Okay, so if there is anyone out there who doesn't know what Al Franken is about, read the news once in a while. The Franken campaign has done nothing to hide his history and his take on any situation. He is the way he is! Get a grip!

What we need is a leader who doesn't have the same "experience" that Norm Coleman does. We need someone who is fresh and knows what needs to be changed.

Minnesota has a history of political experimentation. Look at Jesse Ventura. Didn't work out how everyone wanted, but you never know until you try.

I found this letter to the editor slightly amusing, since it really shows how worried the Coleman campaign is when they start accusing DFL candidates of being what they obviously have always been.

Republican party leader Ron Carey claims Minnesota has never seen anything so awful as Al Franken in our past politics---although his criticisms, slanted as they are, nearly ALL refer to Mr. Franken's statements from years ago, long before Franken had any intention or interest in running for office himself. Had Franken, like Norm Coleman, spent his life on the public payroll, he'd probably have acquired a professional politician's talent for telling people what they want to hear.

I also must fault Mr. Carey for his selective memory or perhaps simple ignorance of Minnesota political history. Has he even forgotten the recent history of dirty campaigns, like Republican Arne Carlson's amazing comeback after the mysterious swimming-pool scandal allegations against Jon Grunseth, the Republican-endorsed candidate for Governor, about 20 years ago? Or what about Republican Rod Grams' bare-knuckle bludgeoning of Ann Wynia in 1994, or her campaign's sloppy attempts to slime back?

Not as offensive to public sensibilities, but worth mentioning, is the 1962 campaign by Karl Rolvaag's supporters to smear Governor Elmer Anderson over a phony accusation about Interstate 35; documented for historians by Thomas Roeser in his book "Ingenious Deceit: The Story of a Scandal That Never Existed."

What Mr. Carey doesn't know about Minnesota's history is that it has witnessed political campaigns easily as dirty and treacherous as the stuff Carey's buddy Karl Rove dreams up.

The very first election for Governor of Minnesota was won by Henry Sibley's ballot-box stuffing (316-to-0) in Pembina---the last precinct to report.

A long litany of abuses and corruption attended our state's history under Republican domination in the "Gilded Age" of the late 19th century. And the 1918 Republican primary election for Governor saw the Non-partisan League's candidate, C. A. Lindbergh, assailed as disloyal to America, despite his record as a five-term Republican congressman. Lindbergh was denied the right to hold political rallies in some towns; his supporters--and the candidate himself--were arrested for attempting to campaign, and Lindbergh was literally shot at while leaving a campaign stop.
That was the length the Republican establishment went to ninety years ago to sustain its political control.

But ruthless political combat reached a pinnacle during the Roaring 20's prohibition era and the Great Depression which followed. Republican lawyer Thomas Schall defeated incumbent Farmer-Labor party senator Magnus Johnson in 1924, but Schall's seating was delayed for 21 months while the Senate investigated his alleged shakedown of Minneapolis bootleggers for campaign contributions. When he was finally seated, after diverting blame to his campaign manager, portion's of Schall's first speech in the Senate were stricken from the record because of "his highly seasoned remarks." That's one of yours, Mr. Carey.

As historian John Beecher tells it, for the Republican primary in 1930, Schall "landed on the unwary [Governor] Christiansen with his brass knuckles flailing and his copper-toed boots savagely kicking his opponent's groin. No lie was too fantastic and no charge too vicious if the slightest veil of plausibility coud be drawn over it." Schall won re-election.

In the depth of the Depression, Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party elected its first Governor---the legendary Floyd B. Olson. Olson's Republican opponents took the low road against him, distributing a pamphlet "presenting Olson as a confederate of crooked cops and prostitutes." Olson won in 1930, and dominated state politics until his death from cancer, while yet a young man, in 1936.

His Farmer-Labor successor, Elmer Benson, was beaten by the Republicans, after a campaign marked by GOP harping on the charge of Jewish and communist control of the Benson administration. The anti-Semitic slurs of the 1938 campaign have been documented by Minnesota's dean of historians, Hyman Berman. That's another one for your side, Mr. Carey.

Many more examples could be given. I suggest that Mr. Carey "doth protest too much." If all politicians who used the vocabulary which Mr. Carey seems to find so shocking, were disqualified from seeking public office, we'd have many vacancies.

Should Mr. Franken revert to vulgar language in the course of this campaign, Mr. Carey still needs to tread cautiously. The Republican Party is the host to the political parasites like Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and other spewers of vitriol---even a local Minnesota radio personality who said in the last campaign that he'd "like to see Wellstone dead"---and whose support Mr. Coleman did not repudiate even after the tragic plane crash killed Senator Wellstone, his wife and daughter, and five others.

That was the same year when Republicans in other states also hit new lows. A service-dodging Republican candidate in Georgia beat triple-amputee Vietnam combat vet Max Cleland by running commercials showing Cleland as a sympathizer of Osama bin Laden.

Mr. Carey, Senator Coleman, and their clique are angry at Al Franken.

Here's why---the path that brought Franken from entertainment into politics began with Franken's determination to confront and expose the lies and smears so effectively used in the past by the worst (and now dominant) elements of the Republican party. Coleman went right along with the Libel League when their tide was rising---now the Senator is desperate to pretend that he suddenly nothing but a baby-faced innocent victim.