As those all-important last hours ticked down, we stole all the thunder from the other two campaigns. The press jumped on board with us, because we were having all the fun. We invited people, “Come along! Jump in your cars and come with us for as long as you want to go!” We had times when we were going down the highway with twenty-five cars tooting their horns, waving banners and flags. We came into cities in a whirlwind of noise. Later, people rushed home and jumped on the Internet to see if they could see pictures of themselves. There was running commentary, “Jesse’s now left for Hutchinson. . . .” We literally stole all the publicity and all the momentum that weekend. That’s when I started to believe we had a shot at winning. I always knew we had an outside chance, but that’s the first time the possibility really began to seem real to me.
Even Terry started to feel it. She went on the seventy-two-hour blitz with us. It was her first real involvement in the campaign. I had told her from the start that I didn’t expect her to be part of it unless she wanted to be. She could be as little or as much involved as she liked.
It was during that blitz that my confrontation with Hillary Clinton took place. It was on Saturday—I think we were in Rochester that morning—that Hillary had come into town to stump for Humphrey. One of the press guys came up to me and said, “Did you hear what Hillary Clinton said about you? She said it’s time to end the carnival sideshow act that’s going on here and get down to the business of electing Skip Humphrey. How do you feel about Hillary Clinton calling you a carnival sideshow act?”
I said, “It seems to me, rather than being concerned about Minnesota politics, Hillary should be more concerned about leaving Bill home alone. He seems to get into a lot of mischief whenever she leaves him.” You wanna start the fight, the Klingon’s gonna draw the line in the sand. Strike us, and you make us stronger.
That was especially true of what happened to us when we got to Hibbing. Now, Mae Schunk and I are very strongly union: She’s Teachers’ Union, I’m Screen Actors Guild. But in spite of our prounion positions, we couldn’t get one single union endorsement. We had tons of supporters among rank-and-file union people, but none of the upper echelons were interested in us. The union officials were in the Democrats’ back pocket.
We were on our way to speak at Hibbing Community College when the union goons showed up. When Mae and I started to walk into the auditorium, they formed a line across the entry to stop us. I walked up to the biggest one; I got up nose to nose with him, looked him straight in the eye, and said quietly, “I suggest you get out of the way.” He stepped aside and let us in.
But the goons were so disruptive once we got inside that it was impossible for us to speak. They scared the students away and kept shouting us down. I shouted back, “Mae and I are vested union members. This is how you treat union brothers and sisters?”
But as we were getting back on our RV, they had the gall to say, “Jesse—if you win, don’t forget about us up here on the Iron Range.”
I told them, “Trust me. I won’t forget.”
There was one more incident that probably had nothing to do with any of this, but it did get us a lot of press. Just a little while before the election, a homemade pop-bottle “MacGyver” bomb exploded outside our campaign headquarters. In all likelihood, it was probably just some goofy kids pulling a prank, because two more went off in the surrounding neighborhood. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But the exposure it got us in the press didn’t hurt our campaign, either!
When our seventy-two-hour junket was finally over, we came home and braced ourselves for Election Day. We’d covered more than fifteen hundred miles, and the whole trip had become a blur. Most of our campaigning had been by the seat of our pants. We didn’t know what we were doing; we just made it up as we went along. We made mistakes, but we recovered beautifully. And above all, we were honest.
Election Day dawned. I woke up in the morning, went out and voted, then came home, put the movie JFK into the VCR, and lay there in bed watching it, entranced by Oliver Stone’s genius. I was done campaigning. Whatever happened next, I was satisfied that we’d given the good old boys a decent run for their money. I’d promised KFAN I’d come in the next day to talk about it, whatever happened.
As the day wore on toward evening, we got ready to go. We bundled into the Lexus and drove down to Canterbury Park, where we’d planned our election party. It’s a racetrack—a place where long shots win. And since it was a horse-racing place, there were plenty of TV sets around.
