Al Franken has a plan to double the number of liberal comedians in the Senate.
The Minnesota senator, a comedian by trade, appeared on CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” Wednesday night. A native of Indiana, Letterman is just furious about the state’s passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. When Letterman asked Franken what he could do to make Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence “feel uncomfortable,” Franken told Letterman, who ends his decades-long run as a late night host next month, to run for what will be an open Senate seat in the state in 2016.
“As a matter of fact, there’s an open seat there,” Franken told Letterman. “The incumbent [Republican] senator, the current senator there, Dan Coats says he’s not running next year. And look, when people come to me and they say — young people say — ‘how do you become a United States Senator?’ And I say, ‘well, do about 35, 40 years of comedy, and then run for the Senate.’ And, you know, it’s worked every time. So I think you should run.”
While Letterman does not have any political experience, he does share some commonalities with a couple very successful politicians. Like Franken, he spent his career as a successful comedian. And like former President Bill Clinton, Letterman has a history of taking time out of his busy schedule to “mentor” interns.