I Ain't Got Time to Bleed

by Jesse Ventura

  It was hard for Joe, though, because within the council you needed someone to second any motion you made—otherwise it never even went onto the floor. Joe would make a motion, and they would all just sit there! Nobody would second a motion he made, so nothing he did ever even went on the record.

  I wasn’t going to take that. I started attending more and more meetings and getting angrier and angrier. One day, I got angry enough that I went up to the podium and gave an impromptu speech about what I thought was wrong with the way Brooklyn Park was being managed. Then I looked at the twenty-year-incumbent mayor and said, “You’re going to make me run, aren’t you?”

  He and his cronies laughed and said, “You could never win!”

  Big mistake. I don’t like to be told what I can’t do. I walked out of city hall that night knowing that I was going to run for mayor. I figured it would work out all right: It was a part-time job and so wouldn’t interfere with my broadcasting career. I knew I could do it. I was getting all revved up to start my campaign when I suddenly remembered that I wouldn’t be around to do it—right about the time that the campaign would have to kick into high gear, I was scheduled to head out to L.A. to start shooting Tag Team!

  No sooner had I gone out to L.A. to shoot, though, than the series was canceled. Suddenly, my schedule was free and clear again—just in time for me to throw my hat into the mayoral ring. The fact that the show got canceled when it did only strengthened my belief in fate. I believe I was destined to become the mayor of Brooklyn Park. And maybe, by fulfilling that destiny to become mayor, I sealed my destiny to become governor.

  I hope I’m not destined to become president. I don’t say that with arrogance—it’s only that everything seemed to fall so easily into place in both of my other races. But I truly wanted to be mayor and governor—I don’t want the presidency. I’ll never say never, because you never know what will happen. But 99 percent of me says no.

  My campaign for mayor was different, very casual. On most of my days on the campaign trail, I wore Zubaz (a brightly colored, baggy brand of pants made by a company in Minneapolis), a ball cap, and a T-shirt.

  I learned quickly how underhanded the whole partisan system can be. It was a nonpartisan election, which means that no political parties were supposed to be involved. Yet leaders from the Democratic and Republican parties joined forces and cosigned a letter to all the citizens of Brooklyn Park. Their letter called the election the most important one in Brooklyn Park history and labeled me “the most dangerous man in the city.” They urged the people, for their own safety, to vote for Krautkremer and not for me. All I did in Brooklyn Park was live there, pay my taxes, and send my kids to public school. Somehow that made me the most dangerous man in the city!

  Well, to them, I was dangerous because I was a threat to their good-old-boy network. That was one of the reasons I later thought I had a shot as governor. If I could beat the parties when they were combined, I could certainly beat them when they were separate.

  Ultimately, that was what led me to join the Reform Party. I began to realize how crooked party politics are. They’re at each other’s throats all the time, unless someone on the outside is threatening their turf. Then they join forces and tear the newcomer to pieces. Only this time, in Brooklyn Park, it didn’t work—this particular newcomer was a lot tougher than they’d bargained for!

  The problem I had with them wasn’t that they opposed me; that’s the American way—they had every right to do that. What troubled me was the fact that when the election was over, both parties, independently, came courting me. Now that I was in power, they wanted me to join them. That’s when I realized that the end justifies the means with these guys. Why would they want “the most dangerous man in the city” to become part of their party? It showed me that they have no credibility.

  We launched a very grassroots, plainspoken kind of campaign. I don’t think we spent more than two or three thousand dollars. We worked hard. The best way to win in a local election is to go out and knock on doors. So we did as much door knocking as we could. Something we were saying as we went around must have made sense, because as the campaign progressed we got so many new volunteers that we were able to distribute literature to every house in the entire city in one night.

  We sent a letter to all the citizens of Brooklyn Park, introducing me and asking them to please take five minutes of their time to read what we had to say. The letter went on to describe the struggle we’d had over the wetlands, what the city was doing to us, and the fact that it wasn’t listening to us. We explained that these were our elected people and that we didn’t think they were doing the jobs that we elected them to do. We told the people how strongly we believed that with their help, this election could make a difference in the way Brooklyn Park was run. Our letter made an impact.

  We also put up a lot of lawn signs, but for some reason they kept disappearing. On the weekends, I went out and baby-sat the signs. People would drive by a Ventura for Mayor sign, and before they’d have a chance to ask themselves “Who’s Ventura?” by God, there he was—sitting right there in the grass next to his sign. I don’t know to this day whether it was just pranksters who were taking them or whether it was a concerted effort, but we kept getting reports that certain cars were going around the city, stopping at our signs, and pulling them out. I wouldn’t put it past that good-old-boy network to do a thing like that. They didn’t care what it took to win.

  My campaign manager was a brilliant retired schoolteacher named Floyd Anderson. He wrote a lot of my campaign literature. One night, about a week before the election, I asked him, “Floyd, do you really think I can win?”

  Floyd looked at me and smiled. “Jess, I don’t think the question is are you going to win. I think the question is by how much are you going to win.”

