“As governor, I will veto any new taxes and any increase in existing taxes. And I keep my word.” –Candidate Jesse Ventura, 1998 WHEN IT CAME DOWN to keeping his word or running for a second term, Minnesota’s flamboyant governor apparently decided on trying to restore his credibility by not seeking reelection. But the damage had already been done. Ever since his remarkable election in 1998 on the Independence party ticket, former pro-wrestler and radio talk-show personality Jesse Ventura has taken full advantage of his resurrected celebrity status. A Playboy interview, appearances on late night television, two book deals, action figures, a million-dollar color commentary contract for the now defunct XFL–politics turned out to be a profitable venture for one James Janos of north Minneapolis. He ran for office on a lark, and lightning struck. But as always throughout his career, the problem was staying power, and whatever he was in, “the Body” was in it for himself. As a self-described “centrist” pol, Ventura sometimes had good instincts, combining a get-tough approach from his Navy SEAL background with just the right conservative-populist touch. But when his populism drifted to the right, Minnesota’s class warriors savaged Ventura’s moonlighting on the job; when it drifted portside, he started to sound like Molly Ivins on steroids. In the end, Ventura’s legacy is failed centrism–the false notion that you can actually play the middle on contentious issues. This year, it finally caught up with him. In an astonishing about-face in January, the governor proposed body-slamming Minnesota taxpayers to the tune of almost $2 billion in the next biennial budget. But Ventura found himself alone (save for the usual media voices) in his shrill call to increase the gas and cigarette taxes, boost the corporate minimum tax, and extend the sales tax, in addition to paring some spending. Minnesota’s Republican House and DFL (Democrat-Farmer-Labor) Senate leaders took Ventura by surprise when they proposed to eradicate Minnesota’s budget deficit of $2.4 billion–without raising taxes. Citing the lack of new revenue, Ventura vetoed the budget bills, but he was later overridden. Gubernatorial politics was certainly in play here. Roger Moe, the DFL Senate majority leader, wasn’t keen on starting his incipient campaign for governor on a platform of tax increases. Tim Pawlenty, his counterpart in the House, now the moderate GOP nominee for governor, was cajoled into signing a “no new taxes” pledge by a challenge from the right. The result was a legislative coup combining modest spending cuts with nearly $2 billion in reserves hoarded in the go-go ’90s to balance the budget. And to solve future revenue problems without tax increases, the lawmakers decided to remove the automatic inflation-adjusted spending increases in the next biennial budget, saving $1.1 billion. Most serious budget-crunchers see taking Minnesota’s budget off autopilot as crucial. In the four years since Ventura was elected, the annual general fund has ballooned 30 percent, to almost $14 billion. And notwithstanding several tax rebates–“Jesse checks,” to Ventura–state revenue is growing faster than personal income, according to the Tax Foundation. The irony for Minnesotans was that Ventura had joined the knee-jerk big-spending establishment he once ran against. He had even made a point of protecting Minnesota’s bloated budget reserves, including a half-billion dollar anti-smoking endowment used to demonize big tobacco in the eyes of children. Why did Ventura choose to alienate his natural constituency of hard-working taxpayers? True, his budget would have cut a bit more from the general fund than the legislators’, and just last year he took on the education lobby, saying at one point, “No amount of money would ever be enough.” But his conservative bark was always worse than his bite. The battle with the teachers’ union was no sooner over than Ventura started talking about restoring any so-called education cuts in the 2004-2005 biennium (his first budget raised the state’s K-12 fund by a whopping $1 billion), and he remains a steadfast opponent of school choice. Even the landmark property tax reform he championed last year turned out to be a windfall for public schools. Ventura’s “Big Plan” entailed modest relief for commercial and industrial properties and even some higher-valued homes. But once the ink dried on the state’s assuming responsibility for nearly 100 percent of education funding, a record number of school districts placed tax increase proposals on their local ballots. Cities and counties have followed suit, erasing much of the relief taxpayers counted on. Here, as on a wide range of issues, Ventura has always been more a liberal than a libertarian, something the national media consistently missed. An enthusiastic advocate of gay rights and drug legalization, Ventura nevertheless championed then Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III’s fraudulent lawsuit against big tobacco. In fact, on social issues, it was downright impossible to get to the left of the abortion-on-demand, pro-assisted-suicide governor. Indeed, conservatives had every reason to be suspicious of Ventura. As Governing magazine noted, “He talked tough about personal responsibility, yet surprised social service advocates with generous funding. He publicly excoriated college students seeking more state aid, but ended up delivering it to them anyway. In his 1998 campaign, he dismissed the state health insurance program as ‘socialized medicine.’ A year later, he safeguarded it from attempts to reduce the tax that pays for it.” Perhaps Jesse Ventura’s difficulty in matching his actions with his rhetoric is due to his background as an entertainer. Professional wrestling is built on illusion. Nothing is for real. One might say the same of Ronald Reagan’s pre-political career, but Reagan had one thing Ventura lacks: an ideology. After a few fiscal decisions proved too tough, the Body started calling himself a “pragmatist.” From then on, every policy was up for grabs and largely dependent on his cadre of liberal advisers. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the area of metropolitan land-use planning. Ventura’s appointment of Ted Mondale, son of Walter, to head up the Twin Cities’ regional government, the Metropolitan Council, was consistent with his unwavering commitment to mass transit and new urbanism at the expense of roads and suburbs. This hasn’t sat well with the Twin Cities’ fastest growing political constituency, right-leaning suburbanites. Nevertheless, Ventura’s intellectual inconsistencies, as well as his strange behavior, were tolerated until the economy went south and he climbed aboard the tax-hike bandwagon. Then, instead of realizing his mistake, he characteristically dug in his heels. Citing the war on terrorism, he offered the maudlin suggestion that it was Minnesota’s patriotic duty to raise taxes: “I’ve been accused of breaking a campaign promise that I would never raise taxes. Well, . . . in a time of war and in defense of our country, I will break any campaign promise.” It didn’t fly–a February poll by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune showed only 29percent of state voters would support the governor for reelection. Ventura the outsider was left holding the big-government bag. To be sure, Ventura is never completely down and out, and anything could have happened had he run in what was shaping up as a three-way race. But the governor’s image had taken a beating. His unorthodox stances on certain issues (he refused to sign a routine proclamation observing a National Day of Prayer, for instance) were wearing thin, and the numerous mini-scandals (the latest of which involved his son’s use of the governor’s mansion) were approaching critical mass. In the midst of this year’s budget battle, Ventura blurted out, “If Minnesota doesn’t want to make the contribution to fight this war, maybe I don’t want to be governor of this state.” His backtracking on taxes had delivered the coup de grace to his political career,
and in the end he knew it. Jason Lewis hosts a weekday talk show on AM1500 KSTP in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
