Jesse Ventura eyes White House run in 2008
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Refreshed from a semester as a visiting professor at Harvard University, former pro wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura says he's considering an independent run for the White House in 2008, although he acknowledges that being leader of the free world might be too confining for him.
How would he do? Could he possibly win?
Ventura was elected in Minnesota because he was a radio talk show host (who happened to have been a pro wrestler). The precinct map of his election is very interesting. It looks like maps of the crater formed by the meteor that hit Yucatan. A very small area in the Twin Cities carried by Humphrey, then a big circle carried by Ventura (I suspect it matches the transmission footprint of the radio station he was on), and then an area outside the blast zone which was carried by Coleman.
Ventura was greatly assisted by election day registration, which allowed people who were generally indifferent about politics to express that indifference, as well as people who wanted to treat the election as a referendum on snowmobile studs (this is not an issue that has traction in Alabama). The vote for Humphrey and Coleman was evenly split which permitted Ventura to slip through with not much more of
No Reform Party members were elected to the legislature (most got under 5% of the vote), and Ventura used the party label much like Buchanan and Nader did in 2000 and 2004.