On our way to the racetrack, we saw the moon come out. It gets dark early in Minnesota in November, so the moon was very bright. It had a broad, fuzzy ring around it, the kind it gets sometimes just before a snow. Just below the moon, we could see three or four shimmering ribbons of northern lights. We were all staring at that fuzzy moon with its gauzy skirt of northern lights when Ty said, very softly, “Dad, something strange is going to happen tonight.”
Canterbury Park was like a coiled spring that night. There was so much energy in the air you could almost touch it. The way they had the place set up was great. There was a public part, then a private part, then a private private part.
Early in the evening, I got a call from Steve Woodbury, the station manager at KFAN. He said, “Jeez, Jesse. The polls are looking pretty good. Are you sure you’re gonna be in to do the show tomorrow?”
I promised him, “I’ll be there. It may only be for an hour, then I’d like to have the week off to recuperate a little. But I said I’d be there and I’ll be there tomorrow, win, lose, or draw.”
I was trying to stay very low-key, because I’m not a big believer in polls. I addressed the crowd very calmly. I told them that no matter what happened next, they’d done a great job, we’d accomplished a lot, and we had a lot to be proud of. We were full of joy, partying along with everyone else.
Then the polls started to close. In the initial poll just back at the primary, Humphrey was at 46 percent, Coleman was at 32, and I was at 10. The last poll before the election had Humphrey at about 34, Coleman at 32, and me at 28. The first precinct reported in, and it was just like the last poll. I turned to Terry and shrugged. “God. Maybe the polls are right. But even so, we at least gave ’em a helluva run.”
When 2 percent had reported in, it stayed about the same. At 3 percent, I passed Coleman. I said, “My God—we’re in second.” I was beginning to think that everyone who said I was going to elect Humphrey by stealing from Coleman must have been right.
Then, at 5 percent, I took a 120-vote lead over Humphrey. It was Ventura, Humphrey, Coleman. At that point, in our hearts, we thought, “That’s victory right there. Because even if we lose, we can say that at 5 percent we led!” Nobody gave us a chance—nobody, and for at least that brief time, we led.
Apparently, a few people knew something we didn’t know. Captain Patrick Chase, the head of capitol security, was out at Canterbury Park with the Lincoln that was designated to drive the new governor-elect. Why was he there and not at one of the two big hotels where Coleman and Humphrey were having their parties?
He caught hell for it, too, from the outgoing governor, Arne Carlson, when he found out about it. I later asked Chase how he knew. He said, “I’d been talking to my troopers. The troopers are out there in the cafeterias among the people, and they said everything was comin’ back Jesse. I knew you were gonna win.”
So at 5 percent, when we took the lead, I went out and spoke to the crowd, and we cheered and hollered and congratulated each other again. Then 10 percent came in, and 15, and 20, and my lead kept widening. At one point, I was at 38, and Coleman and Humphrey were tied at 31.
When 40 percent of the vote had come in, Terry and I were in the private private room. I looked at her and said, “My God, honey. Can you believe it? We might win!” Terry didn’t respond. As the evening wore on, she’d grown pale and quiet. My mother-in-law, Sharon, was rolling her eyes, going, “Oh my God!” It was almost surreal. I was very calm through it all; I didn’t want to get overly e
xcited, because the letdown would have been too much.
I called Steve Woodbury back and said, “Uh, Steve . . . I might be a little late for that show tomorrow. But I’ll be there. And I’ll be back on the air the following Monday.” That following Monday never happened.
At five minutes to twelve, with about 60 percent of the vote in, I was at 37, Coleman was at 34, and Humphrey was at 28. The kids out in the public area were getting wild again. They were doing a mosh pit, passing bodies around overhead—I’m the only candidate in the world who’s had three or four mosh pits going on at their election party! My people came in and said, “Jesse, the kids are getting wild again. You gotta go out there and talk to ’em, calm ’em down. They’re gettin’ brazen!”
I said, “No, I can’t go out again, I can’t. I’ve been out twice. I’ve gotta wait till the end now.”
