This November has all the ingredients to be a better-than-usual election cycle for third-party candidates in Minnesota.
President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are sagging as he struggles to hold together the coalition that elected him four years ago. Former President Donald Trump is rallying the conservative base but his felony convictions are turning off some independents. Many voters are unexcited about the prospect of voting for either candidate.
Plus, Minnesota has been here before.
“I did vote for Jesse Ventura ... it wasn’t that big of a leap for me,” said Mark Frascone, a 65-year-old Eagan resident and longtime Democrat who is supporting independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this fall. “Right now there’s a big legal slugfest between the two major parties with the indictments and trials. I don’t know that people are going to want to keep voting for that.”
Third-party candidates have the potential to draw voters away from both presumptive major party nominees, but the campaign of Kennedy and others have gotten the most pushback from Democrats, who fear they’ll siphon votes from Biden in critical battleground states.
Kennedy’s campaign says it has met requirements to appear on Minnesota’s ballot this fall, although the Secretary of State’s office is still reviewing signatures. Green Party candidate Jill Stein and progressive activist Cornel West are working to collect the 2,000 signatures required to run in the state.
History of seeking out alternatives
Minnesota has a long history of flirting with candidates outside the two major parties. It’s one of only two states in the country that have backed a third-party candidate for president, senator and governor since 1900, and it’s done that 11 times, far more than other state, said Eric Ostermeier, a research fellow at the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs who dug into third-party data.
Until its merger with Democrats, the state’s populist Farmer-Labor Party was one of the most successful third-party movements in American history. Minnesota voters sent Ventura, the former pro-wrestler and Reform Party candidate, to the governor’s office and gave independent candidate Ross Perot nearly 24% of the vote in the 1992 presidential race.