Third parties face a number of troubles which frequently make their candidates terms short lived. The most apparent reason that third parties have trouble surviving is that most voters are faithful to their traditional party. Voters typically identify with a certain political party, often inheriting their particular association from their parents. There are other great roadblocks third parties faces on the path to becoming a typical fixture in politics such as ballot access, campaign finance and the Electoral College system. There are also many laws which hold back third parties from being triumphant (Tabor, n.d.).

Politics in this country have been for years based on popularity and not necessarily the issues at all. Jessie Ventura pulled off an upset in the 1998 gubernatorial race in Minnesota because he was popular. He had tremendous name recognition based on his past endeavors and the public was tired of the two major political parties. The function of the current political parties is to bring people together to attain control of the government, growing policies favorable to their interests or the groups that support them, and put in order and influence voters to elect their candidates to office (the Functions of Political Parties, 2011). They often have a very narrow agenda that they want to get accomplished and having their popular person in office is how they get this done....

Jessie Ventura's set out to break this form by running on an independent ticket and thus having his own agenda that he wanted to carry out, unfortunately he quickly found out that without the backing of the big parties it is hard to uphold the fight for what is right.
References

Ferguson, Margaret Robertson. (2006). The executive branch of state government: people, process, and politics. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Grossbach, Andrew, Kath, Rusty, Spencer, Alicia and Stuard, Danielle. (n.d.). Where Has the Jesse Voter Gone? Retrieved April 11, 2011, from Web site:

http://www.creighton.edu/fileadmin/user/CCAS/departments/PoliticalScience/MVJ/docs/

grossbach.pdf

Lacy, Dean and Monson, Quin. (2000). Anatomy of a Third-Party Victory: Electoral Support for Jesse Ventura in the 1998 Minnesota Gubernatorial Election. Retrieved April 11, 2011,

from Web site: http://polmeth.wustl.edu/media/Paper/lacy00b.pdf

Tabor, Michael C. (n.d.). The Third Party Push. Retrieved April 11, 2011, from Web site:

http://www.minneapolis.edu/english/writerscorner/thirdparty.pdf

The Functions of Political Parties. (2011). Retrieved April 11, 2011, from Web site:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/the-Functions-of-Political-

Parties.topicArticleId-65383,articleId-65501.html