C O N T E N T S
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1 THE AMERICAN DREAM
CHAPTER 2 SOUND BODY, SOUND MIND
CHAPTER 3 HOW IT ALL STARTED
CHAPTER 4 NAVY SEALS
CHAPTER 5 “THE BODY”
CHAPTER 6 “THE MOUTH”
CHAPTER 7 “THE MIND”
CHAPTER 8 ACCEPTING THE SHACKLES
CHAPTER 9 SELF-RELIANCE
CHAPTER 10 LOOKING NATIONAL
ABOUT THIS TITLE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
This book is dedicated to Terry,
Tyrel, Jade, Bernice,
and George
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Thanks to everyone who made this book possible and my life what it is and will be. My wife of twenty-four years, Teresa; my son, Tyrel; my daughter, Jade; my brother Jan; my mom, Bernice Lenz Janos; my father, George Janos; my South Side buddies Jerry, Kevin, Lynn, Harley, Charlie Wannabe, and all the others; Steve Nelson and all my Navy underwater demolition SEAL teammates; Barry Bloom and Mike Braverman; Ken and Vincent Atchity, Chi-Li Wong, and the AEI team, especially Julie Ann Mooney; Bruce Tracy and everyone else at Villard; and all the people alive or dead I may have forgotten.
I would also like to thank Steve Bosacker and all of my current government staff and commissioners; my campaign staff and volunteers; all those who voted for me; and Shirley Chase, Alan Eidsness, and David Olsen, the three best lawyers in the world.
Thank you to all I include and those I have undoubtedly omitted.
C H A P T E R 1
THE
AMERICAN
DREAM
I didn’t need this job. I ran for governor to find out if the American dream still exists in anyone’s heart other than mine. I’m happy to say that it does. I’m living proof that the myths aren’t true. The candidate with the most money isn’t always the one who wins. You don’t have to be a career politician to serve in public office. You don’t have to be well connected or propped up by special-interest groups. You don’t even have to be a Democrat or a Republican. You can stand on your own two feet and speak your mind, because if people like where you’re coming from, they will vote you in. The will of the people is still the most powerful force in our government. We can put whomever we choose into office, simply by exercising that will.
We’re a nation of bootstrappers. We’re visionaries. And we’re not afraid to turn our visions into reality. That’s the great thing about Americans—the word can’t isn’t part of our vocabulary. We’ve always been a can-do people. And we still are, despite all the negative things we hear about how corrupt our government has become, and despite the fact that we’ve become too reliant on that same government for things it has no business providing. We might have lost sight of it a little bit, but we are still the keepers of the American dream.
How else could a guy like me have become the governor of Minnesota? Look at me: I’m no career politician—I’m a six-foot-four, 250-pound ex–Navy SEAL, pro wrestler, radio personality, and film actor. I only got into politics in the first place because I have a pretty noticeable habit of speaking my mind. But I guess a good bit of what I had to say must have made sense to people, because they elected me twice.
This book is mostly about me, about where I stand, and about where I came from. But what’s happening in Minnesota right now is far bigger than me. History is being made. Like many other people across the nation, Minnesotans are fed up with the good-old-boy network that cares more about keeping itself well ensconced than it does about carrying out the voters’ wishes. In 1998’s gubernatorial race, I gave them an alternative.
I’m a Minneapolis native with working-class roots. My collar’s indelibly blue. I belong to the private sector, and that’s where I’m returning the minute my term as governor is over. I stand for the common man because I am him. That’s one reason the people of Minnesota elected me: I know where they’re coming from because I came from the same place.
They also voted for me, I think, because I’m not easy to ignore. I’m big, I’m loud, and I’m not afraid to say what I think. But I also got a powerful set of ethics from my parents, some serious hard-core discipline from the Navy SEALs, and some decent people skills from my careers as a professional wrestler, film actor, and radio personality. And I can talk to people without talking down to them.
But if I had to pick one reason Minnesotans voted for me, I would have to say that it is because I tell the truth. I stand tall and speak freely, even when it isn’t politically expedient to do so. That, above all, is what I think Minnesotans voted for: honesty.
This book has two purposes: first, to tell you where I stand—and why—on the issues that affect us all. Anybody who offers themselves for public office owes you that; and second, to tell you the story of what made me who I am. I’m an ordinary guy who went for his dreams and made them happen. The only things I’ve ever been handed are extraordinary guidance and lifelong friendship, without which I could never have achieved all that I have. But I’m no golden child. I’ve had basically the same opportunities as most of you. And if a guy like me can become the governor, so could you. That’s the way American government is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, there’s an idea out there that’s very destructive to the American electoral system. It’s the idea that you have to cast your vote for whoever’s most likely to win, because otherwise you’re wasting your vote. That is simply not true. There is no such thing as a wasted vote.
