Ventura Officials in Ex-Wrestler’s Corner

Could he still have won as Jesse “The Body” Oxnard?

Most of Ventura’s citizens probably didn’t know it, but their city may have played a role in propelling a professional wrestler-turned-politician to Minnesota’s statehouse in the unlikeliest victory on election day.

Long before he began stumping for votes, Jesse “The Body” Ventura was James George Janos. Realizing that name was less than a knockout for an aspiring professional wrestler, he started combing a California map for something better.

“He’d already picked the first name of Jesse and he thought Ventura went well with it,” Ventura’s media chairwoman, Gerry Drewry, said Tuesday.

“I like the fact you get to name yourself,” Ventura told a Minneapolis newspaper recently. “Jesse is what I always wanted to be called. I looked at a California map for my last name because I knew I was going to be on the West Coast.”

Ventura didn’t mention his name change as pivotal to his grass-roots victory, but he did call his election “mind-boggling.” He became the first Reform Party candidate in the nation to win a statewide office, beating Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey III, the state’s attorney general and son of the late vice president, and the Republican mayor of St. Paul, Norm Coleman.

Last-minute polls showed Ventura had the experienced politicians on the ropes, but few expected him to capture 37% of the vote and win the governor’s seat.

Locally, Ventura Mayor Jim Friedman and tourism officials said a victory for “The Body” is a victory for the city.

“It’s really interesting that the historic upset in the state of Minnesota has made the name Ventura recognized now worldwide,” Friedman said. He considered Ventura’s nationally televised victory speech the best kind of free publicity.

“It was almost surreal,” Friedman said, “because here I am sitting in my living room in the city of Ventura and 2,500 miles away in Minnesota are thousands and thousands of signs and bumper stickers displaying the name of our city.”

“I don’t know how much of it will translate into economic impact on the city,” visitors bureau Director Kathy Janega-Dykes said. “But any time we can get our name out there is a positive thing for Ventura.”

Ventura’s gubernatorial campaign lacked the flashiness “The Body” was known for as a wrestler. Running on a low budget, he portrayed himself as a common man challenging the two-party establishment. In the end, his candor and charisma proved more important than a carefully crafted platform, especially to younger voters, analysts said.

“We shocked the world,” the gap-toothed, shaven-headed Ventura told his supporters at an election night party at a St. Paul racetrack.

Ventura, 47, is a radio talk-show host, a one-term mayor of the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park and a former Navy SEAL.

But he is best known--or at least he was before election day--as a gravel-voiced bad-boy wrestler in feather boas and pink tights, who beat opponents with dirty tricks.

When Ventura began grappling on the California wrestling circuit in 1975, he played off his Gold Coast name as “Jesse Ventura, The Surfer,” before earning the nickname “The Body” when he returned to his native Minnesota.

Now the former wrestling star says he wants to reinvent himself once more as Jesse “The Mind” Ventura.

Friedman said he will probably send congratulations to the new governor--be he “The Body” or “The Mind”--along with an open invitation to visit the seaside city that bears his name.

“If he wants to escape the harsh Minnesota winter, then he may want to spend some time out here in the beautiful city of Ventura,” Friedman said.

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