But they kept saying, “Jesse, you’ve got to go out there, it’s getting too crazy!”
Finally, I stated, “Dammit! I’ll go out one more time, but this is it. I’m not going out again until it’s over.”
Just as I stood up to go out, the three TVs we had on in the private room—one on each network—came up with a check mark next to my name. They were declaring me the new governor. The room exploded! Everybody went crazy!
I said, “Wait a minute! How can they do that? Four out of ten Minnesotans haven’t been counted yet. If I go out now and declare myself the winner, and then it turns out I haven’t won, I’m gonna look like an idiot.”
Bill Hillsman came up to me then. He said, in his quiet way, “Jesse? You believed me about my ads, didn’t you?” I said I had. “Then will you believe me on this?”
I said, “What?”
And he said, even quieter, “You’re the governor. Trust me. They know. They haven’t been wrong since Dewey.”
Then I walked out to the crowd. Modestly, I said, “Well, you’re the ones calling me the governor. I’m pleased. But until I hear those calls from Humphrey and Coleman conceding the election to me, it’s not official.”
Forty-five minutes later, I got the calls from Humphrey and Coleman. They conceded and congratulated me. Then the moment I hung up the phone, there was Captain Chase and his security team encircling me. Protection for the new governor-elect had already gone into effect.
Amusingly enough, earlier in the night, Maria Shriver of Dateline NBC had told her national people, “I want to interview Jesse Ventura before the returns come in.”
They’d said, “We’re not spending our time on losers.”
She said, “OK.” Then she called me and asked for the exclusive if I won.
I said, “Sure, Maria. If I win, you can have the first interview.”
Well, when I won, you should have seen those NBC guys scrambling. “We gotta get an interview with Jesse!”
Maria very calmly said, “I told you he was going to win. I’ve already got him.”
They were going to take the assignment away from Maria and give it to Tom Brokaw, but I said, “No, I agreed to go on with Maria Shriver. I’m goin’ on with Maria or not at all.” So she split it. She did the interview with me first, then threw me to Brokaw.
When you win, it’s like an unstoppable force takes hold of you and drags you with it. You have to go where it’s taking you. There’s no way to stop it. It’s a whirlwind, and you just ride it.
It’s like boot camp. Once you get on that bus, and the bus pulls inside that fence, there’s no way out. You’re in the navy. Or, in a way, it’s like being in prison. Having this job, in itself, is a little like prison, because you lose all your privacy. You become a prisoner in your own home. But I’ll survive it. It’s a pretty nice prison, as prisons go.
Once all the returns were in, we finally let go. We partied and laughed and cried and hugged. My friend Paul Allen, who had replaced me on the radio, came up to me and said, “Body”—that’s what he calls me—“I’ve been to the Super Bowl. I’ve been to the Final Four. I’ve been to the Kentucky Derby. But never in my life have I experienced something like this. This is better than anything I’ve ever done.” I thanked him, then I went looking for Terry.
She was curled up in her mother’s lap, crying, “This isn’t happening . . . this isn’t happening. . . .” She said, “I don’t know how to do this! I don’t know what they expect me to be.”
Her mom said, “Just be yourself. That’s all anyone can expect of you.” She thought about that a minute. Then she dried her eyes and rose to the occasion.
I took her hand and led her to the waiting limo. It was close to three in the morning when they took me, Terry, and the kids to an inn near Canterbury Park. The troopers got us into our suite, told us they’d be right down the hall, and locked us in.
I had to get up at six the next morning to do Good Morning America. But there was one more bit of celebrating left to be done. Terry and I had brought along an old bottle of Dom Perignon we’d been saving. So when we were finally alone, we cracked the bottle open and poured each other a glass—the first in a long, long series of glasses; you just don’t waste Dom Perignon! I was destined to greet my first full day as governor-elect with a hangover.
We looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. She raised her glass and whispered, “My God! You’re the governor!”
I smiled back at her tenderly. “And you’re the first lady!”