  On election night we rallied at our headquarters, a little building in the woods, on land owned by the Izaak Walton League, about a half mile from my house. The building didn’t even have a phone in it. Don Roggenbauer, a former ATF agent, was on a cell phone to Peg Snezrud, who was stationed at city hall. As each district reported in, Peg relayed the results to us. It became apparent very early in the evening that I was going to win, because as the first two or three precincts came in, I was winning at a rate of two to one.

  I knew we had it in the bag when somebody came in and told me that people had been lined up around the block to vote. That’s usually a good sign for a newcomer, a bad sign for the incumbent. If people come out in droves to vote, it isn’t usually for the status quo. That’s why the old-boy network—the ensconced Republicans and Democrats, the career politicians—don’t like high voter turnouts. They’re much happier if you stay home on Election Day!

  Peg told us that a lot of the council members and their wives had gathered at city hall to watch the votes come in, and when it became apparent that I’d won, Council Member Bob Stromberg’s wife broke down in tears and sobbed, “Oh, my God, what’s going to happen now?” They acted like this was the biggest tragedy that could happen on the planet—the fact that the twenty-year incumbent was getting his butt kicked!

  I won all twenty-four precincts, including the one Krautkremer lived in. I got 65 percent of the vote. Krautkremer, with a total of some twenty-five years in office, got just 35 percent. But the most remarkable thing about that election was that the people of Brooklyn Park, who were so apathetic in the previous election that Krautkremer had won with only 1,411 votes (his opponent got 1,100 votes), turned out in masses to vote in this election. Twenty-five hundred jumped to twenty thousand.

  My mom and dad were there that night to see my victory. They were very proud. I’m so glad that they got to see me become mayor, because neither of them were here to see me become governor. My dad died three months after the mayoral election; my mom followed him a few years later.

  The campaign and the victory were a kick, but the moment I heard that I won, I turned to Terry and said, “Oh, my God, now I gotta do this.” But really, it
didn’t turn out to be all that hard. Once I got acclimated and figured out how the system worked, I did OK. My term was a four-year battle with the good old boys, which is what I expected. I knew they’d fight me on everything. Now that Joe Enge and I were there, all the council votes now started coming in 5–2, 5–2, 5–2. . . .

  There was more than one can of worms that needed opening—I was looking at a whole pantryful. The first thing I did as mayor was to have the Edinburgh Club’s books examined. They showed me a check register that was a complete travesty. Every fourth entry was blank—a check had been cut, but it didn’t say for whom! These were sums of $800, even $2,000. I raised heck over it, and since I was the mayor the good old boys had to go along with it. I brought in Deloitte and Touche, one of the largest and most respected accounting firms in the nation. They went in there and came back with the report that the books were unauditable!

  From there, we took our case to the Minnesota state auditor, Mark Dayton, a Democrat. He took a look at the books and said, “Ah, we’re not worried about it.” Unauditable public records, with hundreds and thousands of dollars simply disappearing into a black hole, and he wasn’t worried about it! That taught me that the good-old-boy network is so entrenched that one portion of government won’t even investigate another. They all wash each other’s backs. To this day, those books still haven’t been audited.

  It shouldn’t have to be this way. Americans shouldn’t have to work so hard to police their own elected officials. But that’s the way it becomes whenever we get apathetic and stop making an effort to stay involved. Whenever we stop keeping an eye on them, we give the old boys a chance to dig themselves in.

  How do they get away with it? No one questions them! No one takes the trouble to investigate! Politicians don’t like to have to be accountable to the public. Look at the whole Clinton thing. Look how reluctant anybody is to say that none of this expensive legal rigmarole would have happened if Bill had just behaved himself!

  I’m only speculating, but my suspicion is that the other career politicians in Washington all have skeletons in their closets, too. Remember what happened when Larry Flynt, from the private sector, offered a million dollars to anyone who would come forward and prove they’d had an affair with a member of Congress? They all have something to hide, so they protect each other. If that’s not so, why wasn’t there more congressional outrage when all this first came out? Look at all the people who went down because of Clinton. They were having affairs and doing the same thing! The only difference is that they hadn’t gotten caught yet.

  Not everybody starts out that way. A lot of good people go into the system with the best of intentions. But once you’re absorbed into it, it’s tough to swim against the stream. The current’s very strong, and if you’re going to swim against it, you have to be ready for a battle.

  That’s what I learned as mayor of Brooklyn Park. That’s why we need to have term limits. We need to have private-sector people come in for a short time, do their job, then go back to their private lives. There can’t be this tempting possibility of coasting along indefinitely in unaccountable luxury on taxpayers’ dollars. It’s too great a lure for too many people. The possibility shouldn’t exist.

  Because so few people bother to come out and vote in local elections, the good old boys have all the power in the world to entrench themselves, and once they’re in there, they can have a field day with your tax dollars! If you think about it that way, isn’t it worth a little bit of involvement and vigilance to make sure that you’re not spending your hard-earned money providing posh lifestyles for a handful of entrenched officials? This is what happens when the citizens of a democracy don’t stay involved in their government. Power corrupts!

