YOUNG VOTERS RULE

Ventura's win crushes the myth of generational apathy

ON the day after the recent elections I put a riddle to Michele Mitchell,
author of a fascinating new book on the political views of Generation X.

``What,'' I asked, ``do you get when young voters show up at the polls?''

She demonstrated her expertise by giving the correct answer:

``Jesse `The Body' Ventura.''

Watching the election returns in her Brooklyn apartment, Mitchell, 28, was
delighted with the former professional wrestler's upset victory in the
Minnesota governor's race. She had been predicting that young people would
fuel the rise of an alternative party. But she had expected it to come in
2000 or later, not this soon.

Nor, like most of us, had she expected it to come on the shoulders of a bald
former professional wrestler running under the banner of Ross Perot's Reform
Party.

A former press secretary to former Rep. Pete Geren, D-Texas, from 1993 to
1996 and later the youngest writer the New York Times editorial board ever
had, Mitchell has written ``A New Kind of Party Animal: How the Young are
Tearing Up the American Political Landscape'' (Simon & Schuster, $23).

In it she argues that people born between 1961 and 1981 are not the
politically apathetic slackers us geezers tend to think they are.

For example, in 1992, when the Clinton-Gore campaign actively sought their
vote, 42 percent voted in national elections, the second highest number of
young voters since 1972. In 1996, when all age groups had a low turnout,
young voters still had a 21 percent turnout, only 2 percentage points lower
than senior citizens, Mitchell says.

While seniors are heavily courted by both parties, young voters are the
jilted lovers. These young voters are presumed to be apathetic and,
therefore, pretty much ignored until politicians need them.

Quite the contrary, Mitchell finds the young voting generation to be largely
independent, less committed than their elders to parties or doctrines and
more eager to see the rise of an alternative party.

Her findings have been supported by a variety of independent studies and
surveys, including exit polls of the Minnesota governor's race.

Minnesota had the highest voter turnout of any state in this off-year
election, largely because of Ventura. Exit polls showed most of his vote
came from voters under age 40. Twelve percent of those who voted in the
state said they would not have voted had there been no alternative to the
Republican and Democratic candidates on the ballot. Almost all of that vote
went to Ventura, who drew equally from women and men to win with 37 percent
of the vote in the three-way race.

Mitchell's book argues that young people are largely interested, active and
involved, but mostly in local matters, not the great global issues that pass
daily across the radar screen of major media.

Ventura's voters said they appreciated his ``straight talk,'' which is
largely libertarian, in an age when too many politicians won't say a word
unless it has been thoroughly vetted by polls, focus groups and highly paid
consultants.

With that in mind, I was disappointed to hear Ventura say he would not be a
candidate for president in 2000.

For now, he is putting a choke hold only on our preconceived notions about
the appetites of voters, especially the new generation of voters. If
Republican and Democratic leaders don't want to go the way of the Whigs,
they had better start paying more attention to young voters. They do get
older every day.

Checked-by: Don Beck