4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2021
⏱️ 64 minutes
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Al Talks with His Senate Communications Director on Why the Franken Office was a Blast & Got Stuff Done! & Al on Democracy. Hitler didn’t end it. The Confederacy didn’t end it. Let’s not let Senate Republicans!
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0:00.0 | Hey, everybody, we got a very different one today, I guess by definition, that's for a change. |
0:12.2 | My guest is Ed Shelby, who is my communications director and deputy chief of staff for almost all my time in the Senate. |
0:20.2 | He came on board after a year or so. |
0:23.6 | And I know you're going to really enjoy this because as just a very funny man and a great guy to boot, |
0:30.6 | and by the way, an extremely effective communications director, a job he now holds for Tina Smith, |
0:41.2 | who's exceed me as junior senator, Minnesota. |
0:48.4 | And what we mainly talk about is what it was like to work in the Franklin Senate office. |
0:52.6 | We just had a great time and were very effective. |
0:57.6 | When I got there, you remember I was seated after a nine-month recount. I clobbered Norm Coleman by 312 votes. It was the narrowest clobbering in history. |
1:06.3 | So when I got there in July 2009, I was the 60th Democrat. |
1:13.5 | So 312 votes in Minnesota made the Affordable Care Act possible. |
1:19.6 | When I finally got there, one of our strategic objectives was to demonstrate to Minnesotans |
1:25.8 | and pretty much to everyone that I was serious about the job. |
1:30.2 | So I put my head down. I was a workhorse, not a show horse, as they say. So I did only Minnesota |
1:36.5 | press. And there was a special emphasis on my not being funny or being caught trying to be funny. |
1:44.8 | And I understood that. |
1:45.7 | And for my first term especially, |
1:47.5 | I was very careful not to be funny, publicly anyway, |
1:52.0 | not in hearings, not in speeches on the floor, |
1:55.5 | really nowhere except the office. |
1:58.8 | And we had so much fun in the office. |
2:03.4 | One of the reasons we had one of the lowest, |
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