Body Slam — Jesse Ventura

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At first blush, straightforward and honest seem odd terms, even for a campaign manager, to apply to someone who made his name in the phantasmagorically staged world of pro wrestling and then parlayed his fame into roles in Hollywood action films, including Predator, The Running Man and Batman & Robin. Plus Ventura's appeal to populist sympathies and his downscale campaign wardrobe--faded jeans, scuffed sneakers, an occasional camouflage jacket and bush hat--belied the fact that he is a wealthy man. He lives with his wife of 23 years, Terry, and a teenage son and daughter on a 32-acre horse farm in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Posted above the front door of his red brick colonial house is a sign: FORGET THE DOG. BEWARE THE OWNER.

Even his opponents admit that Ventura's testosterone-overload image can be amusing. But how much of it is true? The record yields a mixed answer.

For openers, his name is assumed. James George Janos was born in Minneapolis in 1951; graduated from Roosevelt High School, after exploits on the football and swimming teams, in 1969; and immediately enlisted in the Navy, where he qualified for the SEALS underwater demolition team. During his campaign for Governor, he made much of his military service, at the intended expense of his opponents. A radio ad, set to the theme from the movie Shaft, contained the lyrics, "When the other guys were cashing government checks, he was in the Navy getting dirty and wet." He boasts a Vietnam Service Medal on his personnel record, although he has consistently refused to explain what he did there.

Discharged from the service in 1973, Janos headed to California and took up with a motorcycle club called the Mongols. "It was the only mode of transportation I had when I got out of the military," he now explains, and scoffs at idle suggestions that this affiliation could have created some entanglements with the law. "I've never been arrested in my life. Never had cuffs put on me, never been charged with a crime, never spent one day in jail."

He returned to Minnesota and spent a year at North Hennepin Community College. In 1975, the same year he met and married his wife, he went back to California to try his hand at professional wrestling. That was where Jesse Ventura was born. He'd always wanted to be named Jesse, and Ventura was the name of a California city. Presto. Showtime.

He was no great shakes as a wrestler, but he could roil the crowds by playing the bad guy against such scripted good guys as Hulk Hogan. Recalls Hogan: "Jesse's best move was to cheat and run...He'd take the tape off his wrist and choke you, he'd gouge you in the eyes, and then if you cleared your eyes or got the tape off your throat, he'd run for his life." But Ventura was funny and articulate outside the ring, skills that led, once he hung up his tights, to movie roles and jobs as a TBS wrestling commentator and a talk-show host at radio station KFAN in the Twin Cities.

Ventura entered Minnesota politics in 1990 when he ran for mayor of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb, and won, causing a nervous frisson in the state's political establishment. Here was a guy who had campaigned on a Harley. Still, how much harm could this outsider do? He had been elected to a part-time job; most of the work was done by a paid manager, and the mayor's vote counted for no more than those of the six other members of the town council.