Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [66]
Terry’s journal, continued: After we dumped the trailer, we could go about 20 miles an hour with lots of slowdowns to keep from ruining the camper. We even went off-road onto the Baja 1000 track, which at times was smoother, but then we would have to go back on the road. We spent about four hours or more trying to navigate that road, and I think it was about 125 kilometers [a little over seventy miles] long. We had some very treacherous turns on hills going through the mountains that were very scary, with and without the trailer, where I was looking down into canyons that were about a hundred-foot drop or more.
You can’t make any time on the Baja 1000 track either, because it’s up-and-down like a roller coaster. But at least you don’t get the washboarding. Occasionally, the road consists of volcanic black gravel and, at those times it is passably decent. At a place called Alfonsina’s, a supply point for the next bay, we decide to take a break and stay the night. We go maybe one-tenth of the distance I’ve figured on making today.
As we get Dexter settled and climb into our bunks, Terry smiles and says: “Now here’s a place where your light-rail transit system would really come in handy!”
I laugh. “When I take over the Baja,” I say, “that’s the first thing I’m gonna push for!”
Headline: LARRY KING LIVE: JESSE VENTURA DISCUSSES YOUTH VIOLENCE, POLITICS, AND THE ECONOMY
KING: What’s the toughest part about not being in a party and governing a state?
VENTURA: Well, you don’t have any political punch out there. You don’t have spin doctors and people that can try to make it right and all of that stuff. You really kind of stand on an island, and you have to, you know, take your own punches and weather the storm as it goes along. But I like that. I’ve been kind of a renegade and a loner and a rebel my entire life and career. So I’m very comfortable doing that.
But the nice thing is, too, I don’t have to answer to a political party either very much. You know, I don’t have to get in lockstep with a party, and I don’t have to hire party cronies. I can get the best person for the job regardless of their party without having to hire within a party.
—CNN, March 14, 2001
I like to steal a line that I heard Kinky Friedman say when he was running for governor of Texas as an independent: “A politician looks to the next election, a statesman looks to the next generation.” As governor, I tried to accomplish some things that, maybe ten or fifteen years later, people would look back at and say: “Boy, what a bright decision that was. Ahead of its time.”
The light-rail transit system I fought for might fall under that category. Light rail is the modern version of the streetcar or trolley, using less massive equipment and infrastructure than rapid transit systems. Back in the early fifties, the Twin Cities had probably the best mass transit in the world—a streetcar system that could take you anywhere in the metropolitan area. That is, until the automotive, gasoline, and tire industries lobbied successfully to destroy it. Like they had done in Los Angeles a few years earlier. Thanks to those same people, all the track was pulled up and gotten rid of. I was told while governor that some of the streetcars are still in operation—in New Jersey, where Minnesota ended up selling them.
I pushed for light rail because I saw it as playing an important role in the future. Especially when it came to transportation, I felt that people need options, choices. Here’s how my thinking evolved. When I’d gone to work for Ted Turner as a commentator for World Championship Wrestling down in Atlanta, in the early 1990s, I used to take a taxi from the airport to CNN Center that would cost between twenty and twenty-five dollars. Along the way you’re subject to an accident on the highway that causes congestion, or whatever it might be. One day, after I’d been doing this for a couple months, a fellow who’d been sitting next