Despite your accusation [“The Puppetmaster at Rest,” October], I planned to vote for Wellstone from the get-go, and I never saw one of Hillsman’s famous ads. And I sure as hell didn’t vote for Jesse (The Numbskull) Ventura, a man more interested in holding asinine grudges than in actual governance. Paul Wellstone’s success in 1990 was due to two things: His incredible skills at grass-roots organizing (he’s trying to lead the Democratic Party away from the expensive TV ad campaigns that comprise the meal tickets of people like Hillsman, and back toward old-style pound-the-pavement campaigns) and the monumental last-minute screwup of Wellstone’s 1990 Republican foe, Rudy Boschwitz. As for Jesse Ventura, he was on his best behavior throughout the 1998 campaign, actually managing to sound semi-intelligent, and even fooling a few lefties who didn’t realize his utter antipathy towards spending tax monies on government projects (unless these government projects were his own pet ones, such as LRT). His name recognition as a Minnesota-born major wrestling star brought a number of new voters into the ranks, and that was enough, in a three-way race, to take home the win. However, Ventura’s popularity didn’t last, which is why he’s not running for a second term. And as for why Bill Hillsman is finding it hard to get work nowadays: When one realizes that he’s gone from working for a Democrat who believes in using government to make things better (Wellstone), to a loose-cannon closet-Republican who hates government and governance (Ventura), to a man who told both Outside and In These Times magazines that he wanted Bush to win in 2000 (Nader), you’ve got to wonder about not only his self-proclaimed ethics, but also his loyalty. One suspects he’s not so much the idealist he claims to be. He is just another gun for hire.
—Tamara Baker
St. Paul
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