MINOR-PARTY SENATE CANDIDATES ADVOCATE BOLD IDEAS

Each time Erik Pakieser buys new shoes, food or other essentials for his
toddler, he wonders why he can't keep more of his paycheck to support his
family.

Playwright and performance artist David Daniels wonders why two of his
productions were shut down because of marijuana smoking in the audience.

And Rebecca Ellis wonders when the day will come that workers control more
of the wealth they produce.

These concerns -- taxes, marijuana laws and workers' rights -- are the
driving forces behind the three minor-party candidates running for the U.S.
Senate seat.

Lacking the money and visibility of the major-party candidates, Pakieser,
Daniels and Ellis nevertheless press on, hoping for an upset while taking
advantage of a statewide forum to advance their views.

Pakieser would abolish the income tax; Daniels would legalize marijuana,
and Ellis would give workers more control over the workplace and the
government.

Unadulterated ideas such as these attract some voters to minor-party
candidates, said Lisa Disch, a University of Minnesota political science
professor. They draw voters who are not entirely alienated from the
political process, but who don't see major-party candidates focusing on
issues important to them.

The three minor-party candidates share some issues with the major-party
candidates -- Republican Sen. Rod Grams, DFLer Mark Dayton, Independence
Party nominee James Gibson and Constitution Party candidate David Swan.

But the minor-party candidates are more willing to center their campaigns
on issues that are politically risky and even unpopular.

Taking risky positions "is in their interest because part of their interest
is to shake up the dialogue," Disch said.

Because minor-party candidates rarely win elections, she continued, they
can't shake up the system by winning, so they do so through campaigning on
less popular issues.

Libertarian Party: Erik Pakieser

As the Libertarian Party candidate, Pakieser wants to reduce the size of
the government significantly, even though he is a state employee -- a
corrections officer at the prison in Faribault.

The way to a small federal government, Pakieser says, is by abolishing the
income tax, which he says promotes excessive government spending and forces
Americans to work in "slavery" for three hours of every eight-hour shift.

Pakieser, 31, says he has been interested in politics since he was a
teenager in Omaha. Soon after high school, he joined the Army, saw combat
during the Persian Gulf War and also was stationed in Panama and Cuba.
Since then, he has held a string of security jobs.

Soon after moving to Minnesota in 1997, Pakieser became a volunteer
bodyguard for Jesse Ventura in the 1998 gubernatorial campaign.

He takes some inspiration from Ventura's underdog campaign, but Ventura is
not supporting him in the Senate race. Instead, the governor is backing his
own Independence Party's candidate, Gibson.

Pakieser, of Cannon Falls, works full time and campaigns in his spare time.

He has about 100 volunteers around the state for his campaign, which is run
out of his campaign manager's home in northeast Minneapolis. Between his
campaign kickoff in April and August's Minnesota State Fair, Pakieser said,
he had spent only $2,100 on his campaign. Noting Dayton's spending --
nearly $7 million of his own money so far -- Pakieser said he could
probably find his campaign financing among the millionaire Dayton's couch
cushions.

Pakieser has three main goals for this election: to be included in debates,
to achieve 5 percent of the vote to make the Libertarian Party a major
party, and to win the election.

Although he has been invited to four debates, the major ones have excluded
him because he barely registers in opinion polls.

Grassroots Party: David Daniels

Daniels first smoked marijuana at an Allman Brothers concert in 1973, when
he was 18 years old. He said he never dreamed that marijuana would still be
illegal nearly 30 years later.

Daniels, 45, said that when the chairman of the Grassroots Party asked him
to run for U.S. Senate, he hesitated. But he committed after one of his
favorite haunts, the Hard Times Cafe on Riverside Avenue in Minneapolis,
was shut down for nearly two weeks this past summer because of concerns
about drug dealing there.

The closing typified other recent events in his life. At the Bryant Lake
Bowl theater in Minneapolis, one of the playwright's performances was cut
short because of marijuana use by the audience and the actors. A similar
incident happened at a performance in Denver, when police surrounded a
theater and, after the show, arrested four audience members for smoking
marijuana.

He said that friends of his are considered criminals and that "valuable
community resources" like the Hard Times are shut down because of drug laws.

Daniels, who lives in southeast Minneapolis' Prospect Park neighborhood, is
running on other issues, too. He wants more conditions put on government
aid to corporations, calling it "corporate welfare." He would offer
companies tax breaks and subsidies if they paid employees a living wage,
strengthened workers' union rights and used environmentally sound
practices. In addition, he said, under his plan no government funding would
go to companies producing genetically engineered foods. He also advocates
reducing the national debt.

With little money to spend, Daniels relies on volunteers, including
campaign manager Laura (Galore) Church, word of mouth and the Internet to
get his message out. He was recently invited to the Bob Marley Institute of
Art in Jamaica to speak, and has been told he is the first American
Rastafarian to run for federal office.

With dreadlocks down to his chest, Daniels eschews the typical politician's
focus-group-approved look. But he is not without a political background.

"I came from a very politically aware family," Daniels said, recalling how
his mother took him to a 1964 Democratic Party platform committee meeting
in Atlantic City, N.J., when he was 8 years old. He said he met the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy at that gathering.

The first campaign he worked on was in seventh grade, folding literature
and stuffing envelopes for Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy's 1968
presidential campaign. He worked on two more McCarthy campaigns later.

"I've always had a belief that we're placed on this Earth to live and then
hopefully ... to make this even just a little bit better for the next
generation," he said.

Daniels said supporters have told him that by running, he is giving them a
reason to vote. "I'm running to win," he added.

Socialist Workers Party:

Rebecca Ellis Rebecca Ellis says bluntly, "I don't think we're going to win
the election."

Ellis, 52, is running for the reason many minor-party candidates do,
third-party expert Disch said: to use the ballot as a public protest.

"We need to start thinking of the ballot as a forum where statements are
made," she said.

Ellis, a telecommunications employee who lives in St. Paul, looks to Cuba,
a country the United States has long considered an enemy, as the future she
hopes for in this country.

The Cuban people's revolution in 1959 resulted in a government run for the
people, by the people, she said. Cubans have free education at every level,
doctors who want to help people rather than just bill them, income-based
limits on rent and freedom from farm foreclosures, she said.

The country is poor, she acknowledged, but she blames that on the U.S.
embargo on Cuba. But even as it struggles monetarily, Ellis said, Cuba
responds to the human needs of its citizens with a society run for people,
not profits.

Ellis said she sees the seeds of this type of society beginning to sprout
in the United States.

She said she saw them at a meatpacking plant in South St. Paul earlier this
year when workers sat down on the job for 7 1/2 hours until supervisors
slowed production line speeds.

And she said she saw them when hotel and Pepsi workers went on strike this
summer.

Inspired by those workers' fights for their labor rights, Ellis agreed to
run for the Senate when approached by Socialist Workers Party leaders, she
said. She had been involved in the party since her student days in her
hometown at the University of Houston.

She said the Socialist Workers Party appealed to her after she concluded
that capitalism was to blame for everything she didn't like in the United
States, including the Vietnam War and oppression of women.

A handful of wealthy leaders holds all of the money derived from products
that workers produce, Ellis said. In a capitalist system, she continued,
money means power.

She wants to see working people in power and making the country's
decisions, which is why she is running for office.

Her campaign is run out of the Pathfinder Bookstore in St. Paul. It is
supported by the four members of the Young Socialists' Twin Cities chapter
and about 15 other volunteers around the state.

Her main interest in campaigning is to speak to working people and let them
know there is an alternative, she said. Other candidates are talking about
the status quo, Ellis continued, but she is looking for change and wants to
be part of the discourse.