Party convention season: Voters just can't help falling in love with a familiar face

It's a feature of American democracy that some would call a flaw: Voters fall with relative ease for candidates who have attained celebrity status as entertainers, athletes or broadcast personalities.

The latest case in point will be on stage in Cleveland this week at the Republican National Convention. As pundits wax on — and on — about the reasons for Donald J. Trump's stunning ascendance to the Republican presidential nomination, they can't overstate one factor: It's highly unlikely that Trump would have risen to political prominence if he had not first spent nearly a decade as the star of a successful TV reality show, "The Apprentice," and its spinoff, "Celebrity Apprentice."

We should not have been so surprised. History shows that despite Americans' ingrained skepticism about their government and its elected officialdom, they can be mighty trusting of the people who entertain them.

Trump joins a long line of celebrity pols in both parties — or, in Minnesota, in three parties. The Independence Party's Gov. Jesse Ventura had been mayor of Brooklyn Park before running for governor. But he was known first and best as "The Body" in professional wrestling, and stayed prominent as an occasional actor, wrestling commentator and the host of a radio talk show for three years prior to his 1998 election.

More examples come readily to mind. Minnesota has had two U.S. senators in recent years who fill the bill, former "Saturday Night Live" comedian and radio talker Al Franken and former TV news anchor Rod Grams. Former Minnesota Vikings Hall of Famer Alan Page won election to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992 and provided distinguished service for 23 years.

Last week, when Indiana Gov. Mike Pence frothed that Trump "has connected with everyday Americans like no one since Ronald Reagan," Trump's soon-to-be running mate was invoking the granddaddy of modern-era celebrity politicians. Yes, Reagan had been a two-term governor of California before running for president. But he won that office with a name that was familiar from his quarter-century career as a movie actor and television personality.

Before Reagan (youngsters, trust me on this), actors, athletes, broadcasters and their ilk occasionally ventured into the political arena. But they were often met with resistance from a political class that was dubious about anyone with qualifications that differed from their own. That ice melted when Reagan knocked a sitting Democratic president out of office in 1980 and clobbered Minnesota's own Walter Mondale in 1984. Now, it seems, political parties can't get enough of former stars of stage, screen and talk radio.

Lewis has already passed the test's Part I. It took six ballots, but the GOP endorsing convention on May 7 gave Lewis its blessing. It passed over a GOP activist who had been running for Kline's seat for more than two years, David Gerson, and overlooked the potential liabilities Lewis accumulated during 25 years of slinging verbal outrage for a living.

Gerson obligingly ended his bid that day, but two others at the convention did not. Former state Sen. John Howe of Red Wing and business owner Darlene Miller of Burnsville are both candidates in the Aug. 9 primary.

So is Matthew Erickson, a political newbie who — at least for a few more weeks — serves principally to deflect DFL candidate Angie Craig's efforts to cast Lewis as Minnesota's "mini-Trump." Erickson, 29, is this race's nearest Trump clone, minus a few decades of maturity, a few billion dollars of net worth and a shock of orange hair. The founder of a snow-removal business, Erickson lavishes Trump with praise as he mimics the mogul's themes and pugnacity. If politics doesn't work out for Erickson, he might find work as a Trump impersonator.

Howe might be deemed the John Kasich in this race. He's the one with the conventional political background — before serving one term in the Legislature, he was Red Wing's mayor — and he holds to the quaint notion that the job of an elected official is to make deals with officials of other political persuasions in order to govern. In the Senate, he tried to be a dealmaker on such matters as state tax reform and the ill-fated, GOP-backed voter ID constitutional amendment. Party purists have responded to Howe with about as much enthusiasm as they did to similarly pragmatic Ohio Gov. Kasich this year.

But unlike the reticent Kasich, Howe exhibits no compunction about negative campaigning. He's taken aim at some of Lewis' least defensible comments, about young single women and slavery, with a pair of YouTube videos titled "Jason Lewis Unplugged."

But judging from her session with the Star Tribune Editorial Board last week, Miller lacks Fiorina's steely glare and willingness to verbally pounce on a hapless opponent.

Lewis lacks neither. He also has the constitutional rigidity of a Ted Cruz, the libertarian/isolationist streak of a Rand Paul and the bravado of a Chris Christie.

But DFLer Craig is convinced that if she faces Lewis in the general election, south-suburban voters will see him as a Minnesota version of Trump. Moreover, she says, that connection will work to Lewis' detriment in a congressional district that Barack Obama narrowly carried in 2012.

"People will make that connection on their own. The past comments he has made, the shock value, it doesn't take much to draw that parallel," Craig said. "His lack of civility may play well on the radio, but it doesn't help grow the economy or educate the next generation."

Yet the political value of celebrity often seems unrelated to what said celebrity said or did. Lewis came to the Star Tribune last week bearing the results of a May 15-16 poll among likely Republican voters in CD2. It found him not only with twice the name recognition of Miller and Howe, but also with a 30-percentage-point-plus advantage of favorability over those two challengers. As Trump showed all spring — and Lewis might show on Aug. 9 — celebrity status is a potent vote magnet.