For Washington, a Nightmare From Cyberspace

Washington journalists and pols now have a new Internet nightmare to worry about along with hackers, pornographers, peverts and techno-terrorists. He did it from way outside the system. Jesse Ventura and his "geek squad" have given the Internet its first election victory, and politics might not (we can only hope) ever be the same. How he did it:

Politics and new media technologies tend to collide with one another at election time. Newcomers and candidates in trouble are usually the first ones to test the political opportunities of new forms of media, and bring them into the political mainsteam.

John Kennedy was the first President to use TV to win the presidency. Ross Perot pioneered the use of fax and telephone technologies to draw volunteers and raise money. So did California's Jerry Brown.

In l992, Bill Clinton used new media forums like MTV and talk shows to sidestep already-pronounced media obsessions with sex and morality and take his campaign directly to the public. His appearances in these new, unorthodox forums - he played the saxaphone on Arsenio Hall and talked about his underwear on MTV -- were credited with helping him to win the election.

Since then polls, pundits, geeks and consultants have been carefully studying the Net to see when the newest and potentially most power form of communications might win its first election for a political candidate.

Of all new media, the Net is by far the most political and potentially, the most politically significant, from the hackers to the cypherpunks to the Libertarians to the Open Source Software geeks.

Because of its inter-active, intensely communicative infrastructure, the Net will inevitably transform politics, once there are enough politicians around with the brains to understand and use it. Jesse Ventura was one of the first.

Because of him, l998 turned out to be the year that a politician won on the Net, but not quite the kind of politician anybody expected, and far beyond the hoary mainstream of our two-party system.

Ventura was the worst nightmare of the professional politician and the Washington journalist - the charismatic, popular, totally independent outsider. For them, he is a Frankenstein sprung whole from cyberspace.

Really, what more fitting politician to be the first to win on the World Wide Web than Jesse Ventura?

Political and media insiders hate new media precisely because it busts open their closed, co-dependent political productions, and lets people like Ventura in, along with equally-independent minded followers sick of conventional dogma and ideology.

Entrenched insiders in almost any field hate outsiders more than anything (attention, many Slashdot posters), since they behave in unknowing and unpredictable ways, and they threaten to undermine the security and legitimacy of the people who set the agenda and control the machinery.

So it's especially sweet that the first election in American history in which the Internet is believed to have made the difference was that of a former professional wrestler, Rolling Stones bodyguard, talk show host and small-town mayor.

The upset victory of self-styled populist Ventura, who beat better known Republican and Democratic candidates with large and well-funded campaign organizations, is an Internet landmark, a significant date in the history of cyberspace.

Most of journalism has seized on the Ventura election as the man-bites-dog story of this year's national elections. Pictures of Ventura - nicknamed "The Body" - in the ring in his feather boa were widely displayed on national TV.

Leno and Letterman both joked about the fate of legislators who disagreed with the new governor.

On "Meet The Press," last Sunday host Tim Russert interviewed Ventura for more than 10 minutes. The interview was patronizing to the point of being insulting, Russert smirking most of the time, barely be able to contain himself at the amusing freak sitting in a Minnesota studio. You could almost hear Russert thinking, "see what happens when you let all those people out there on all those computers get into the act? "

Newsweek ran a picture of Ventura scowling in a yellow dreadlock wig from his wrestling days, referred to him as "Governor Body," and describe his victory this way: "Out of nowhere, 'The Body' Ventura puts politics-as-usual in a headlock with a victory as Minnesota governor: The voters' message to Washington? If you act like pro wrestlers, we'll give you pro wrestlers."

A lot of journalists and politicians shook their head in wonder at yet another dread specter brought about by the Internet, one more menace to add to the list of hackers, perverts, techno-addicts and terrorists, militias and porn-peddlers. For decades, politics has been a co-production of big media and the two major political parties. Few people outside the system have made it through. The Internet may change that. It apparently did for Ventura.

The Minnesota governor-elect used the Net very skillfully and intelligently as a means of mobilizing volunteers and voters. In additioning to maintaining a Web site, which featured daily photos and updates, his Reform Party relieved heavily on e-mail to organize and crank up thousands of volunteers throughout the state.

From the beginning, while his stuffy colleagues in Washington were still clucking about how to keep Johnny off the Playboy website, and passing laws restricting "indecent" speech online, Ventura openly embraced the Net and associated himself with it, one of the first candidates for major political office to do so.

