franken-smooch2“Where’s Al Franken?”

That’s what bloggers and reporters have been asking in recent days. Well, on Saturday at midnight he was greeting union picketers with a hug and a kiss in the sleet in downtown Minneapolis. Video (and update) after the jump.

Franken’s Republican rival for the U.S. Senate, Norm Coleman, has been all over conservative radio and TV since a March 31 ruling that seemed to seal the former senator’s defeat in Minnesota’s election contest trial. On Tuesday judges will oversee the opening of only 400 absentee ballots — likely not enough to erase Democrat Franken’s 225-vote recount lead.

Franken, by contrast, has been little seen or heard from since March 28, when he told a gathering of young Democrats in St. Paul: “We will be seated — and by we, I mean we.”

But Saturday night, Franken was there when a small group of Communication Workers of America Local 7250 held an impromptu informational picket in the falling sleet outside the AT&T building in downtown Minneapolis. The occasion: Their contract with AT&T expired at midnight.

UPDATE: Walking with Franken under umbrellas were U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Paul Begala, the CNN commentator and former aide to President Clinton, who that evening delivered keynote speeches at the DFL Party’s annual Humphrey Day Dinner at the nearby Hilton Hotel. (The event was not open to the media.) Obama himself headlined the event in 2006 (video and audio) and the young Franken campaign made a video for the 2007 event.

Apparently not joining the after-party stroll was the third keynoter at the event, Mitch Stewart, director of President Obama’s new campaign group, Organizing for America, who last year ran Obama’s successful efforts at the Iowa caucus and in the general election in Virginia.  (I’ve e-mailed the Franken camp to ask what Kennedy was doing in town with Franken.)

In a video shot by the picketers, it’s not clear whether Franken and Kennedy sought out the protest or merely happened by. (Franken’s downtown townhouse is nearby and, as it happens, Franken’s old show, “Saturday Night Live,” had just wrapped up on NBC.)

In any case, Franken and Kennedy hear out a union member’s frustration with negotiations and Franken gives her a hug and a kiss.

Here’s the video:

Franken has spoken at the CWA hall the picketer mentions — “7200,” the offices of another CWA local on East Lake Street in Minneapolis. Franken addressed an enthusiastic crowd there only days after winning the DFL Party endorsement last summer.