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At the federal level, yes, we need the check-and-balance of different make-ups in a House and a Senate. Otherwise, California would run the nation, in terms of representation, because they’re the biggest state. But at a state level, this actually goes against the constitution of Minnesota. It’s supposed to be one person, one vote. Not one person who gets two votes. That’s why Alan Speer, a brilliant constitutional scholar who sat in our House of Representatives, supported me on unicameral.

Well, I couldn’t even get the legislature to bring this to a floor vote. Even at a time when the entire private sector was being forced to cut back, government wasn’t about to consider reducing itself. I called them “gutless cowards,” and I meant it.

Term limits, in my view, would be a damned good idea. Maybe politicians wouldn’t then be quite so beholden to the power of corporate lobbyists. The only lobbyist I ever knowingly met with as governor was one I used—to try to get a floor vote on a unicameral legislature. Otherwise, I told my staff from the beginning: lobbyists and special interests did not elect me, so why do I need to talk to them now?

Emiliano Zapata Boulevard, the main drag of Guerrero Negro, is unpaved and dusty. The next morning, I maneuver the camper slowly past the taco stands, motels, pharmacies, restaurants, and bars, to where the street ended at a bank, a grocery store, and a small, palm-lined park. There races a group of teenaged boys, booting a soccer ball around between a pair of makeshift goal posts.

Soccer, fútbol in Mexico, as in much of the world, is the sport. I’m not a big fan, except when the World Cup rolls around every four years. My passion is the Minnesota Timberwolves. I was a season ticket-holder, and tried not to miss a game. What I’m not a fan of in the least is the power that money has come to exert over professional sports. And, as Terry and I pause to watch these enthusiastic kids playing soccer in a little town in Mexico, I think back to some of the brouhahas I became involved in as governor.

In 1997, the year before I ran for governor, there was talk that the Minnesota Twins baseball franchise was going to have to move unless a new stadium got built. Even Mexico City was said to be in the running to get the team. Governor Carlson tried to scare people by claiming a tristate group from the Carolinas was about to buy the Twins. Reporters went down there and discovered this was a made-up hoax.

Carl Pohlad, a billionaire banker who owned the team, wanted the state to pay for a new stadium. I’d been asked, in every debate during the campaign, would I support public money for new sports arenas? I said emphatically no. In the case of baseball, unless the stadium is under a roof for half the year, there’s nothing you can use it for during a Minnesota winter except maybe to send kids in to make snowmen in the middle of the field. A pro football team spends even less time in the stadium, maybe ten games a year.

I was playing a golf tournament in Tahoe, when the greatest hockey player in the world—Wayne Gretzky—came up to me. He said, “Governor, are you being pressured to build new stadiums in Minnesota?” I said I was, and Wayne said, “These owners fly off in their jets to $10,000-a-night hotel rooms in the Bahamas to have their meetings. They laugh at how they can manipulate the government and get the public, the working guy, to pay for their stadiums. Be the first one to say no.” I said, “Trust me, Wayne. I will be.” (I hope he hasn’t changed, now that he’s part owner of the Phoenix Coyotes.)

So I told Carl Pohlad that the state wasn’t in the business of financing a new stadium. He kept on making noises about selling the Twins. Pohlad happened to be good buddies with Bud Selig, the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers who then became commissioner of baseball. Selig turned the Brewers over to his daughter and, as the closest team geographically to the Twin Cities, don’t you think they might reap some benefit from getting rid of the Twins? I wasn’t all