Dissatisfied centrists hoping for a Jesse Ventura-style outsider in 2026 will find a political landscape designed to stop them
The 2026 gubernatorial race in Minnesota looks like a choice that few find enviable. It will feature an incumbent governor so tainted by fraud and scandal that, except for partisans holding their noses and their breath, few see him as an enviable option. On the Republican side, it will probably feature a person so extreme that, again, only true believers will support that candidate.
From many, the question I hear then is: what about a third-party candidate?
Is there not a hole meant to be filled yet again by a third-party candidate in the way that Jesse Ventura won back in 1998? Unfortunately, while the hole is there, the conditions that made it possible for Ventura to get elected in 1998 no longer exist.
Minnesota is a politically divided state. We can see that in terms of partisan control of the state legislature. For the last several years, Minnesota has been one of the few states in the country with partisan divides in the legislature, while at the same time having some years with a trifecta. If we look at Minnesota’s current political alignment in terms of public opinion, a recent KSTP poll finds that about 35 percent of the population identifies as Democrats, 31 percent as Republicans, and 29 percent as independents. Neither Democrats nor Republicans alone can win a statewide election, and therefore they must rely on swaying independents. It is unlikely right now that Walz or the likely Republican nominee will win over these independent voters in any enthusiastic way.
Walz is finished. The national, state, and local media have made it clear that he is tainted by fraud. Articles and op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, The Hill, and the local media all paint the same story. Walz’s repeated denials or obfuscations about fraud have not helped him.
His only response to recent allegations that there could be $9 billion in fraud is that there is no proof now to support that claim. But the little action Walz has taken looks like too little, too late, or the proverbial closing the barn door after the cows got out. It was already going to be difficult for him to run for a third term. No modern Minnesota governor, since terms became four years, has achieved that goal except Rudy Perpich.
Recent polling reflects this vulnerability. A recent KSTP poll finds Walz’s approval rating at 48 percent, equal to his disapproval rating. Alpha News puts his disapproval at 57 percent. The truth is probably somewhere between those numbers.
Nonetheless, Walz is underwater in terms of approval. Over three statewide elections, two for governor and one for vice president, he has won by fewer and fewer percentage points and carried fewer and fewer counties. Environmentalists, public-sector unions, and many progressives are no longer enthusiastic about him. He has also lost Greater Minnesota Democrats.
Walz’s strategy is to hope that midterm momentum against Trump, diverting attention from fraud toward guns and a weak GOP nominee, will carry him to victory. The GOP may deliver exactly that. Mike Lindell, the “pillow man,” has entered the race for governor and received a semi-endorsement from Donald Trump, making him a favorite.
Lindell will motivate the GOP base, but he is unlikely to win independent voters, just as Walz is unlikely to do so. Arguably the strongest GOP candidate might be Kristin Robbins, a more centrist Republican who has come out tough on fraud. But she is tied to Nikki Haley’s camp as her 2024 campaign manager and is unlikely to get the nomination.
Moreover, any likely Republican nominee will be out of step on abortion and reproductive rights. While abortion may not be the central issue, it remains an important one. Polls suggest that about two-thirds of Minnesotans favor reproductive choice. Any Republican likely to win the nomination will not support that position. This is despite a conversation I had earlier this year with a Republican state legislator who told me that if Republicans ever nominated a pro-choice gubernatorial candidate, they would win handily. That claim is probably true. Arne Carlson’s victories in the 1990s support it.
Given all this, and given that neither Walz nor Lindell are likely to generate enthusiasm among independents and centrists, the question arises again: could a third-party candidate emerge and win, as Jesse Ventura did in 1998?
The 1998 election was an unusual year with an unusual candidate. Minnesota had a multibillion-dollar surplus and a strong economy. Voters were in a good mood and willing to take a chance on an alternative. Jesse Ventura was what I call a “politainer” candidate, someone who combined politics and entertainment and understood how to use celebrity status politically—much like what Donald Trump understands.
Ventura had high name recognition and a large following. He ran against boring career politicians, Norm Coleman and Skip Humphrey, who both ran lackluster campaigns. Campaign finance laws at the time made it possible for a third-party candidate to run and for a third party to achieve major-party status on the ballot.
There was also a residual effect of Minnesota’s long tradition of nonpartisan politics. From the early twentieth century until the 1970s, only constitutional offices were partisan. The legislature, courts, and local offices were nonpartisan. That legacy of party detachment still lingered in the 1990s. Put all this together, and Ventura won, as one reporter friend told me at the time, because 37 percent of Minnesota voters gave the state the finger.
It was a statement against career politicians and politics as usual. But things have changed dramatically since then. One of the biggest turning points came just two years later with Florida in 2000 and the Bush versus Gore election. That contest accelerated the polarization of American politics.
It also featured Ralph Nader’s third-party candidacy. Many came to believe that Nader cost Al Gore the presidency. As a result, the spoiler effect took hold, creating fear that voting third party would elect the candidate one liked least. In Minnesota, the two major parties responded by making it much harder for third parties to gain major-party status and ballot access.
Today, it is far more difficult for a third-party candidate to get on the ballot. There is also no high-profile figure like Jesse Ventura waiting in the wings. Economic conditions are more serious, and voters are in a far darker mood. All of this makes a third-party movement far less viable than it was in 1998.
Perhaps if Minnesota had ranked-choice voting at the gubernatorial level, a centrist third-party candidate might stand a better chance. But right now, the options for a viable third-party candidate look slim. The election is shaping up to feature two candidates, neither of whom, except to the most partisan voters, will find acceptable.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Citizens United in 2010, which allows for unlimited financial contributions from PACS, also was a contributing factor in making the two party system more entrenched, diminshing the chances for Thrid party candidate. As the article points out, Jesse Ventura had tremendous name recognition and showmanship to get elected, but it’s now apparent he was more invested in boosting his own celebrity than helping the Independence party he represented in the election. When he opted not to run again, he did very little of the behind the scenes work necessary to build and strengthen his party.
