Normally, it wouldn’t be good politics for a presidential candidate to pal around with a man who once said he wanted to be reincarnated as an oversize bra. But Ventura has something that Gore–and his rival–badly need: support from the disaffected center. Just as the Republican landslide in 1994 turned on all-powerful Perot Voters, this may shape up to be the year of the Ventura Voters. Weary of political theater and searching for a galvanizing leader, they carried John McCain through New Hampshire and Michigan. Ventura even vowed to stump for McCain if he won the nomination. But McCain is now back in the Republican fold, and the lost Ventura Voters–who may comprise a quarter of the electorate, depending on how they’re asked to identify themselves–are wandering in the political desert. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see that even a small tremor among these voters could turn the 2000 race.
Democrats and Republicans are making their pitch in different ways. Gore appears to have made winning over Ventura himself a priority. Meanwhile, having been smacked around by McCain’s legions in the primaries, Bush has sharpened his message to go directly at them. He repeats the word “reform” as if it were a verbal tic and seizes on issues–like Social Security and taxes–that appeal most to ornery independents. Ventura is amused by the posturing. “I guess I would tell them to be themselves, but I don’t know if they’re capable of doing that,” he says. “They’re too rehearsed. They’re too spun. They’re who their parties think they should be to win. And now their parties are gonna try to spin them to be me.”
The whole point of Ventura’s appeal, of course, is that he has no spinners. Unlike Perot Voters, who were mainly concerned with fiscal responsibility and Washington “gridlock,” Ventura Voters are drawn to personalities. Tired of political blather and negative campaigns, most are independents who just want someone to level with them. But Ventura also appeals to the more elusive unaffiliated voters–people who have no interest in politics one way or the other. “They get their entertainment from Jerry Springer, not CNN,” says GOP pollster Frank Luntz. “Ventura, because of his personality, was able to wake them up.” Minnesota’s turnout rate soared more than 20 percentage points above the national average when Ventura was elected, and 16 percent of the voters registered that day. In other words, the Ventura Voters turned what should have been a status-quo election upside down.
But Ventura says his kind of voter will probably stay home this fall. It’s nothing against Gore and Bush; it’s just that they sound like the usual party pols. “The vice president I see on TV now–I do double takes, because that ain’t the one I seen at dinner,” he says. “You know, the one I seen at dinner is a very intelligent man, animated, highly emotional. And yet the one I see on TV is drier than toast.” Thinking it over behind his desk in the governor’s office, Ventura finally sums it up this way: “These guys will not say what they say in private out in public. I will.”
On some level, the GOP gets it. Luntz sent a memo to party officials last year urging them to heed Ventura’s lesson–in short, to try hard to appear as if they’re not trying quite so hard. Both likable men, Bush and Ventura have a cordial relationship from their governors’ meetings. Bush’s campaign pitch is in some ways oddly similar to Ventura’s. Although he’s a Yale man, Bush has genuine disdain for eggheads and doesn’t get weighed down in policy minutiae. Like Ventura, he prides himself on hiring people who do. Bush likes to remind voters that he, not his handlers or his party, will be the boss. But with his $84 million in the bank, and strong ties to lobbies like the National Rifle Association, Bush is hard-pressed to convince disaffected centrists that he’ll be a real reformer. McCain might be able to help sway them, of course, but he doesn’t exactly seem swayed himself.
Gore forces, meanwhile, have tried to pick up the banner for campaign-finance reform, a favorite issue among Ventura Voters. They’d love an endorsement from the Body. “He’s really intellectually sharp,” says Chris Lehane, Gore’s spokesman. “He really understands the policy and the nuances, much more so than the policy elite.” A valiant effort, to be sure, but all the flattery in the world isn’t likely to get Ventura into Gore’s corner. For one thing, although he seems to genuinely like Gore, it’s not clear whom Ventura favors. And Ventura’s smart enough to know that a bid to bring his admirers into Gore’s camp probably wouldn’t work anyway.
As far as Ventura is concerned, there’s only one man who could safely count on an independent groundswell in November. You guessed it. “I still believe strongly that I could walk in and steal this election at the 11th hour,” says Ventura, who got a hero’s welcome during a recent trip to Chicago. “It was sort of scary, how many people were begging me to run.” But Jesse says he’d rather visit Washington than live there anyway. At least he always has a place to stay.