Voting is not supposed to be just a popularity contest. It’s not like betting on a horse race. It’s our responsibility when we vote to vote for the ideas we would like to see become public policy. We have to choose our candidates by the things they stand for, not by their ratings in the polls. When we bow to the pressure of the polls, we get exactly the phenomenon we’re complaining about now: career politicians who will say anything to get your vote and who don’t stand for anything except what the latest poll tells them to support. Yet somehow, that’s become the standard. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I understand why so many people don’t vote anymore, and I sympathize with them. It can seem like a waste of time when the only candidates you see in the news are cookie-cutter copies of the ones you saw in the last election and the election before that. But these days you have to look beyond what the media tells you to think and make up your own mind about the issues. Your choices aren’t limited to the party favorites who have the money and the influence to get themselves into the limelight. You can vote for anybody you want. My stand on voting is that if you don’t cast your vote, you forfeit your right to whine about the government.
When I announced that I was running for governor, everybody said I couldn’t win. They said my campaign was an exercise in futility. The media thought I was a joke. My opponents pretended I didn’t exist. But on November 3, 1998, the people of Minnesota came out in droves and made it happen. This election had the largest voter turnout (in years without a presidential election) in Minnesota’s history and almost the largest in the country’s history. We shocked the world. We wasted the system with “wasted” votes.
My Democratic opponent, Attorney General Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey III, called our victory a “wake-up call of the first order.” Even my Republican opponent, Saint Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, said that we ignited a spark, even though he said he didn’t have any idea what that spark was. They knew I was popular, but neither of them had any idea how I won.
How did I do it? With a secret weapon that the other two candidates didn’t have: The people who put me in office were overwhelmingly people who had never participated in the system before, and
a huge number of these new voters were collegeage people.
The bottom line is that my opponents were boring. They were the same old brand of career politicians, the kind that comes out of the woodwork every four years, spouts the same old rhetoric about the same issues, and then disappears. People don’t bother to come to the polls anymore because they don’t see the point. The candidates are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Minnesotans might not have been quite sure what they were getting when they voted for me, but one thing they knew for sure: It wouldn’t be business as usual!
There’s a brand-new generation in Minnesota that has just come into the electoral system. They saw this election as an opportunity to be heard. They’ve infused Minnesota politics with new blood. And as long as we do what we have to do to keep this new generation involved, we’re going to turn this system around.
My victory is important for another reason. I’m the first member of the Reform Party to win a statewide office. There’s been talk recently that the Reform Party has had it. People have been saying that we’re going to go the way of most other third parties: We’ll show up and bark just loud enough to get the two traditional parties back in line a little, then we’ll quietly disappear. But our government needs more than just a face-lift—it needs a major overhaul. The Reform Party’s work is far from over. In fact, it’s barely begun.
We have to build this party from the bottom up. It must be a grassroots organization, or else it’s meaningless. And if you look at it that way, then no election is insignificant. No win for the party is too small. A government that is truly by the people has to be grassroots at its foundation. It has to come from the bottom up.
Think of the alternative. If the party’s controlled from the top, then whose hands is it in? Career politicians. The comfortably ensconced people who are many levels removed from the working people of this country. The fact that our nation’s government is controlled by people like that is at the heart of every complaint I hear about our government today.
Standard operating procedure in our political system today is that everyone’s owned, either by one of the two parties or by special-interest groups. Career politicians are bought and sold. And that’s how I’m different: No one owns me. I come with no strings attached. All the lobbyists in Minnesota are running scared right now because suddenly the rules of the game have changed. They have no leverage with me. They have no in.
One of the first things I did during the transition period between the election and the inauguration was to bring in thirteen citizens from across the state. These were people who were either first-time voters or who hadn’t voted in five consecutive elections. I asked each of them a question: Now that you’ve come into the system, how do we keep you involved?
Their answers were very clear, very honest. They said, It’s the same story every four years. Whenever an election’s coming up, all the politicians come out and give you the same song and dance about the same issues, all the way up until they get elected. Then you don’t hear any more from them until it’s time for them to get elected again. We’re tired of it. If you want to keep us involved, don’t tell us what you think we want to hear, tell us the truth.
There’s a great need in our government right now for honesty. All you have to do is look at what’s going on in Washington these days to see that. I’ve always told the truth, because I believe it’s the right thing to do. But coming from the private sector gives me a credibility that career politicians don’t have. I have no hidden agenda. I don’t need to tell you what you want to hear so I can get reelected. I have a very successful life waiting for me outside of politics; I don’t need to get reelected.
Anyone who’s known me through the years, in any of my various careers, will tell you that I speak my mind. I’m incorrigible when it comes to that. You might not always like what you hear, but you’re gonna hear it anyway. I call it like I see it; I tell the truth. And if I don’t know something, I’ll say so. Then I’ll try to find the answer.
