Jesse Ventura
Jesse "The Body" Ventura is a former professional wrestler turned politician who was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 on the Reform Party ticket after winning in an upset with a campaign that was "Don't vote for politics as usual". The surprise win led to sales of "My governor can beat up your governor" T-shirts. Ventura appeared to enjoy the notoriety more than the job, however. He insisted on now being known as "Jesse the Mind" Ventura, did an interview for Playboy, guest-refereed a pay per view WWF wrestling match while he was governor, and wrote his 1999 best selling memoir I Ain't Got Time to Bleed. In 2001 he also allowed himself to be hired as a commentator for the short lived XFL football league. [1]
Ventura believed prostitution should be legalized and called organized religion a "sham". In an effort at damage control he then specifically attacked "fundamentalist fanatics" who he claimed thought "everybody must believe the same things they do." He gave no examples. He was also appalled that "there are lots of people out there who think they know the truth about God and religion."
Although riding a wave of popularity when he first came into office, by the time of the next election that had changed. When Ventura made the choice not to run again for re-election, his popularity rating had dropped into the teens.
In 1999, Ventura had a public disagreement with erstwhile Reform Party leader Ross Perot over Perot's control of the party and with Pat Buchanan's seeking the party's 2000 nomination, and Ventura took the Minnesota branch independent of the national Reform Party to become the Independence Party of Minnesota. In 2002, Ventura appointed his fellow Reform/Independence Party politican Dean Barkley to the U.S. Senate to fill out the remaining two months in the term of the deceased Paul Wellstone.