Political Science Jesse Ventura\'s Election

Political Science

Jesse Ventura's Election

The general election for governor in Minnesota in 1998 matched Jessie Ventura against

Republican candidate Norman Coleman and Democrat-Farmer-Labor (DFL) candidate Hubert

Humphrey III. Ventura's pro-wrestling infamy, his knowledge as mayor, and his job as radio talk show host all pooled to give him an immediate presence in early pre-election polls. A number of background issues aided Ventura's augment in the polls. First, Ventura benefited from visibility and name identification from his pro-wrestling and successive radio talk show days. His radio talk show had common political guests, predominantly the 1996 Reform Party nominee for U.S. Senate. This gave him some partial coverage, as well as practice in turning his formidable pro-wrestling charm toward political issues. This served him well in a sequence of well publicized debates at the end of the campaign. An additional significant feature of the campaign that helped Ventura was the fact that both parties had packed and aggressive primaries to work through prior to concentrating on the general election (Lacy and Monson, 2000).

Research has suggested that third party votes are not simply based on the candidate's qualities. There is another probable explanation for choosing to vote for a third party candidate. It has been asserted that voting third party is not due to party classification with a third party, but rather a momentary progress away from the major political parties. When people feel an adequate amount of distance between themselves and the major party nominees, they start to consider a third party vote. This proposes that those who voted for Ventura voted frequently, and in this specific case voted for Ventura as a vote in opposition to the major parties (Grossbach, Kath, Spencer and Stuard, n.d.).

Ventura founded his campaign around being a regular guy and speaking about the requirements of groups he asserted were overlooked by the two major parties. It was clear from the beginning that Ventura was a different kind of governor that set out from the beginning to change politics in Minnesota. Despite his unorthodox governorship, he did manage to achieve some of his objectives while in office, like enacting property tax reform, supporting light rail, securing health care donations and endorsing trade. Critics asserted he could have been much more successful had taken a less controversial stance with legislators, but disagreement seemed to be the trademark of his leadership and his life (Ferguson, 2006).

Jesse Ventura's term probably would have been very different if he had been a leader of one of the two major political parties. Third parties face a number of troubles which frequently make their candidates terms short lived. The most apparent reason that third parties have trouble surviving is that most voters are faithful to their traditional party. Voters typically identify with a certain political party, often inheriting their particular association from their parents. There are other great roadblocks third parties faces on the path to becoming a typical fixture in politics such as ballot access, campaign finance and the Electoral College system.

There are also many laws which hold back third parties from being triumphant (Tabor, n.d.).