You are right to point out that third party candidates tend to do better when both major parties run safe, normal, candidates. That gives voters room to take a chance.
We should also underline the way the legislature has made it increasingly difficult for a third party to gain major party status, and has done so without making it easier for independent candidates to get ballot access. Ever wonder why it’s so rare to see an independent candidate for state legislature? Self serving, undemocratic behavior by our elected officials.
I think you analysis on the abortion issue is half right. Yes, most Minnesotans support legal abortion during the first trimester. Most do not, however, support legal abortion without cause late in pregnancy. Minnesota, where a woman is within her right to decide to kill her unborn child for any reason up until birth, now has some of the most extreme abortion laws on the planet. My family, most of whom leaned Democratic only a few years ago, uses words like “evil” to describe our party’s extreme position. Perhaps this hasn’t broken through yet, but I do think a Republican candidate that ran on, say, a 20 week ban with exceptions would find support for their position, particularly if they were a skilled communicator and able to point out the DFLs extremism (verging on a pro-infanticide) stance on the issue. I think we are past the backlash to Roe being overturned.
I think this article underestimates Walz as a viable candidate. I am not a partisan and I will easily vote for Walz…again…without holding my nose or my breath. Regardless of the complaints this biased article presents, Walz will standup for children, for public education, for healthcare, for immigrants, for farmers, and for unions. These should not be partisan values, these should be all of our values.
It was Norm Coleman, not Chris Coleman who ranas the GOP candidate in 1998 for governor. Both he and Skip Humphrey were viewed as career politicians. Ventura ran more as a libertarian candidate.
David, D’Oh! Of course, you’re correct! However, I think getting the first name wrong is ALL that I was mis-remembering (if that’s a word…). And yes, both he and Skip were career politicians, and Ventura was not. But I stand by my memory of having known DFLers who voted for former-DFLer Coleman, infuriated by Humphrey’s tax posture. I was surprised in positive ways by the Ventura term. But I still think he’d have been defeated had there been more party excitement/solidarity behind either of the established-party nominees. Coleman, having been a recent convert, likely had little to no path to achieving that. Humphrey had a clear path, and threw it away.
The problem with this analysis is the forced analogizing to the ’98 Ventura run. So this comment is for those youngsters out there, who (apparently, like the author of this piece), do not clearly remember it.
Yes. there is a yearning among many in the electorate this year for a centrist candidate. But not, I suspect, a latter-day Ventura. Ventura did NOT run as a centrist.
It needs to be remembered that his opponents were Chris Coleman and Skip Humphrey. Coleman may have been THE most centrist politician in Minnesota at the time, having been a not-very-radical Democrat who had very recently converted himself into a not-very-radical Republican. There was very little for anyone to hate about Chris Coleman, policy-wise. There was also very little to love. Skip, God bless him, COULD have run as a “reasonable” liberal (we didn’t typically call politicians “progressives” back then). His actual record was as a relatively careful and thoughtful liberal, but a liberal nonetheless. But HE was the one who decided to make the hallmark of his campaign a promise not to raise taxes no matter what – a stance which, at the time, was highly associated with “Reagan Republicans” it was literally regarded as their “brand”. I have never figured out precisely WHY Skip thought that was a good campaign strategy, but he might have thought it made him look “moderate” – as in “not quite a real DFLer” to folks outside the DFL.
I knew DFLers back then who voted for Coleman, saying “I’m voting for the the guy who used to be a DFLer and only says he’s a Republican, rather than the DFLer who is promising to BECOME a REAL Republican”. I am not making that up. Ventura himself was “wild and crazy” – a mixed bag of positions which had been “owned” in recent pre-’98 history by the DFL and ones that had been owned by the GOP. When he had an opinion on something, either left- or right-coded, there was nothing “moderate” about it.
So, in summary, there was a true moderate who couldn’t decide which party to belong to (which was not uncommon for true moderates in those days), in Coleman. There was a DFLer who had been a “liberal” but wanted to be KNOWN as a moderate, and was willing to swear allegiance to one of the GOP’s biggest campaign issues of the previous two decades, in Humphrey. And there was nobody’s idea of “moderation”, a “moderate” only “on average”, in Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura. I can’t think of any election, before or since, in which the choices involved so many “flavors” of moderate, and in which more people who I knew personally voted against their nominal party’s candidate, while still professing to support their chosen party. It. Was. Just. Weird. And it doesn’t have much to say to us in the highly polarized environment of today.
A quick Wikipedia check and looks like the Primary for Governor of MN is in Aug 2026. I suspect Walz will drop out of the race well before that
Mike Newcome is running as an independent with the Forward Independence Party and he is clearly the best option in 2026 and he absolutely does have a chance to win. 1/3 of the state is independents.
Voted for walz the first time. Back when he seemed normal.
Did not vote for him the 2nd time. Voted an independent.
There is nothing….. And I mean nothing that will get me to ever vote for him for anything again. Him on the ticket with Harris ensured I did not vote for that ticket for president. I would not vote for him for Dog catcher.
So I will happily vote independent as long as there’s one to vote for.
If there isn’t an independent candidate by the time we get to the election, I will have some difficult decisions to make. But Walz is a non starter for me, And hopefully a lot of other people do.
Agreed! Mike Newcome is a great candidate: https://www.newcomeforgovernor.com/
Walz “finished”? [redacted for incivility]