The Net became the primary organizing tool of his grass-roots, low budget campaign. "It's tailor made for my campaign," he told a reporter last February. "It's reaching a huge amount of people at a very low price."

And just the right people for a poorly-funded, bottom-up political campaign. Ventura attracted thousands of kids, college students and older volunteers who are online regularly and responded to a political figure who understood the Web, rather than one who used it to exploit fears about pornography and thievery.

"They can make fun of him all they want," e-mailed Roger, a student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a Linux Geek. "Jesse gets it, and they don't. This was about opening up the system, not making fun of it."

Phil Noble, president of the consulting form Politics Online in Charleston, S.C., predicted early in the campaign that the Internet would win an election this year. "This was it," he told the New York Times after the election.

Ventura used the Net as a behind-the-scenes co-ordinating tool, a supplement to his charismatic, populist campaign style. The big closing event of the Ventura campaign - a 72-hour drive through Minnesota - organized entirely by e-mail and through the campaign's Website.

Ventura campaign workers sent out messages to his 3,000 member list "JesseNet"-- calling volunteers to a meeting before the election. More than 250 volunteers showed up to help organize the tour. The website also used e-mail and Web instructions to teach volunteers how to get crowds out for the candidate, and how to vote.

The creators of the site understand the informal, idiosyncratic nature of Webheads, and their impatience and fatigue with the combative, self-righteous rhetoric of the two parties: "Friday night we will be going from bar to bar in the Northern metro area; Champs on !-35E and Larpentuer, the Eagles Club in New Brighton, the Mermaid in Moundsview, and the Be-Bop in Blaine. Jesse will spent 20 to 30 minutes at each stop. No drinking and driving if you are with us on the caravan. We mean it...If you do, you will likely find yourself spending the night in jail. If that happens, and since you won't have much else to do anyway, see what you can do to get your arresting officer and detox cell mates to vote for Jesse on Tuesday!"

After rallies, the campaign's "geek squad" put digital photos on their website, so by the time volunteers and supporters got home, they could see pictures of themselves in the crowd. In that sense, Ventura's was one of the first truly inter-active campaigns.

A Ventura campaign official said that thanks to the Net, his candidate won despite the fact that it spent only $500,000 and employed only one campaign staff member. Ventura beat more than $15 million in combined opposition. He raised money by selling 6,000 T shirts at $22 a piece, didn't run a single poll or a penny of debt. He carried every age group under 60 and every income level under $100,000.

Despite the fact that Ventura was widely ridiculed by the press - one magazine wondered if he would argue with opponents or hit them over the head with a chair -- as a sideshow and a freak, his campaign positions were usually intelligent, non-dogmatic and practical. He pointed out that the Monica Lewinsky scandal had paralyzed the country for nine months, and "over what?"

He also pointed out that plenty of politicians - former Hud Secretary Jack Kemp, the late singer and congressman Sonny Bono, U.S. Reps. Steve Largent and J.C. Watts of Oklahoma (both star football players) had come out the sports or entertainment world, and weren't subject to ridicule or late-night talk show jokes.

Despite that, few journalists took Ventura seriously, focusing much more on his feather boa and friendship with Arnold Schwarzennegger than his ideas or plans.

In fact, if this political year ought to demonstrate anything to Washington journalists and politicians, it might be the more outsiders the better. Ventura demonstrated a surer grasp of public sentiment than almost any journalist working in the capitol, or any talk show gasbag. The jeering reeked of the rankest elitism.

Are pro wrestlers more ridiculous than 400 pound behemoths in helmets and shoulder pads who race down a field to crash into other behemoths? Or less qualified to run for office?

Ventura also pointed out that the country's first politicians didn't belong to a professional elite political class, but were individuals interested in politics, and drawn from many different walks of life - farmers, bankers, shopkeepers, sailing captains. "I'm not some dumb wrestler," he told Meet The Press.

"Go to the secretary of State's office," he told a Newsweek reporter. "It says: live in the state for a year and be over 25. That's it. I think that's what the Founding Fathers wanted."

The Ventura election may have been an oddity in the year of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Perhaps people were sending Washington yet another kind of message. And there aren't a lot of people running for office who are like Ventura, for better or worse.

But at a time when millions of people are turning away from conventional politics in disgust, Ventura attracted many thousands who were engaged and enthusiastic. And he did it on the Net, a medium that is just beginning to reveal itself as one of the most democratic and revolutionary form of communications in modern political history. Katz can be e-mailed at [e-mail]. **