The Bully™ was re-elected for the same reason that the Gropenfuhrer was.

[onehandle]

Morons voting for a personality.

In this case, a Sopranos/Dick Tracy/Jersey Shore character, rather than a 'it'll be cool to have The Terminator for Governor' character.

[JI7]

1. and his actual personality sucked and he was a fucking dumbass, but even dems are stupid

and yeah, they did vote for him because they thought it was "cool to have the terminator for governor".

and in both cases they had the media whores out whoring for them .

[TeamPooka]

2. K&R!

[hfojvt]

8. a guy from California was working with our county party

He claimed that

a) The Democratic candidate in Arnold's first election was corrupt
b) Arnold actually was a decent Governor

Kinda hard for me to know all that much from 1,500 miles away.

[dragonlady]

3. Jesse Ventura was another

That worked out well, too.

[onehandle]

7. Yeah. I always forget that one.

Mercifully.

[hfojvt]

9. Now Jesse I know something about

I went to University in Minnesota and was living in Iowa when he was elected.

Jesse was a local TV personality, he used to do announcing for the WWE with "Mean Gene" and "McMann". He was actually pretty funny.

So he had that going for him - fame, and comfortable speaking on TV, and somewhat clever in speech.

But also, he squeaked out a win in a three-way race.

But another key thing, also used by Reagan and by many politicians since then, including Bill Clinton, and Obama. He basically BRIBED the voters.

Minnesota at the time had a substantial budget surplus, and Jesse promised to give that "back to the taxpayers" an amount of about $4,000 per voter. Some people voted for him, I believe, to get that money. The lure of easy money has a very strong appeal.

Then he was on TV the day after he was elected saying "Well, the legislature already spent the surplus, so you ain't getting nothing."

SUCKERS.

[Avalux]

4. Authoritarian personality types love them some bullies.

That is the Republican voter in a nutshell. It's pathological, and it's destroying this country. GW "this would be a whole lot easier if I was a dictator" Bush and Reagan fit the mold too.

[Orsino]

5. Morons voting for fake machismo.

The illusion of strength most Republican politicians try to project to conceal their essential weakness.

[shanti]

6. and Steven Seagal is trying for that one too

hey, it's worked before