Jesse Ventura's 'Body' Politics

He learned quickly. Ventura picked his new last name from a map (he chose ""Jesse'' because he liked it) and went West. He and his partner, Adrian Adonis, ultimately won the tag-team championship and sold out arenas like Madison Square Garden. He played the villain--a ""heel'' who faced off against more heroic ""baby faces''--and while others were more graceful with the flying head scissors and pile drivers, Ventura was a master showman. ""As a wrestler, he was outlandish, outspoken and off the wall,'' says ""Mean Gene'' Okerlund, wrestling's most famous announcer. Away from the spotlight, though, Ventura was a family man whose wild days were behind him. After matches he would retire to his room to watch movies and call his wife, Terry, while the other guys hit the bars.

Ventura developed a caustic rivalry with Hulk Hogan, whom Ventura accuses of stealing his moves. (Hogan says Ventura's just jealous: ""Jesse's greatest move was to choke people, poke them in the eyes and then run for his life.'') Political by nature, Ventura tried to form a wrestlers union but got nowhere. Later he sued the World Wrestling Federation for video royalties and was awarded $800,000.

It all came to a crushing end in 1984, on the eve of a title match with Hogan in Los Angeles, when Ventura developed a pulmonary embolism. Doctors told him his career was over. But life wasn't, so the agile Jesse Ventura transformed himself yet again, this time into an actor. In his finest hour on film, he teamed up with Schwarzenegger in ""Predator.'' His credits also include TV's ""The X-Files,'' where he wore a black coat and tried to look sinister.

Ventura got his first shot at politics in 1990, when he ran for mayor of Brooklyn Park--population: 60,000--to pro-test the destruction of a treasured wetland. He says the biggest achievement of his four-year term was a drop in crime; just seeing Jesse Ventura walk down Main Street, apparently, is enough to make a city safer. He spent most of his time bickering with the city council.

Next he entered the world of talk radio, where he picked at the same themes again and again: taxes should be lower, marijuana should be legal, JFK's real killers should be caught. Last year, though, he began harping on a new issue: the $4 billion state budget surplus, which he thought should be returned to the voters. Recruited by the local chapter of Ross Perot's Reform Party, an outraged Citizen Ventura arrived at the capitol on an icy January day to announce he was running for governor. Hardly anyone noticed.

For all his comic value, Ventura ran the kind of campaign that other so-called reformers only talk about. He raised cash by selling 6,000 T shirts at $22 a pop. Ventura didn't conduct a single poll or run up a penny of debt. His platform was mostly libertarian--lower taxes, less government--but he relished pointing out that he was the only candidate with a union card. (Never mind that it's for the Screen Actors Guild--not exactly the Teamsters.) He chose as his running mate Mae Schunk, a motherly grammar-school teacher for 36 years.