Is there room for two former Saturday Night Live cast members on Capitol Hill? That’s what Gary Kroeger, who appeared on the show from 1982-85, is trying to find out.
Kroeger announced on Monday that he will be running for Congress in Iowa’s first congressional district in a bid to join Al Franken in Washington and double the size of the Congressional Not Ready For Prime Time Caucus. The former actor, who is running as a Democrat, grew up in north-east Iowa and moved back to his native state 12 years ago. He now works in advertising.
In an interview with the Guardian, Kroeger, who was ranked the 97th-best cast member in Saturday Night Live’s history earlier this year by Rolling Stone (which referred to him as “the poor bastard who had to play Walter Mondale”), talked about his liberal platform and what his moment in the limelight meant for his campaign.
Kroeger told the Guardian that while he had always been interested in politics and long contemplated running for office, he decided to throw his hat into the ring after Republicans picked up his congressional district in the 2014 GOP landslide. The newly elected Republican incumbent Rod Blum was antithetical to his progressive values.
Kroeger also defended himself against the charge that he might not be serious because of his background as a “satirist on SNL”. He told the Guardian: “People in entertainment have a lot of diverse sources and draw from the palette of humankind. Our business is ... to look at life through a long, deep lens.” Kroeger went on note that “no one can tell me that [outgoing Daily Show host] Jon Stewart isn’t serious [and] intelligent”.
The former actor says “showbusiness is in my past”, although he admits he won’t be shy about asking celebrity connections for help – saying Billy Crystal told him: “I hear you’re running for office” and that he had talked about the race with Larry David and “Marty Short”.
Kroeger did, however, back away from any comparison to the only former SNL cast member currently in Washington. ”I’m certainly not Al Franken,” he admitted. As Kroeger notes, Franken wrote books, while he simply wrote a column in the local newspaper and had his own “leftwing blog”. But he did say he considered Franken along with Tom Harkin and Paul Wellstone as political role models.
If elected, Kroeger said that he would initially focus on economic and tax reform, “because no one is ready to hear about education and environment, even though those are paramount issues”. The ex-actor said that he was in favor of expanding tax breaks for the middle class and the earned income tax credit, and offsetting some of the cost by “raising the top marginal tax rate somewhat”. He also said he supported the proposed nuclear framework with Iran and said that he believed “what the president and Secretary Kerry have negotiated was a good agreement”.
However, the path to Kroeger even winning his party’s nomination is tough. He faces two opponents in the Democratic primary for his seat: former Cedar Rapids city councilwoman Monica Vernon and hotel executive Ravi Patel. Both have already raised significant amounts of money and, in Vernon’s case, lined up endorsements from a number of local elected officials.
Scott Brennan, a former chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, noted that while both of Kroeger’s opponents have raised “staggering amounts of money”, the election was still 14 months away. “So many things come down to organization,” said Brennan, and “if he’s serious, there’s plenty of time”.
Other Democrats in the state were more skeptical about Kroeger’s chances. “I don’t see where he’s going to raise any real money,” said one Democratic operative who is unaffiliated in the race. As was pointed out, while Kroeger did appear on Saturday Night Live, his celebrity from the show doesn’t quite match that of Franken.
Kroeger seems unconcerned about the odds. “There has to be an element of joy in everything that we do. I know how hard this is going to be, but I enjoy the process of speaking to people, listening to people, and the thought of representing people in Washington gives me so much joy.”
