If this was a "Seinfeld election," an election about nothing, then how
do you explain Jesse Ventura's stunning victory in the Minnesota
governor's race last Tuesday? Even the 47-year-old former Navy Seal
and professional wrestler turned talk-radio host and small-town mayor
seemed at an uncharacteristic loss of words. "Ask them," meaning the
voters, he told reporters the day after the election.
Actually, looking at the voters is a good place to start. Ventura won
the three-way race against Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Hubert
"Skip" Humphrey III by a vote of 37 to 34 to 29 percent, respectively.
But the day before the election, the Star-Tribune/KMSP-TV Minnesota
Poll showed him tied with Humphrey at 29 percent each, with Coleman
leading at 36 percent. What happened?
A huge surge of new voters, many of them newly enthusiastic young
people, showed up at the polls. And Minnesota allows voters to
register to vote as late as election day. At one precinct in St. Paul,
120 of the more than 600 people that voted were new registrants.
Turnout exploded. According to state election officials, it was like a
presidential election was taking place. Typically, about fifty-three
percent of eligible voters come out for a mid-term election in
Minnesota, but estimates of Tuesday's turnout were running at sixty
percent and higher. Twenty-eight percent of the people who voted for
Ventura said they wouldn't have if he were not on the ballot,
according to exit polls. And it was the mobilization of these
"unlikely voters," as I predicted a week ago in Salon, that made all
the difference.
The shape of Ventura's vote was as important as its size. He did well
with all the age groups except those over 60, and won a whopping 46
percent of the 18 to 29 year olds. (Does this mean that Generation X
agrees with the Ventura radio ad where he declared that "The Rolling
Stones and Led Zepellin are the greatest rock bands of all time?"
Don't tell MTV.) He won strong pluralities from all the income groups
except those making over $100,000. Women were almost equally likely to
vote for him as men, despite the noise over his comments suggesting he
favored the legalization of prostitution. About the only group he did
poorly with were people with post-graduate degrees, who along with the
elderly strongly supported Humphrey, the only blocs to do so.
It is also telling that Ventura's vote, rooted in a majority of
ballots cast by political independents, leaned distinctly to the left.
He won a full one-third of Democrats voting, compared to 28 percent of
the Republicans. And he got 44 percent of self-identified liberals,
compared to just 29 percent of conservatives. What this shows is that
the Republican Coleman held on to more of his base, mainly by bashing
gays and harping on his pro-life position, while Humphrey experienced
a near total meltdown in the face of Ventura's working-class populism.
If anything, Ventura is Ross Perot with a happy face: sane, funny,
self-deprecating, grounded in the reality of average people's lives
(not a secluded billionaire surrounded by sycophants), a patriot but
not a anti-foreigner demogague, a real libertarian who never tried to
buy a politician or get a government subsidy (unlike Perot, who was a
big donor to Nixon and other Washington insiders), focused not on the
painful politics of belt-tightening but on the good-times of a budget
surplus.
Ventura's victory also owes a lot to Minnesota's progressive campaign
finance laws, which limited both of the major party candidates to
spending just $2.1 million each_keeping them from drowning Ventura
out_and gave him enough money to get on the airwaves in the final two
weeks. "I hope that this will show people what can be achieved when
you can pare down the influence of money on the political system,"
said Todd Paulson, executive director for Minnesota's Common Cause.
"It's the closest thing I've ever seen to a revolution."
And the major party candidates had no idea what hit them. On Election
Night, as local reports showed Ventura in the lead with half the votes
counted, Humphrey told people at his non-victory party "We're just
coming around the corners. I think they're going to be showing a
Humphrey victory." Across town, Coleman was telling his supporters to
"keep the faith." Uh-huh. A day later, Dane Smith, the Star-Tribune's
chief political reporter, said that local Democrats and Republicans
had gone into hiding. "We can't find any of them today," he told NPR's
All Things Considered. "They're not answering their phones."
Apparently, the revolutionary character of Ventura's campaign has a
lot of people freaked out, especially the media elites who keep
telling us that there are only two flavors to choose from in politics,
Bland A and Bland B. And their condescencion has been open.
Interviewing Ventura, NBC's Tom Brokaw asked him if he should be
addressed as "Governor Jesse Ventura, or Governor Jesse `The Body'
Ventura." You could almost hear the snickers from the control room.
The New York Times front-page story on his win couldn't resist poking
fun at his roots in the pro-wrestling business either. Robert Scheer,
a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a limousine liberal if there
ever was one, said on his radio show on KCRW that "The people of
Minnesota should be spanked for letting this happen." Even Hillary
Rodham Clinton piled on with a disdainful reference to Ventura's
"traveling road show." This isn't an attack on Ventura's lack of a
detailed platform for what he will do as governor. It's a
nose-held-high sneer at someone who didn't come up the conventional
path, didn't go to an Ivy League school, likes to party and doesn't
apologize for it_and whose success just proved how narrow-minded the
elites really are.
"The conventional analysis we're fed is that people are happy with
politics and they like the politicians they have," says Patrick
Caddell, onetime political adviser to a host of maverick Democrats
ranging from Jimmy Carter to Jerry Brown. "Jesse Ventura suggests
that's not true. The fact that he won is like a can opener. It says to
other people in other states `why can't we have people like this?'.
It's a dangerous example. His candidacy represents a threat to the
established order, and so it's not surprising to see elites try to
marginalize him at every point."
One political leader who takes Ventura very seriously and respectfully
is Paul Wellstone, the senior senator from Minnesota, who has also run
and won two populist campaigns for office. (Not to mention that he is
also a longtime wrestler, albeit of the amateur college variety.)
"What I most appreciate about his campaign and victory is the
downright anti-establishment part of it," Wellstone told me in a
November 5 phone interview. "The message was `look, you gatekeepers
who supposedly decide who can run, and who is viable and who is
serious and who can win -we're going to take you on.' I like that. I
also appreciate the political reform part [of Ventura's message],
which was very much for real." When I told him liberals like Robert
Scheer wanted to "spank" Minnesota, Wellstone immediately replied
"That's ridiculous. That's a huge mistake. That's the same elitism
that looks down on people, and gets liberals into big trouble that
they deserve to be in."
Wellstone was looking forward to sitting down with Ventura's
staff_they've already called him to set up a meeting_and working
together on areas of common agreement. But he expressed some concerns
about the content of the Governor-elect's program, noting that
populism has historically taken many forms, not all of them friendly.
After acknowledging Ventura's opposition to corporate welfare, his
support for public schools and his environmentalism, he pointed to
some worries. "Please remember that during the campaign he also said
to students in higher education, in community colleges, that if you're
smart enough to get to college you're smart enough to pay for it.
Community college students not needing help? Jeez! And he also said
that he doesn't see a role for government to make child care more
affordable. He's also talking about massive tax cuts while reducing
class sizes. I'll be interested in seeing how you do that, how you
invest in a commitment to children starting school ready to learn." I
noted as well Ventura's announcement during the last weekend of the
campaign that he opposed the idea of requiring government contractors
to pay a "living wage," a hot issue in Minneapolis right now. "If
those are the policies," Wellstone said with a growl, "I look forward
to a vigorous debate."
In the meantime, the genie is out of the bottle_and the two major
parties are going to have a hell of a time stuffing it back in.