Adventures on the Political Fringe

Minnesota Body Jesse “The Governor” Ventura--OK, so I have his title and nickname reversed--will referee a professional wrestling match Aug. 22 in Minneapolis. A referee in wrestling is very much like a politician. Whenever there is trouble, you can usually count on one to look the wrong way.

Ventura will be paid $100,000. He will donate it to worthy causes, the big, soft-hearted lug.

Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio, 47, a young Republican who wanted to be president of the United States, is pulling out of the 2000 race because he cannot compete with Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s financial war chest of $36 million.

If only someone would offer Kasich a series of refereeing gigs at 100 grand a pop, he could afford to stay in the race against gorgeous George, right up to the Republican convention in Philadelphia.

As it stands, Kasich says he will support Bush, a man he now calls a “soul brother,” next summer at the Grand Old Party’s party in the city of soul-brotherly love.

Kasich is the second Republican candidate to withdraw in a week, following the example of New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith, who also couldn’t rake in bucks as fast as Bush.

We can’t all be Steve Forbes, whose campaigns are virtually self-financed. We can’t be H. Ross Perot, who probably thinks of George Bush as a boy from the poor side of town.

Campaign money’s hard to come by.

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Consider what happened to Crystal Dueker, also a Republican, when she made a brief bid for the U.S. Senate last year in North Dakota.

She was Dakota’s answer to Jesse the Body, a candidate who came from an unusual background. A number of jokes were made about Dueker’s background (and foreground) during her campaign.

“My political run was very short,” she tells me from her home in Fargo. “My only reason for coming forward was to fill a void in the Republican Party, since no other person would run against [Democratic incumbent] Byron Dorgan.”

Dueker’s bid didn’t last long.

She did the best she could, without sufficient funding. And she did her best to be taken seriously, just as Jesse the Body sought to be taken seriously.

“My platform,” she says, “was domestic abuse reform, Social Security reform, helping to lower the tax burden and to give as much power back to the state [and away from the federal government] as possible.

“Of course, my biggest focus was a philosophy of individual freedom, to keep the government from intruding on our personal lives, which fits in with my lifestyle and pro-choice beliefs.”

Dueker is a nudist.

She first got in touch with me when a crackdown on public nudity began in the popular Black’s Beach area of San Diego, which for years had been a haven for the clothing-impaired.

(I, by the way, am a big believer in public nudity. It’s only in private where I am uncomfortable with it.)

Pro-nude in the same way some are pro-nukes, Dueker doesn’t believe in censorship. She says she helped gather 5,000 signatures, more than the 3,000 needed, for a referendum in North Dakota that enabled voters to stop the closure of a strip club.

Then came her 1998 Senate campaign.

When her candidacy was announced, Jay Leno mentioned it in his “Tonight Show” monologue on NBC. Dueker says the joke went something like this: “Did you hear about that Republican woman from North Dakota who is a nudist and wants to run for the Senate? Let’s see, nudism, North Dakota, winter . . . that’s commitment!”

Every politician takes a ribbing.

“Perhaps the best slogans I could have used in my Senate campaign,” Dueker ribs herself, “would have been: ‘She has nothing to hide!’ or ‘Crystal Dueker supports the right to bear arms, as well as bare legs and breasts.”

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I must admit, I’m warming up to Jesse Ventura. My first impression was that Minnesotans had gone off their rockers, but I am becoming quite taken with this man who supports our right to bear hugs.

After a press conference at which the governor announced his plan to ref a $29.95, pay-per-view World Wrestling Federation event, one political commentator, Dick Morris, calling it “a ritual political suicide,” went on to say, “In the past 15 minutes, this man has destroyed his political career.”

I couldn’t disagree more, Dick.

Jesse Ventura could probably beat George Bush and a Democratic candidate, with one arm behind his back. With a nudist running mate, just imagine the money he could raise.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com