  A couple of weeks after I became mayor, I was at one of those public functions that mayors are required to attend. A man came up to me, introduced himself, and said, “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

  I said, “I ran for mayor and won?”

  He said, “You’ve beaten one of the most powerful old-boy networks in the state, and they don’t like it.” He was right. Over the next four years, they did everything they possibly could to disgrace me. Can you imagine what they’re thinking now—not only did I survive all their petty little attempts to bring me down, but I went on to become their governor!

  What do we have to do if we want to change things? We have to have the strength of our convictions. We have to be prepared to fight for them. And we have to be in the fight for the long haul. While I was mayor, I learned that government is a system of checks and balances—you can’t simply walk in and change things. It takes time. I used to joke that it would have been nice if a magic wand came with the job, if I could just wave it and make things work the way they’re supposed to. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy. The bureaucracy is so huge that in a lot of situations all I can do is tell people the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

  Government protects itself from the top down—state government is reluctant to get involved in local government, and so forth. And since the good old boys are ensconced from the top down, we have to be willing to whittle away at their network from the bottom up. That’s the only way it’s possible: in tiny local victories that eventually lead to bigger victories. The only way the system will ever change is if enough well-meaning private-sector people get involved in their local government for the right reasons and are able to resist getting absorbed into the political food chain.

  The second thing I did as mayor was put all the council meetings on public television, over all the good old boys’ objections. Exposure might create an educated, involved public, which isn’t in the best interests of the old-boy network. The smaller the number of people involved, the more power the incumbents have. They can control it better.

  The rules were changing. I held the mallet. I ran the meetings according to Robert’s Rules of Order, and I now had the power to recognize Councilman Enge. He’d say, “Mr. Mayor, I’d like to make a motion.”

  I’d tell him, “Make your motion, Mr. Enge.”

  He’d make it; I’d second it. At least that way, it got on the record. Then we had to discuss the issue, and if the old boys were still determined to kill the motion, they’d have to vote us down—which they did, continually.

  For the first time, the people of Brooklyn Park could see what the good old boys were doing, and they weren’t happy! They were watching what we did in council meetings on the local cable station, and they could see that things weren’t going fairly. It got to the point where we’d be debating a hot topic and people would jump in their cars, drive down to city hall, and storm in all red-faced to give the council a piece of their mind. It made a difference. In the next election, we found another person to run for the council. We got that person in there. Then the votes were 4–3, 4–3, 4–3. . . .

  Bit by bit, we were weakening the incumbents’ stranglehold on the city. But the old boys weren’t going to go quietly. About three years into my term, my mother began to get somewhat frail, so she came to live with us. But our house in Brooklyn Park wasn’t really equipped to handle that many people. I knew I had to look for another house. I’ll always put my family before any political life, because they’re going to be around when politics is long gone from my life. Terry was big on finding a place where we could have our horses on our own land, because boarding is extremely expensive—you could pay a mortgage with it. So we bought a ranch in Maple Grove.

  This was in the last half of the last year I was in office. In June, I announced that I would not be seeking reelection. In July, we bought the ranch. So at that point, we owned two houses. The good old boys saw this as an opportunity to disgrace me. They started whining that I should give up my position as mayor because I was no longer a resident of the city. It was ridiculous! There’s no law that says you can’t own two homes. The old boys hired a lawyer to try to find a way to oust me. By now, it was September. I had four months left in my term.

  By law
, the city was required to hire a lawyer on my behalf, because I was the mayor. I said, “That’s ridiculous. I’m not spending taxpayers’ money on something as absurd as this thing!” So I decided to represent myself. I knew I could do it. For one thing, I had right on my side. For another, I was the man who had successfully sued Vince McMahon!

  The matter went in front of an administrative law judge. They presented their case; I presented mine. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Since I was my own lawyer, I got to cross-examine their witnesses. One day they put Bob Stromberg, one of the last remaining good old boys, on the stand. Believe it or not, in an attempt to build evidence for the case, Bob had actually been scoping out my house. He and a friend had been getting up at four in the morning to sit in the parking lot of Mama G’s restaurant across from my house in Maple Grove, watching to see if anybody would leave.

  I was doing morning talk radio at the time, and I left home at about four. I stayed at either house at the time, depending on what we were doing. My mom was in the new Maple Grove place, but we were essentially living in both houses, much as we’re doing today with the governor’s mansion.

  Stromberg thought he had the goods on me because he observed my Porsche leaving the house at four o’clock in the morning. He was going to all this trouble to spy on me, all for the sake of this nonsense lawsuit!

  My Porsche has tinted windows, and our house sits so far back from the road on a wooded lot that there was no way for them to actually see who was in the car when it drove out. So when I cross-examined Stromberg’s friend, I asked him, “Did you actually see me get into the Porsche?”