Franken does, too. He enters the Senate politically weak, having won just 42 percent of the vote and having been tarnished by a vicious campaign advertising war and a race that highlighted some of his most offensive statements, Kunkel said.

The good news for Franken is he has more than five years to improve his standing with voters before facing re-election.

“Basically, he’s a professional wise guy,” Kunkel said. “... Whether he becomes an endearing character or becomes unpopular remains to be.”

Groebner is expecting the latter.

“He can fire up a lot of people to make sure he doesn’t get re-elected,” Groebner said of the potential of a controversial Franken term to motivate Republican activists. “I just hope he keeps rattling off his mouth the way he’s been.”

His most incendiary comments came in his earlier career at SNL and as an author, and Kunkel wonders if Franken has permanently shut down his sense of humor out of caution.

“I guess my final thought is, can Al Franken be funny again or does he have to keep being serious and boring?”

Fleming, who became a Franken supporter after initial skepticism, is optimistic about how he will perform. And he doesn’t believe that Franken’s unusual victory — winning with well less than 50 percent of the vote — will hamper him.

“Pawlenty’s won the same way. It’s hard to look at Pawlenty and say he’s weak,” Fleming said.

And Franken — after the longest wait of any candidate in Minnesota election history — will next week be granted something powerful that normally doesn’t come with 42 percent of the vote.

“He’s the senator,” Fleming said.