Here is the St. Paul Pioneer Press report. Now mind you, the entire half hour news conference was mostly Ventura giving his reasons for making this appointment, with the particular timing he used in hopes to NOT see the story get censored. I agree katlaughing, it appears that it hasn't worked. And that clearly gives the Republicans the advantage.

Posted on Mon, Nov. 04, 2002   

Ventura appoints Barkley to fill temporary Senate seat
By JIM RAGSDALE and PATRICK SWEENEY
PIONEER PRESS

ST. PAUL, Minn.
Gov. Jesse Ventura appointed longtime friend Dean Barkley this morning to replace the late Sen. Paul Wellstone in the U.S. Senate until the candidate who is elected Tuesday is seated.

Barkley is the director of Minnesota Planning and a former third-party candidate for the U.S. House and Senate. He is the man who recruited Ventura to run for governor in 1997. In addition to being a lawyer, he was managing a car wash when Ventura was elected.

Ventura timed his announcement to conflict with the signal event of the political wind-up -- a morning U.S. Senate debate between Democrat Walter Mondale and Republican Norm Coleman.

Coleman and Mondale started debating at 10 a.m. at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul; Ventura, who was upset that other candidates were not included in the Mondale-Coleman debate, timed his announcement for the same moment in his reception room at the state Capitol.

To add to the three-ring-circus effect, a lawyer for Moore, the candidate of Ventura's Independence Party of Minnesota, was in court early Monday morning trying to stop the debate because he and Green Party candidate Ray Tricomo were excluded. A Ramsey County district court judge rejected Moore's request at 9:45 a.m.

The length of Ventura's appointment is in doubt.

Initially, Attorney General Mike Hatch said the person elected on Tuesday would take office on Nov. 19, when the results are officially certified. But Ventura's office believes the appointment would last until the new U.S. Senate term begins in January. A second Attorney General's opinion on the subject was delivered to Ventura's office, but has not been publicly announced.

Ventura has been all over the map in his strategy for the appointment.

He said his main concern was to make sure that Minnesota is fully represented when Congress goes back into session on Nov. 12. He initially said he would probably appoint a Democrat, because the seat would have been in Democratic hands through the end of the year had U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone not been killed in a plane crash.

But after his anger at the political content of the Wellstone memorial service last week, he abandoned that plan, saying he would take his anger out on Demorats by denying them the interim appointment.

He has consistently said since Wellstone died that he would try to make an appointment in a way that would not influence the election. He said that meant he would not make his appointment known until after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday. That plan was abandoned Monday morning.

He also has consistently said he did not want to appoint anyone who wanted to hold the position permanently. He said he would probably be attacked if he appointed someone of his own party. More recently, he has said he wanted to appoint "John Q. Citizen," someone with no political experience.

That triggered an avalanche of resumes, emails and calls from average citizens who wanted to be senator-for-a-fortnight. At 9:35 a.m. Monday, in fact, Ventura's receptionist was still taking calls from people seeking the appointment.

While the national media descended on Minnesota following Wellstone's death and Mondale's replacement, Ventura, who is accustomed to national reporters seeking him out, has been largely ignored. But his musing about the appointment, his anger over the memorial service and finally his dramatic announcement on Monday thrust him back into the story.