‘SNL’ star becomes a senator

Right about now, Former Saturday Night Live writer and performer Al Franken must be saying, “I’m good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”

According to The Washington Post, the man who played Stuart Smalley on SNL will be named the victor of the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota after a tight contest with Republican Norm Coleman.

Coleman, however, isn’t one to let a pesky thing like election results stop him from claiming a spot in the Senate. He has gone ahead and asked Minnesota's supreme court to include a few hundred more absentee ballots in the recount, which would allow the court to investigate the race once more.

"At the moment, Franken has a 225-vote lead," said Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a Democrat who oversaw the process, to the Post.

Coleman’s campaign manager Cullen Sheehan countered with a statement saying hundreds of absentee voters were "disenfranchised," some ballots were double-counted, and others that went missing were counted anyway.

"We remain convinced that this process is broken, and as a result, the numbers being reported will not be accurate or valid ... [It] clearly means that a contest is the only likely remedy to ensure a fair outcome," Sheehan said.

Franken, 57, was one of the original writers at SNL from 1975 to 1980, and returned as a performer from 1985 to 1995. He wrote and starred in the 1995 big-screen movie Stuart Saves His Family, which was based on his SNL character Stuart Smalley.

He also blogs for The Huffington Post and hosted the liberal radio show The Al Franken Show from 2004 to 2007.