Let’s all admit it, we’re curious to see how Al Franken fares in the upcoming election.

Whether you love him or hate him, he’s going to be an unusual candidate.  Among other things, he’s called for a “quickie impeachment” of George W. Bush in 2009, called Rush Limbaugh a “big fat idiot,” and gotten into public scrapes with Bill O’Reilly.  Certainly, Franken’s campaign will not lack for drama.  So it’s understandable that as we approach Franken’s expected campaign announcement this Wednesday, all eyes will be on him.

But DFLers would do themselves a disservice to divide the campaign into Franken and Everyone Else.  There are some talented folks mulling a run against Norm Coleman, and the field for Senate should be deeper than it’s been in recent memory.  Here’s the lineup:Michael Ciresi (DFL-Mendota Heights) announced that he’s forming an exploratory committee, and why not?  He’s got more money than Mac Hammond, meaning that he certainly will have the wherewithal to compete with Franken, no matter how much money Al raises.  Moreover, Ciresi’s work on the tobacco lawsuit gives him instant credibility as a candidate.  Of course, Ciresi did lose to Mark Dayton in 2000, but Dayton wasn’t exactly an unknown quantity, having served a term as state auditor in the early 1990’s–not to mention bearing the name of Minnesota’s most famous department store — make that former department store — and one of the state’s most high-profile families.

State Sen. Mee Moua (DFL-St. Paul) has an only-in-America story that can’t be beat.  The highest-ranking Hmong-American official in the country, Moua fled Laos for Thailand, where she lived as a refugee until her family was able to emigrate here in 1978.  She’s a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s law school, and they don’t let chumps in there.  She’s driven, she’s articulate, and she’d be a great voice for Minnesota.  Can she raise enough money to compete with the likes of Franken and Ciresi?  Are you going to count out someone who emigrated to America in 1978 and graduated from Brown a decade or so later?

State Sen. Tarryl Clark (DFL-St. Cloud) is just barely a sophomore Senator, having been elected in a late-2005 special election.  Yet just over a year after coming to St. Paul, she has already been named assistant majority leader to Larry Pogemiller.  She’s got a strong background in community development and is one of the few out-state candidates in the mix.  She’ll appeal to the centrists and Chamber of Commerce DFLers, but with a number of unapologetic liberals in the race, that’s not a bad thing.

Mayor R.T. Rybak (DFL-Minneapolis) should require no introduction.  The immediate knock on Rybak, of course, is that the GOP will play up crime in Minneapolis.  Of course, that worked so well for them in 2006 when they tried it against Amy Klobuchar that it’s hardly a deal-breaker.  Rybak hails from the left wing of the party, and he’d be able to challenge Franken hard for those voters.  What’s more, Rybak has a strong machine in Minneapolis that should be able to provide both votes and money.  And there would be something entertaining about Minnesota’s two most high-profile mayors of the last decade dukeing it out, wouldn’t there?

Former State Sen. Steve Kelley (DFL-Hopkins)…OK, I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a Kelley skeptic, what with his failure to close the deal in the attorney-general race in 2006.  That’s a total of three statewide races he’s lost, and you usually don’t come back for a fourth.  But Kelley benefits from the fact that the truncated attorney-general race in the 2006 primary made it a bit of a wild card, and he also benefits from the way he bowed out gracefully from the 2006 governor’s race.  And in a crowded field, a guy who’s just been part of a statewide race, even a losing one, has some advantages.

No doubt there are other DFLers who are considering a run.  State Sen. Tom Bakk has been mentioned, as has professor-slash-gadfly Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.  And there’s always someone out there mulling a run whom you’re not expecting.

But my by-no-means-exhaustive list is full of candidates who could compete with and defeat Al Franken and Norm Coleman.  That’s not to say Franken won’t get the nomination, and not to say Franken can’t win. Any state that could elect Jesse Ventura, Paul Wellstone and Tim Pawlenty to statewide office in the space of six years is too unpredictable to rule anything out.  Heck, Norm might even get re-elected; we’re that weird.  But Franken had better not assume the race is Franken’s to lose.  He has a lot more competition that he might expect.