From the "Where Are They Now" Department
Anyone remember the Independence Party?
In case you don't, they were Jesse Ventura's party, for those of you who think his party mattered.
They apparently still exist!
Independence Party vice chairman Jack Uldrich said Thursday he's formed an exploratory committee and is inclined to run in 2006 for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton.
Uldrich said he understands he will be an underdog to any of the big-name politicians seeking the Republican and Democratic nominations. And he is has no illusions that he will raise anywhere near the amount of money those candidates will have.
This is the part I love
"Really, I'm going to run a guerilla-like campaign," he said. The other candidates will "spend so much time and money hurling crap at each other that the public is going to get tired of them."
Leave aside that there has never been a crap-hurler like Jesse Ventura; I love the third-party assumption that voters really, truly abjure the "hurling" of "crap".
If people really, really didn't like the hurling of crap - if they didn't eat it up, indeed - then National Public Radio would dominate the airwaves, and Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh would be working as insurance adjusters. Jai-Alai would be the national sport, and NASCAR would be run on dirt tracks along the Alabama/Kentucky border. Vince McMahon would be a mild-mannered priest in the suburbs of Wichita.
If people disdained the "hurling" of "crap", we'd be talking about Senator Jim Gibson (to this day, the only IP candidate that it was ever worth the effort to read about), and Governor Tim "Who's Tim Penny" Penny.
Americans love crap-hurling. I think that in our passive-aggressive Scandinavian way, Minnesotans like it even more.
But I wish Mr. Uldrich the best of luck; once Ventura's faux populism evaporated (five minutes after his inauguration), the IP's base was exposed for what most of us always thought it was; DFLers who got tired of waiting their turn for endorsement. Uldrich will draw many votes from the DFL candidate for every one he draws from Mark Kennedy the GOP candidate, whoever that might be.
Best of luck, Jack "Skeet" Ulrich!
Posted by Mitch at
April 14, 2005 06:03 PM
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“But I wish Mr. Uldrich the best of luck; once Ventura's faux populism evaporated (five minutes after his inauguration), the IP's base was exposed for what most of us always thought it was; DFLers who got tired of waiting their turn for endorsement. Uldrich will draw many votes from the DFL candidate for every one he draws from the GOP candidate, whoever that might be.”
I’m not so sure about that. Uldrich ran as a Republican against Sabo in 1996 and mostly touted “fiscally conservative” issues like deficit reduction and (to his credit) reducing entitlement spending. An energetic and photogenic deficit hawk could end up doing more harm to the GOP candidate.
On the plus side though, he wasn’t a very good debater and Sabo did eat his lunch as Uldrich didn’t already have an established position on a number of non-deficit related issues. I’m assuming that isn’t the case any longer but I haven’t seen anything that shows him to be more formidable. Also there was a LOT of bad blood the last time he ran for Congress as many grassroots GOPers thing he basically slimed Dorothy LeGrand to get the endorsement. IIRC he also sought the IP endorsement in 1996 and when he couldn’t run as a “fusion” candidate, he elected to go the IP route because they had gotten a higher percentage than the GOP candidate. I could see his past affiliation working against him with likely GOP voters.
Posted by: Thorley Winston at April 14, 2005 06:07 PMDidn't think that Alabama bordered Kentucky... or is this a joke that I'm not getting?
You're right about crap though...
Posted by: Jonathan at April 14, 2005 06:58 PMThe only way for Uldrich to win is the way Ventura did. Become the Blue-Collar Hero. A team of Hollywood trainers and plastic surgeons couldn't turn Uldrich in to one of those.
Posted by: RBMN at April 14, 2005 11:01 PMApparently, the existence of Tennessee depends on crap throwing. It might be a reference to Davy Crockett's autobiography, in which he hurls crap at Andrew Jackson every couple of pages and then lets fly with a steaming full catapult in the last chapter.
Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at April 15, 2005 07:07 AMMitch--
Don't count on it. Most of us erstwhile IP members have shuffled back to the DFL. Not so much because of the DFL itself, but because the GOP's actually gotten bad enough that the DFL is clearly the lesser of two evils for the moment.
I liked tripartite government, for the most part (except for the Unholy Alliance of 2002--the reason I can can never vote for Roger Moe or Tim Pawlenty for anything, ever)--and Tim Penny would clearly have been the best governor of the three running then.
But right now, given the hard right turn the GOP is taking--combined with some small signals that the DFL might finally get it--the DFLers the IP could peel off are mostly going home.
Which will leave us where we were in, say, 2000. With enough DFLers to elect a Senator, but not necessarily enough to elect a Governor. I still say the winners in '06 are Klobuchar and Pawlenty.
Uldrich will not top 5%.
Posted by: Jeff Fecke at April 15, 2005 09:49 AM