Landham jumps in Senate race with Predator pedigree

Actor Sonny Landham is expected to announce his entry into Kentucky's U.S. Senate race at 1:45 pm today during a press conference at the state capital building in Frankfort.

Landham, perhaps most well known for his work in action films such as Predator, 48 Hours, and Action Jackson, has secured the Libertarian Party's nomination for Senate, though he must still acquire 5,000 petition signatures to make Kentucky's ballots.

Landham will have an uphill struggle to gain space in a U.S. Senate race crowded with two men with millions to spend. Landham joins multi-millionaire businessman Bruce Lunsford (D-Louisville) and four-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Louisville) on the ballot, should he acquire enough signatures.

The former actor previously considered a run for governor as a Republican and independent at different times in 2003, but withdrew from the race prior to the election.

The new candidate enters the field with some history that may alienate the more socially conservative voters he hopes to connect with. Landham also was on-screen in a series of other, lesser known films (outside of most circles) in the 1970s, including several pornographic movies.

"If I was going to do it now - knowing that I'm going to have four children, knowing that I was going to run for office - no, I wouldn't make that choice," he told the Associated Press. "But at the time I made the choice of getting a paycheck, staying alive for your big break."

The former actor currently resides in Ashland, where he moved following a prison term of 2 1/2 years after he was convicted of "making threatening and obscene phone calls to his ex-wife," according to the AP. They also report that conviction was ultimately thrown out on appeal.

Still, Landham does have some things going in his favor.

While conventional wisdom would have a political observer point to Harvard or Yale as the venues producing the most successful politicians, few may acknowledge the set of the 1987 action film Predator as having almost the same pedigree. The cast of that film has produced two American Governors thus far. Overlooking the common link between Landham, former Governor Jesse Ventura (I-Minnesota), and California's current Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would be shortsighted.

Ventura famously became the first former WWF (now WWE) wrestler to win statewide office, taking the Minnesota Governor's office as the Reform Party candidate in 1998. With Landham running on a Libertarian ticket this year, and Schwarzenegger continuing to try and find an independent space in the political spectrum despite his Republican label, the Predator set seems to have linked a series of atypical political minds together for one relatively brief, surreptitious moment in history.

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