I decided to run for governor because I got mad. In 1997, the State of Minnesota had a budget surplus of more than four billion dollars. The voters wanted that surplus returned to them because, in their opinion, they’d been overcharged. But Minnesota legislators chose to ignore the wishes of the people and instead dreamed up all kinds of pork-barrel projects to make themselves look good when reelection time came. Some of that surplus money was bonded to pay for high-profile projects that the people didn’t want. As a result, our children are going to have to assume the payments on the out-of-date convention centers and sports facilities these politicians built to help themselves get reelected. Is that how we show our children we care for them? Is that the kind of public servants the voters really want?
I also saw that a lot of people had no voice in decisions affecting their taxes. For example, there’s a group called the Metropolitan Council that can levy taxes in a seven-county area that makes up the Twin Cities, even though the council seats aren’t filled by elections. Nowhere else in the state is there this extra layer of government. Another example is people who own lakeshore property. They are also highly taxed but receive very few municipal services and have no say in policy matters. In my book, these are both cases of taxation without representation.
I want to make government more directly accountable to the people. If I’d run for governor and lost because no one was interested in or cared about what I want to do, that would have been fine with me. It’s their choice. But I wasn’t going to be weeded out because the system said I couldn’t win.
My campaign was anything but run-of-the-mill. My opponents were in suits. I was wearing jeans and a Minnesota Timberwolves jacket, and my campaign slogan was “Retaliate in ’98.” Since so many people were convinced I didn’t have a chance, early on in the race the thought of voting for me was considered pointless but fun. Garrison Keillor even said voting for me was like throwing toilet paper in the trees to piss off Dad. I became the candidate of choice for the rebellious. But I went out and made myself available to people. I listened. And I learned.
Unlike my opponents, not a penny of my campaign money came from special-interest groups. Instead, my supporters relied on Minnesota’s Political Campaign Refund program, which allowed them to donate fifty dollars each to my campaign, and then get a fifty-dollar refund from the state after the election. I spent $600,000 on my campaign; my opponents together spent close to $13 million.
I knew that in order for the campaign to work, everyone in the state needed to know that Jesse Ventura was a candidate for governor. Many people are not on the Internet. Many people don’t read newspapers. But nearly everyone watches TV, so that’s where I focused my campaign. I got on TV and promised the people that there would be no big-money power brokers behind the scenes, yanking their governor’s chain. I promised I’d be there to serve the people, not the special interests. And I promised to be honest with them.
A lot of people laughed at the idea of this big, beefy featherboa-wearing ex–pro wrestler and film actor as the head of state. OK, so maybe it’s funny. But there are precedents. Other entertainers have successfully gone into politics: Ronald Reagan. Senator Fred Thompson. Clint Eastwood. Sonny Bono. Even Gopher from The Love Boat, Fred Grandy. I’ll let you in on a secret about being an entertainer: It’s all about communicating, about being able to see things from a bunch of different perspectives. There’s a lot about entertainment that translates directly to the kind of public relations that you have to do in politics. When you’re serving in a public office, you have to be able to communicate extremely well. It didn’t bother me all that much that people laughed. To tell the truth, it bothered me more when they stopped laughing after the election.
It’s strange how before this victory, nobody took me seriously. Now, suddenly, everyone’s lost their sense of humor. Yes, I now have a heavy responsibility, which I take very seriously. But I’m still the same person I always was. It reminds me of Voltaire’s quote about God being “a comedian
playing before an audience that can’t laugh.” That applies to me, too—not to put myself on God’s level, but people take me as far more serious than I am. I don’t know where our sense of humor has gone in this country. I’m finding out that when I talk to the media, a lot of the time I have to throw up my hands and say, “That’s a JOKE!”
Politics is not my life. I have a career in radio and another career in film. I have a wife who is the sweetest person in the world and two kids who are growing up into terrific, well-rounded people. I don’t need or want to spend the rest of my life in politics. When I’m finished with my term as governor, I’m going back to the life that’s waiting for me in the private sector. For one thing, it pays better. And for another, none of the other careers I’ve had in my life has kept me trapped in my own home and under surveillance twenty-four hours a day. I’m accustomed to answering only to myself and my family. Now I have to answer to the entire state of Minnesota. But I’m taking on this responsibility, willingly and voluntarily, because I have a vision for how to make things better. And as a citizen of the greatest democracy in the world, I have a duty to do my small part.
This is all new to me, and I feel a little like the Rodney Dangerfield character in Back to School. But I’ll adapt. I’ll do what needs to be done. The responsibility doesn’t scare me. I’ve been through SEAL training. I’ve faced death and lived to tell about it. Nothing that happens in the next four years can possibly be as tough as that.
You can rest assured that I have plans for the next four years. I’m here to affect policy as much as I can. But no matter how the next four years go, I’ve challenged the status quo and won. I’ve restored people’s confidence in our political system. I’ve awakened their hope. My victory is part of a much bigger picture. It’s a wake-up call. It’s the beginning of a political revolution.
C H A P T E R 2
SOUND BODY,
I Ain't Got Time to Bleed Page 1
