The timing of Jane Mayer's attempt to exonerate Al Franken of sexual harassment charges couldn't be more suspect. This is clearly the opening salvo of an attempt to get Franken back in his Senate seat in 2020.
Governor Mark Dayton appointed then-Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith to fill Franken's seat until a special election, which she won, to fill out his term. But that means that in 2020 she'll have to run for a full term. Smith was a bit of a statehouse insider who was not well known in the state and had never run for office independently. The New York political/media elite may now figure that she would be fairly easy to knock off and reinstall 'their guy' to his rightful position.
I don't think it'll work. For one thing, the carpetbagger issue may prove more important in this election than it was originally, because Smith is a born-and-bred Minnesotan, and the incumbent. Franken was born in New York City. His family moved here when he was a small child but moved back to New York when he was around ten, where he lived until he decided to run for the Senate in Minnesota and established residency here. He's not a Minnesotan, he's a New Yorker, and the fact that his reentry into Minnesota politics is being orchestrated from the pages of The New Yorker is highly suspect.
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