time” that “We can have #MeToo and Al Franken. They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s time to get Al off the bench so he could come back to doing what he does better than any other Democrat, taking down right-wing blowhards.”
Even President Trump ridiculed Franken for quitting too soon. At a rally in Minnesota last month for the Republican running in a special election to complete Franken’s term, Trump told the crowd that Franken folded “like a wet rag.”
Franken declined an interview request, and he hasn’t made clear exactly how he will seek to become more publicly involved. He said in his Facebook post that he is “certainly not running for anything.” Even if he were interested, Minnesota’s Senate seats and governorship are locked down for the near future by fellow Democrats.
And some are warning against rushing to welcome Franken back.
“No matter how much you care about him or his voice or his talents as an orator, that does not trump the need to create a more just culture for the survivors of sexual violence,” said feminist author Sady Doyle, a regular contributor to Elle and Medium who said she was once a big Franken fan.