Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [13]
It was five minutes to midnight. About 60 percent of the vote had been counted. I had 37 percent, Coleman stood at 34, and Humphrey was at 28. Out in the public area, kids were getting wild. They had several mosh pits going, passing bodies over their heads. I was asked to go out again and calm them down a bit. As I stood up, on the TV the local CBS affiliate put a check mark beside my name. Declaring me the winner!
I envisioned that famous headline from the 1948 presidential election: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” I quieted my people down, saying, “Wait a minute, how can they do that? Four out of ten Minnesotans haven’t even been counted yet. I’m not going out there and claiming victory, I’ll look like an idiot.”
Then the other two networks followed suit with check marks. Bill Hillsman, a true genius, who’d put together the TV and radio ads that many people felt pushed us over the top, walked over to me. He said, “Jesse, you trusted me with the ads, didn’t you?” I said yes. He said, quietly, “Then will you believe me on this?” “What?” I said. I felt numb, more than anything. “Trust me, Jesse. You’re the governor. They know. They haven’t been wrong since Dewey.”
TERRY: All of a sudden we looked and there was this check mark on the screen by his name. I was so terrified, I couldn’t think; I was hyperventilating. I went in the bathroom with two of my friends, because we were getting ready to go out onto a big stage. “What am I gonna do?” I asked them. “Oh, you’re the First Lady!” they shouted at me.
I went in the stall, sat down, and said, “Okay, nothing has changed. Even when you’re the First Lady, you still don’t get the stall with the toilet paper!” And my girlfriends just busted up.
I went out and told the crowd that nothing was official until I received those calls of concession from my two opponents. Forty-five minutes later, the phone rang twice. At the racetrack, the Rolling Stones were blaring. The people were splashing beer and highfiving and chanting like they do after a touchdown at pro football games: “Na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey-hey-yeah, gooooood-bye!”
In a private room, Terry was curled up in her mother’s lap. She was crying. “I don’t know to handle this,” she said. “I wear leather and jeans. And I’m supposed to be Minnesota’s First Lady? I don’t think I can do it!”
I stood at a microphone and gazed out at the people. “Thank you for renewing my faith that the American Dream still lives,” I said.
“I didn’t make a lot of promises,” I told them. “I’m gonna do the best job I can do. I’m human. I’ll probably make mistakes. And let’s remember that we all make ’em. And if they’re mistakes from the heart, then you don’t have to apologize for them.”
I thanked my wife and kids, who, about a before year ago, had said to me, “Are you NUTS?!” With my voice trembling I thanked my parents, who were buried not far away in the Fort Snelling National Cemetery.
It was about three in the morning when the state troopers shuttled Terry and me over to a hotel about five hundred yards away. Somehow, Terry had the presence of mind to bring along some champagne. I popped the cork, we each took a swig and smiled at each other. “You’re the governor!” she said.
I could feel her excitement for me, but I also knew that she was terrified.
“And you’re the First Lady!” I said, and raised my glass to the woman who still means more to me than anything.
Headline: THE NATION: NOW, PRESIDENTIAL ‘BODY’ POLITICS; BUT SERIOUSLY, MR. VENTURA
Neither Vice President Al Gore nor Gov. George W. Bush of Texas is ripping his shirt off and wrapping a feather boa around his neck in the style of Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota. But barely one year after Mr. Ventura’s unlikely election on the Reform Party ticket unnerved Democrats and Republicans, politicians have generally stopped joking about the professional wrestler turned