Jesse 'The Gov' Ventura

On January 4, 1999, Jesse Ventura will be sworn in as the new governor of Minnesota amid a media deluge not seen since the state hosted the Super Bowl. The traditional black-tie inaugural ball has been canceled in favor of a huge "People's Celebration" to be held at the 18,000-seat Target Center in Minneapolis, with likely performances by Bob Dylan and others. Since winning a three-way race against Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Hubert "Skip" Humphrey 3d by a margin of 37-34-28, Ventura--who wants to be known as "The Mind" after years as "The Body"--has become a nationwide celebrity. He's signed a six-figure book deal for a quickie biography, and a made-for-TV movie deal with NBC is said to be in the works. But so far there's been little attention to the real significance of Ventura's win: A working-class populist has figured out how to drive a monster truck through the Potemkin village known as two-party politics in America.

Right now, Ventura is basking in the afterglow. According to a poll taken the week after the election, 54 percent of the state's voters said they would vote for him if the election were held then. Nearly a third said his Reform Party best represented their interests, compared with just 24 percent favoring the Democrats and 20 percent the Republicans. Even people over the age of 55, who tend to have the strongest party loyalties, favored Reform over the other two parties.

But winning candidates often see a postelection jump in their support. What's really striking is the actual shape of Ventura's base. He won a near-majority of 18-to-44-year-olds. Women voted for him almost as much as men. In terms of class, the exit polls, which show that he was favored by everyone except those making over $100,000, aren't as illustrative as the geography of his vote.

"In the high-income professional suburbs, Jesse did poorly," says Myron Orfield, a Democratic member of the Minnesota House and an expert on political demography and regional planning. "In the less affluent suburbs, which are full of households making less than $50,000 a year, often on two jobs or more, he did very well. He also won northeast Minneapolis, which is blue-collar land. And he did better in poor parts of the city than he did in the yuppie areas. The only place where the Democrats held their base was in the Iron Range, where he wasn't that strong."

Even more stunning, in a half-dozen suburban counties ringing Minneapolis-St. Paul to the north and west, Ventura won an absolute majority of the vote. All six of these counties--Anoka, Chisago, Isanti, McLeod, Sherburne and Wright--voted for Clinton over Dole in 1996. They are full of politically independent swing voters coveted by both parties. Indeed, Paul Wellstone spent a great deal of time in these counties during his 1996 re-election campaign. In each one, Ventura actually got more votes than Clinton.

If these aren't signs of a political earthquake, I don't know what is.

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