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Posted on 12/07/2017 7:28:14 PM PST by ButThreeLeftsDo
Sen. Al Franken has announced he will resign his seat in the coming weeks.
But this isn't the first time Minnesotans have witnessed a shift in that particular seat. Some political experts even call it cursed.
"This is a troubled seat," said David Schultz, a political expert at Hamline University.
Schultz said to better understand why, you have to go back more than 40 years.
"It all started in 1976 when then-Senator Walter Mondale resigns to become Vice President of the United States," he said. "It creates a vacancy. Gov. Wendy Anderson wants to become Senator, (so) he resigns as Governor." That resulted in what's been called the "Minnesota Massacre" in 1978, as Republicans went on to beat all three Democrats who were running in huge upsets. That marked the last time both U.S. Senate seats and the governor's office were on the ballot in the same year in the state.
"Democrats got routed," Schultz said.
Then tragedy struck in 2002 with the death of Paul Wellstone in a plane crash very close to the general election in which he was running against Republican Norm Coleman.
"11 days before the election his plane crashes," Schultz said.
Al Franken would go on to win the seat in 2008 in the closest Senate race in American history. But even that caused some issues.
"By a couple hundred votes, Al Franken defeats Norm Coleman, but he doesn't take office until July of 2009 because of six months of court fighting," Schultz said. In all, Franken's seat has changed hands 25 times, compared to 16 for Sen. Amy Klobuchar's.
"We've got resignations, we've got deaths, we've got political fights, we've got legal battles, this is a cursed seat," Schultz said.
Cursed or not, once Franken steps down, it won't be vacant for long.
"People who are running for the seat might want to think twice about it, but despite that curse, the allure of being a U.S. Senator, one of the most exclusive clubs in the United States, it's so powerful," Schultz said. "I think people are willing to take a chance to do that."
Is Franken’s seat kind of like Hillary’s stool?
Actually, Al Franken lost to Coleman.
Then the crooked DFL (MN's Democrat Farm Labor party) started a recount scheme that eventually found more votes for Franken.
In Franken's case, it is not a curse, it is Karma.
It was actually the rat party that stole it but I get what you’re saying. Franken is too stupid to successfully steal a candy bar from 7-11.
What do you expect for a state that brought us Jessie “the Body” Ventura as Governor ?.
Better than the DFL guys.
When I heard Franken asking legal-type questions of people under oath as part of the Russian-election-manipulation-investigation fustercluck, I’d swear that guy was brain-damaged. It was the worst rambling garbage I’ve ever heard. Dead serious, this guy sounded worse than a 7th grade girl on the debate team right after her boyfriend dumped her AND she failed a mid-term math test. I don’t expect everybody in the world to speak like Ryan Seacrest or be a practicing lawyer, but you’d think that a guy in that position would at least consult a lawyer (gonna tell me that his congressional office doesn’t have one on retainer?!) and get some pointers on how to do this without looking like a complete corndog. What’s sad is that he probably did.
If I was in that position, I would type up my questions, have a lawyer go over them and redline any changes, then I would take that paper in and read the questions verbatim. It comes off wooden and monotone but it sure beats coming off like a blithering idiot.
I think all of the alcoholic drinks, bong-hits, and lines of coke that Franken did over the years have caught up to him. He’s insisting that he’s innocent of his sexual assault accusations and is anxious to defend himself. He’s forgotten that he’s already publicly confessed to a bunch of them, publicly apologized, and he was photographed doing several of them!! I wouldn’t hire this idiot to clean my bathroom, he would probably bomb the place with industrial chemicals and kill every living thing on my block.
I actually liked Jesse during his campaign in the 1990s, mainly because he wasn’t afraid of anybody and he was pissing off the right people. But soon after getting elected, he went off the deep end and has only managed to sink.
I really think that becoming a public figure drove him nuts. He was a wrestler and a sometimes-actor that actually got some decent roles. Alright, he’s not Marlon Brando, but there’s a whole lot of people that try their whole lives to be an actor and don’t get 5 seconds of screen time in Hollywood. That stuff gave him a small taste of being a public figure but nothing like being an actual state governor, especially one that was outrageous and had media following him around to see what kind of wacky shtuff that he was going to try next. It didn’t take him long before he got sick of the media following him around 24/7 and had no problem making him look like an idiot, which was a very short trip. Then he hit a phase where he couldn’t shut up about his military service and kept getting caught in lies about what he did—and where. After talking about being a SEAL in Vietnam, it was proven that Jesse never served in combat in Vietnam. He also earlier claimed that a health problem with blood clots in his lungs was caused by being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, which was also proven to be a lie. That’s a clear case of stolen valor and admitting to it had to have carried a real sting, as it should.
I think being a controversial public figure drove him nuts and that’s why he spiraled so bad.
Wife and i voted for Jesse.
He ran as a true outsider. Then, about 6 months into his job, his brin short circuited and he threatened to kill a Star Tribune reporter.
It went down hill from there...
Yeah, he was good in the later 90s. After getting elected, he took a big decline mentally. I wonder about dementia. I’m not saying that to be a jerk or make fun of him, I’d honestly like to see him get help.
Jesse remains the only politician who ever gave back excess taxes to the folks who paid them. That move was just stunning.
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