Almanac: At the Capitol

Tonight, Almanac will host the first DFL U.S. Senate debate. Al Franken, Mike Ciresi and Jim Cohen are invited. They are the declared serious candidates. I know most people are excited to see Franken in action. We've seen Ciresi debate before. I'm getting a lot of people wondering if Franken will be funny or serious, provocative or cautious. This debate has been a long time in the making. We've been calling and trying to schedule this for months. It's not an easy job that our booker extraordinaire Kari Kennedy does better than anyone in the business. At least one of the campaigns has been very interested in the format. There's evidence they've been studying past debates and wondering if some of our old tricks will be back. Of course we'll have some of that, but some new stuff too. We try to keep our approach to debates fresh. No podiums and no stop watches for sure. We've kept this one under wraps for a while, hoping no one would cancel. MDE and Norwegianity (BTW, to fact check that post the show is posted by the next morning at the latest and the average Almanac is seen by about 75,000 people) gave us a plug, but not much chatter out there yet. I think people just aren't thinking about this race yet. I was at the State Fair today visiting political booths and I could hardly get people talking to the candidates to admit they cared much.