C H A P T E R 8
ACCEPTING
THE SHACKLES
So I marched up this long, long flight of steps, and I pulled on a huge brassbound set of doors that even I had to exert some real muscle power to open. My footsteps rang against marble. There were corridors here, corridors there, massive staircases going up in two directions, vaulted hallways, columns of ocher-colored marble everywhere. In front of me was the rotunda, still prettied up in Christmas greenery.
Somewhere in this labyrinth—and I still didn’t know exactly where—there was an office with a bronze plaque outside and Arne Carlson’s name on it. I knew that in a few days, that plaque would come down, and another would go up. This one would have a different name on it: Governor Jesse Ventura. I was looking at the red and gold letters that spelled out quotes from George Washington, and at carved brass and bronze and gold leaf in the shapes of sheaves of wheat and ears of corn, symbols of Minnesota. I stared at these larger-than-life oil paintings of Minnesota’s governors. And I imagined myself up there, in wraparound shades, tights, and a feather boa.
It’s an awesome responsibility. I’m going to have to literally put my private life on hold, to a large extent, for the next four years. I’m under constant scrutiny by the people, by the press, and by security. From the moment capitol security came in and encircled me on election night, I’ve felt a little bit like a prisoner. I’ve never had this many restrictions in my life. I can’t leave my home without my “protection.” And even when I’m at home, there’s security on duty, twenty-four hours a day. I had no idea how much it would change my life on a daily basis. They might not even allow me to rappel from the ceiling of Target Center during Timberwolves games anymore!
I’ve never really minded being in the limelight before, but since I became a political figure I’ve had moments when I’ve gotten fed up with the attention. One day I tried to get out for some much-needed R and R. I was out hunting for the day, in the middle of nowhere, and this one media guy still wouldn’t leave me alone. At one point, he stuck a microphone in my face and said, “Mr. Ventura, what are you going to be hunting today?” I growled back, “Media people. You got a ten-second head start.” It made the papers and the evening news.
People can do things to you when you’re a public figure that they could never do to you when you were just a private citizen. I’ve heard there’s a TV movie about me in the works—I have nothing to do with it and I’m not getting a dime for it. But somehow they can capitalize on the life I’ve worked hard to create, and tell my story without even talking to me about it, just because they can argue that I’m now part of history. You k
now what’s even sadder? John Davis is the producer. He produced Predator. And Bruce Sallen is involved in it, too—he was in Tag Team. These two guys know me and have worked with me, and yet they’re doing this to me. I’m very disappointed in them, that they would exploit my life to make a buck for themselves. And when I see them I’ll tell them. Sallen’s going bald; he recently got hair plugs put in. I sent a message to him: “You tell Sallen if I run into him, I’m gonna pull every plug out of his head.”
If I had known the extent to which I was going to become a prisoner for these next four years, would I still have done it? Sure. It was a challenge. And I’ll live through it. My family will live through it. We have it in pretty good perspective.
I’ve told you that I take my job as governor extremely seriously. But I’ll tell you right now, it’s only the second most important job I’ll ever do. My very first day at the capitol, I made it clear to everyone that I’m not going to allow this job to interfere with my family. I make all my decisions based first on what is best for them. I told everyone that I’m not taking calls on Sundays—that’s my day with Terry and the kids. I don’t want to come home in four years to a house full of strangers. Besides, there haven’t been any nuclear disasters in Minnesota. What could possibly come up that isn’t going to be able to wait until Monday?
And of course, I have my detractors. There’s no pleasing some people. Steve Sviggum, the speaker of the House, and Tim Pawlenty, the House majority leader, have given me the nickname “Robin Hood” because of my policy of “robbing” (as they’re calling it) some of the proposed budget-surplus refund from the rich to give to the middle class.
I told them, “Well, if I’m Robin Hood, then I guess that makes you the Sheriff of Nottingham. If I remember the story correctly, Robin Hood was the hero; the sheriff was the villain.” Hey, they do represent the wealthy landlord who’s putting down the peasants!
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