On a day when Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan paid a courtesy call and a San Francisco newspaper was touting a Jesse Ventura presidential candidacy, Minnesota's outspoken governor took on the new chairman of the state's Republican party.
Ventura said he was disappointed at comments by Ron Eibensteiner, the Republican Party's new state chairman, at the party's convention on Saturday.
Eibensteiner said he intends to be a strong Ventura critic for the next two years, and called Ventura "Roger Moe on steroids." Moe is the longtime Democratic-Farmer-Labor leader of the state Senate.
"He's a big talker when he stands there at a convention," Ventura said Wednesday of Eibensteiner. "Bring him over and lock me in a room with him and we'll see how big he talks then, this banana."' He explained that a "banana" is soft on the inside and on the outside.
Addressing the matter again after his meeting with Buchanan, Ventura said, "I don't think Minnesotans care for that kind of negativism, and if they continue on that route, you know, they (they GOP) have only had control of the (Minnesota) House for one election. They can lose it as quickly as they gain it."
Eibensteiner responded that Ventura needed to "lighten up a little bit," and the party's executive director, Tony Sutton, said of Ventura, "This guy can dish it out, but he can't take it."
After his private meeting with Buchanan, a conservative Republican who is running for president, Ventura joked about suggestions that he could have a dramatic impact on next year's election if he ran. He repeated his disinterest in running, then posed a hypothetical constitutional crisis.
"If you get the most votes and win, and you don't run, do you have to do it?" he asked.
The Constitution's framers may not have thought of a such a contingency, or of a phenomenon quite like Jesse Ventura. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that Ventura, a former wrestler and entertainer who recently completed a coast-to-coast tour to promote his autobiography, has an 80 percent name-recognition reading in California. That number, the Chronicle reported, is almost 30 points higher than the state's own governor, Gray Davis.
The Chronicle quoted a number of pollsters in the nation's most populous state saying that Ventura could seriously alter the political calculus if he got into the presidential race.
Buchanan, who was in the Twin Cities on Wednesday for a fund-raiser and on his way to events in North Dakota, had much the same reaction after chatting with Ventura at the state Capitol.
"He's known all over the country," Buchanan said. "If the governor ran in a presidential campaign, it would have a dramatic impact on the campaign."
Ventura said while he won't be a candidate, he hopes to be a player in his own Reform Party, which is holding its national convention next month in Michigan.
Of the California newspaper's speculation, the governor said, "It's nice to be liked. It's flattering. I'm humbled by it. It's nice to be so well known.
"But it hasn't changed my mind at all. I have a commitment to the state of Minnesota that I'm going to fulfill. Whatever role I play in the Reform Party will be in a supportive role for the candidate they choose."
In his own race, Buchanan said he hopes to draw clear contrasts between himself and Texas Gov. George W. Bush -- the party's clear leader in early polls -- on foreign affairs, abortion and trade. And he said he believes candidates from both parties will be watching Minnesota's tripartisan experiment closely.
"A lot of us in the Republican as well as the Democratic party have got a stake in his (Ventura's) success," Buchanan said. "I believe that American politics ought to be opened up more, and the idea of people challenging as independents, I think is healthy."
