2008 Primaries, Messaging, Views on News • May 16th, 2008

Minnesota Smackdown!

by Chris Lato

Our neighbors to the west are gettin’ goofy again. They have Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura to blame.

Yep, he’s back. Ventura is considering re-entering the political ring after his stint as Minnesota governor several years ago. This time he may run for US Senate, a race which already has the once-funny, now-bitter former semi-celebrity Al Franken poised to take on RoboRepublican incumbent Norm Coleman.

Ventura beat Coleman in the race for governor back in the day, which adds a fun little twist on all this. Another mitigating factor: Ventura has what can charitably be described as a rocky relationship with the press. It must come from his wrestling background, but he treats them with open disdain, referring to them as jackals. Call me crazy but I have a feeling the press considers Ventura to be something that rhymes with ‘brick.’

Now it could just be that Ventura is an attention hound and all this chatter about the Senate is just part of a plan to move copies of his new book.

But can the ‘populist’ rhetoric of Jesse Ventura carry the day in a state that has an independent streak of its own? Can he win and shake things up all over again? Or did Mr. Ventura leave a bad taste in the mouths of enough voters who remember his gubernatorial antics? Political spectators can only hope we see a good old-fashioned political cage match in Minnesota.

As an aside: when I worked at the Wisconsin Radio Network, we did a monthly call-in show called ‘Ask the Governor’ with one Tommy G. Thompson. I once dared to ask what he thought of Governor Ventura and his rise to national prominence, what with being a best-selling author, famous politico and all that.

Mr. Thompson, who was known to enjoy a taste of the spotlight every now and again, obviously wasn’t too happy with this interloper Ventura hogging up all the spotlights in the Midwest. I recall Mr. Thompson looking at me like I owed him money. That was the last time I brought up Mr. Ventura.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under 2008 Primaries, Messaging, Views on News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.