Al Franken

Alan Stuart Franken, born on May 21, 1951, is an American politician, comedian, writer, actor, and media personality. He served as a United States senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. Franken gained fame as a writer and performer on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, where he worked for three stints. He served as a writer for the show from 1975 to 1980, and returned from 1985 to 1995 as a writer and briefly as a cast member. Apart from his entertainment career, Franken became a prominent liberal political activist, hosting The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio. He was elected to the United States Senate in 2008 as the nominee of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, defeating incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman by a narrow margin.