Run, Jesse, Run!

UPDATE-- 6/17/08: Here's an article on Jesse Ventura and recent Minnesota political history.

A momentous golf match took place in Minnesota on Wednesday. The competitors were former Gov. Jesse Ventura and Dean Barkley, the former interim U. S. senator from Minnesota. The agreement was that the winner of the golf contest would NOT run as an Independence Party candidate for U. S. senator.

Barkley won.

After Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash during his 2002 campaign for re-election, former Vice President Walter Mondale was chosen to replace him as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nominee. A few minutes into Mondale's televised debate with the Republican Norm Coleman, Gov. Ventura held an impromptu press conference to present Barkley as Wellstone's interim successor. Seems Ventura had phoned Barkley with the news of his appointment only shortly before the press conference.

Since his service in the Senate, Barkley has enhanced his resume by managing Richard "Kinky" Friedman's 2006 independent campaign for governor of Texas ("How Hard Could It Be?"). The other independent candidate in that race was state comptroller Carolyn Keeton Rylander Strayhorn, the mother of Scott "Judas" McClellan, former press secretary to President George W. Bush. When asked why Strayhorn got more signatures on her nominating petitions than he had on his, Friedman said that she had gotten all of her ex-husbands to sign for her.

Besides his winning the golf match, another factor rules Barkley out of the Minnesota Senate race. A lawyer by profession, Barkley has just been named CEO of the bus company for which he has recently been a driver. If Ventura runs, however, Barkley says that he will still have time to manage his campaign.

"He's easy to manage, because he doesn't listen anyhow," Barkley said. The former senator says he believes Ventura will run if he thinks he has a real chance of winning. In addition to the Republican incumbent, Norm Coleman, Stuart Smalley (a.k.a. Al Franken), failed talk-show host, tax dodger, and alleged comedian, is running as the endorsed Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate.

Barkley predicts that Ventura won't decide until 4 p.m. on July 15, the filing deadline.

Stay tuned.