Minnesota’s Ventura May Bid to Pin Down Senate Seat

9 Jul 2008 // Former Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota is hinting more strongly than ever that he will enter the state’s race for U.S. Senate.

The pending candidacy by Ventura — a flamboyant professional wrestler before he entered the political arena — would add to the cost, publicity and unpredictability of an already expensive, high-profile, tossup race pitting incumbent Republican Norm Coleman against Al Franken, a former Saturday Night Live funnyman and longtime acerbic Democratic Party activist.

The race, with or without Ventura, is bound to get outsized national attention as the national media descend on Minnesota to attend the Republican National Convention being held the first week in September in the state capital city of St. Paul.

CQ Politics rates the race as No Clear Favorite, but could change the rating in the coming weeks based on further developments in the field.

Ventura, who has seldom had trouble drawing attention, did so Wednesday in an interview with NPR. He maintained that he would not make an announcement about his possible candidacy until the state’s candidate filing deadline coming up next Tuesday, but also intimated that he was gearing up for a run.

It would be his first campaign since the stunning third-party victory that earned him his one four-year term as governor. Ventura did not seek re-election in 2002, which he attributed in part to frustration with his inability to get agenda items through a state legislature dominated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

A Ventura Senate bid would create a rematch with Coleman, who as the 1998 Republican nominee for governor was the mayor of St. Paul and a recent convert from the Democratic Party. Ventura took 37 percent of the vote to defeat Coleman, who had 34 percent, and Democrat Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey III — son of the famed late senator and former vice president — who took 28 percent.

Coleman rebounded to win the state’s 2002 Senate race, though under unusual circumstances. The Republican challenger to two-term Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, Coleman ended up running against fill-in candidate Walter F. Mondale — another former senator and vice president from Minnesota — after Wellstone was killed in a plane crash just days before the election. Coleman defeated Mondale by just less than 2 percentage points.

Ventura said in his radio interview that he opposes Coleman’s re-election because of the incumbent’s support of the Iraq War, an issue that Democrats too have emphasized in their campaign to oust the senator. “That’s the reason I run. ... I run because it angers me,” he said of the war.

“All you Minnesotans take a good hard look at all three of us, and you decide if you were in a dark alley which one of the three of us would you want with you,” he added.

So far Ventura has not made his intentions known to the Independence Party of Minnesota, on whose line he ran for governor in 1998. Once affilated with the Reform Party founded in the 1990s by Ross Perot, the Independence Party parted ways after that national organization shifted strongly to the right and eventually endorsed conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan for president in 2000.

Craig Swaggert, chairman of the Independence Party, said he has not spoken to Ventura. Swaggert said he remains neutral on the race, although the party already endorsed another candidate for the contest at its June 21 convention. Stephen Williams, a farmer, won the endorsement on the party’s second ballot, while the option not to endorse a candidate — leaving the nomination up to the Sept. 9 primary — placed second.

Ventura has several options should he decide to get into the race. He could file with one of the state’s three standing parties, Democratic-Farmer-Labor, Republican or Independence. If he did so, he would be forcing a primary on Sept. 9, given that all three already have endorsed candidates. Ventura also could petition to get on the ballot as an independent candidate or with a smaller party, which would require him to submit 2,000 signatures to Minnesota’s Secretary of State by 5 p.m., Tuesday.

Minnesota’s Ventura May Bid to Pin Down Senate Seat
Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said Ventura was giving every indication he intended to run, and very well could win the race.

“Conditions are ripe. This is the kind of race that he’s got a real chance of winning,” Jacobs said.

Polling conducted in June indicated that Ventura would win a quarter of the vote, even though the poll was conducted without Ventura as an announced candidate.

Both Franken and Coleman are well-known figures with strong partisan support bases, but both have high negatives among voters. Franken has faced scrutiny over issues related to late tax return payments by his business enterprises and sexually racy writings he did during his career as a satirist. The latter led him to offer a mea culpa at the Democratic nominating convention in June.

Coleman meanwhile has been dogged by low job approval ratings and has struggled to get over 50 percent, the threshold often cited as the danger line for incumbents seeking re-election. In a state where President Bush is highly unpopular, Coleman has to fend off criticisms of the strong support he lent the administration during his early Senate years, though he has distanced himself from the White House on a number of issues since.

Coleman has faced recent questions about a rent deal he made in Washington, D.C., with a Republican donor. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the Senate ethics committee over the issue.

Jacobs said Coleman also struggles with his Republican constituency, some of whom question his allegiance to core GOP principles. Coleman switched parties in 1996, two years into his first term as the Democratic mayor of St. Paul. Coleman “is not a convictions politician,” Jacobs said.

Ventura, as he did in 1998, could cut out a niche with core support with independents supplemented by members of the Democratic and Republican parties who are not happy with their choices, Jacobs said.

He added that the bar would be relatively low for Ventura in a three-way race. “He doesn’t need a majority. He doesn’t need close to a majority. ... If he can lock down 36, 37 percent that would probably be enough to win in this race,” Jacobs said.

Ventura wasn’t a political novice when he ran for governor 10 years ago, having served as mayor of the Twin Cities suburb of Brooklyn Park.