Jesse Ventura won as a third-party candidate. Here's how it can happen again
Episode 85 Sneak Peek
Actor, wrestler, former Governor of Minnesota — this week Jesse Ventura is joining KK&F as our honorable guest. He’s a staunch supporter of building third-party political power, having won his 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial race with the Reform Party and considered running with the Green Party in the 2020 presidential race. In a country with such a scant history of third-party electoral victories and even fewer in recent memory, we’re looking forward to a thoughtful conversation with Jesse about the obstacles to third parties and what would have to change to give working class voters real options.
Jesse’s own projects have been wide-ranging in the past few years, including a 2016 book (Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto: How Lies, Corruption, and Propaganda Kept Cannabis Illegal). He’s outspoken about his views on weed legalization, opposition of torture under the Bush administration, and his critiques of organized religions. With Jesse, a true multihyphenate and a prominent, consistent critic of our country’s two-party system, we’ll delve into the issues that Jesse has championed, his experience navigating state-level politics as a third-party outsider, and his perspective on the fight that lies ahead: How can we build a robust third party in the United States?
A lot has happened this week, and the FBI raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago pad isn’t the least of it. Krystal’s show Breaking Points has an explainer for you here. Meanwhile, liberal feathers were ruffled by Bernie Sanders’s assertion that the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t go far enough to support working families — he’s right; it doesn’t. Bernie introduced an amendment to start up the lapsed child tax credit program, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Our very own Kyle Kulinski has a video from his show Secular Talk that gives his reaction to the bill’s passage: watch here.
See you Friday with the episode if you’re a paying subscriber — everyone else, check out the episode on Saturday through Spotify, Pandora, and more, and consider becoming a subscriber for just $5 a month.
i am actually EXCITED about this interview. Jesse Ventura, as you guys just mentioned, is somebody who actually managed to WIN as a third party candidate in his state. Look, the country is SO sick and tired of the corporate duopoly and war machine that is our two-party system. Trying to overtake the DNC has been a proven failure - Kyle admitted this himself with regard to Justice Democrats - but at the same time, the system is so rigged against third parties and we do not have ranked-choice voting and neither do we have open primaries. The two-party duopoly needs to be broken up once and for all and we must have a party that fights for and represents the working class because neither two parties will do so. I am sick of being a registered Dem in NYS which is a closed party state. The Democratic and Republican have long outlived their purpose, and it's time to do away with them once and for all for the sake of civilization, and if there is anybody who'll show us how to triumph over this duopoly, it's gonna be Jesse Ventura. I hope he runs for president in 2024. I voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020, the very first time I voted for a 3rd party candidate in my lifetime, and I am PROUD of it.
He is an interesting man. On one hand he basically was black balled by pro wrestling for attempting to unionize but was ratted out by Hulk Hogan one reason I hate Hogan. On the other hand he has some terrible theories on 911