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Pastimes : Professional Wrestling, WWF and WCW Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jonathan Lebed who wrote (31)	10/26/1998 10:21:00 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 48

Ex-Wrestler Shakes Up Minn. Governor's Race Monday October 26 12:11 AM EDT dailynews.yahoo.com By Benno Groeneveld ST. PAUL, Minn. (Reuters) - For 11 years Jesse ''The Body'' Ventura slammed bodies to the canvas in the wrestling ring; now he's running a third-party campaign for governor of Minnesota that has suddenly come bouncing off the ropes. If a recent poll is correct, he will be at least a spoiler in next week's election where the main-line candidates -- Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Hubert Humphrey III -- are looking over their shoulders at someone they had largely ignored during the campaign. The chances of Reform Party candidate Ventura winning are still remote. A Minneapolis Star Tribune poll showed him with 21 percent support compared to 35 for Humphrey, son of the former vice president, and 34 percent for Coleman, the Republican mayor of St. Paul. What turned heads, however, was the poll's finding that Humphrey's support had tumbled by 14 points while Ventura's had doubled since September. Ventura, the same newspaper recently said, appears to be drawing more support than any third party effort has in Minnesota in 50 years. But Ventura isn't talking third place. Urging voters to ''drop the remote, get out and vote'' and sporting a T-shirt reading ''Retaliate in '98,'' the man who often played the bad guy in the wrestling ring says he will win. He predicts it will be with the help of ''unlikely voters'' who usually stay home on election day. He's also reminding them they can register at the polling station right before they vote. ''A vote for Jesse Ventura is a vote for Jesse Ventura,'' he said. ''It is also an opportunity to vote against the career politicians who have the gall to say that unless you vote for one of them, you're wasting your vote.'' Steve Schier, chairman of the political science department at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., says he doesn't believe Ventura can beat either Humphrey or Coleman. ''The poll shows how unimpressive the major party nominees have been in the public mind,'' he said. ''And there's a Clinton effect here -- both are career politicians and career politicians are not held in particularly high regard just now. ''I don't see Ventura winning. Each major party nominee probably has a lock on 30 to 35 percent of the vote. I think Ventura's ceiling is around 25 percent -- Ross Perot got 24 percent in Minnesota when he ran for president,'' he added. Politically Ventura espouses a libertarian philosophy. He would allow some private citizens to carry concealed weapons; wants to turn the state legislature into a year-around, on-call unicameral body; suggested recently that he's open to studying the idea of legalized prostitution; believes abortion is a personal matter for women, not the state; and has refused to accept campaign money from any special interest groups. On top of that, Ventura says, ''My opponents are boring.'' A six-year Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and was a Seal, the 47-year-old Ventura was mayor of Brooklyn Park, a close-in Minneapolis suburb of about 56,000, from 1991 to 1995. He was a radio talk show host in Minnesota until his candidacy for office forced him from that job. The burly, shaven-headed and goateed Ventura has had parts in two movies, including ''Predator,'' and has appeared on the ''X-Files'' TV series. Ventura, who was born in Minneapolis as James Janos but took his surname from a California city before he headed to the West Coast to wrestle under the name ''Jesse the Surfer,'' said in one recent interview he had no intention of running for office until the state of Minnesota turned up a $4 billion budget surplus. ''The career politicians carved it up and spent it and gave us this supposed property tax refund, which was so bogus,'' he said ''My property taxes have gone up $460 a year for four consecutive years.''