Jesse's Victory: It was no fluke.

• Author: SCHIER, STEVEN E.
• Position: Lessons to be learned from Jesse Ventura's election

In the wake of his stunning election as Minnesota's next governor, former World Wrestling Federation superstar Jesse Ventura presides as a genuine cultural phenomenon. The darling of the media, particularly televised "infotainment" programs, he allowed over one hundred desperate reporters to interview him during his stopover at the National Governors' Conference shortly after his victory. He has signed a book contract in the mid six figures with a major publishing house, and is in negotiation with NBC for a possible TV bio-pic. Stores in Minnesota feature T-shirts proclaiming "My Governor Can Kick Your Governor's Ass" and, more tamely, "My Governor Can Beat Up Your Governor" Jesse--that's what infatuated Minnesotans call their new governor--loves the media, thinks fast on his feet, and presents himself with a testosterone-juiced air of authority. Americans will see a lot of him over the next four years.

If all this seems a funny political sideshow, it isn't. Ventura's election carries important implications for politics in Minnesota and the nation as a whole. His triumph seems so beyond the pale that a lot must be happening in our politics to cause it. And a lot is. Jesse's ascendancy underscores the great and growing weaknesses of our two major parties with the public. It reveals that third parties have a future in American politics only if national campaign finance and voter registration rules come to resemble those now in force in Minnesota. The success of Ventura's unorthodox, low-budget campaign ads exposes the shortcomings of conventional political advertising. And, perhaps most disturbingly, Jesse's rise to the top confirms the growing power of celebrity and entertainment in American politics.

How He Did It

Jesse's victory required a harmonic convergence of legal and political circumstances that took Minnesota's quirky political populism to a new level. During the '90s, voters in Minnesota have taken a liking to candidates who attack the "political establishment" of the state from all manner of directions. In 1990 and 1996, Paul Wellstone's tie-dyed leftist insurgency carried him to victory over establishment Republican Rudy Boschwitz. Rod Grams, as emphatically to the right as Wellstone is to the left, won a Senate seat during the 1994 nationwide Republican insurgency, defeating Ann Wynia, a conventional liberal well-known and widely respected among Minnesota's political establishment. Arne Carlson, the outgoing Republican governor, is a scrapper who has been at war with the activists in his own party for years, and has won office twice despite being denied endorsement for the party primary by two consecutive state Republican conventions. Jesse is the culmination of this trend, rocking the political establishment from the "radical" center.

Why do Minnesotans like the insurgent style in their statewide candidates? The answer lies in the decay of the two major parties in the state. Two decades ago, scholars routinely ranked Minnesota as a state with a strong party system. No more. Though both the Democratic and Republican parties of the state still boast big budgets and many officeholders, they have lost their hold over the voters.

Each election year, Minnesota's parties hold a statewide set of precinct caucuses followed by county, and congressional district conventions. At the June state convention, the parties write a platform and endorse a favored candidate for the September primary. Over the...