GUTS AND, SO FAR, GLORY: VENTURA WINS OVER MANY

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Armed with a bullhorn, the 6-foot-4, 260-pound governor of
Minnesota came striding down the Capitol steps last week to confront his
accusers: a crowd of college students rallying to protest rising tuition
costs and demand more student aid. When a young woman who described herself
as a single mother shouted out a complaint, the governor exploded in anger.

"I don't want to seem hard-core, but why did you become a parent?" asked
Jesse Ventura. "It takes two people to parent. Is it the government's job
to make up for someone's mistake?"

A week later, Ventura was unrepentant.

"They thought I was going to back down," he said, puffing on a fat cigar in
the back seat of his limousine as he returned from doing a radio call-in
show Tuesday night. "But I don't back down. That's one thing you'll never
have to worry about with me, having guts. I'll probably get in trouble for
having guts."

If he's in trouble, it's not with the voters. Ventura, 47, shocked the
state and the nation in November when he won the state's gubernatorial
election as a Reform Party candidate, beating out long-established and
well-known Republican and Democratic opponents by getting 37 percent of the
vote in a three-way race. A Star-Tribune/KMSP-TV poll earlier this month
put his approval rating at 72 percent, which suggests he's winning over a
lot of people who didn't vote for him.

The bullhorn episode doesn't seem to have tarnished the luster. Hundreds of
calls flooded into his office afterward, with eight to one favorable, said
spokesman John Wodele. "They were saying, 'Way to go Jesse. Thank you for
standing up to those people,' " said Ventura, who will be in Washington for
the National Governors' Association meeting that starts today.

These are heady days for Minnesota as their
ex-bandanna-and-pink-boa-wearing professional wrestler governor continues
to bring uncommon attention to the "Land of 10,000 Lakes."

This week, Ventura appeared on the Tom Snyder show. Next Tuesday, he's on
David Letterman. The Rolling Stones played in Minneapolis Monday night, and
the governor -- who worked as a bodyguard for the group in the early 1980s
- -- partied backstage with the band. "Charlie Watts gave me a drumstick and
Keith Richards gave me his guitar pick!" the rock-and-roll
enthusiast/politician gushed to everyone he encountered the next morning.

But it hasn't been all fun and games. "I'm putting in 10 hours a day,
Monday through Friday," the governor reassured listeners of KFAN radio,
where he hosted a call-in show before resigning last year to run for governor.

Not only is Ventura working, but he's doing it under unusual circumstances
- -- as the head of the nation's only trilateral government. Democrats
control the state Senate; Republicans, the House; and the Reform Party, the
governorship. That configuration has only heightened the political
contrasts of a state that has elected perhaps the nation's most liberal
senator, Paul D. Wellstone (D), and one of its most conservative, Rod Grams
(R).

Because the Reform Party -- formed by Ross Perot after his unsuccessful
presidential campaign in 1992 -- exists basically as a shell organization
in Minnesota, Ventura has assembled a bipartisan administration that
borrows heavily from the staffs of his vanquished opponents from last
year's governor's race, St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman (R) and former attorney
general Hubert H. Humphrey III (D).

During his campaign, Ventura promised to cut billions in taxes and return
surplus money to the taxpayers. The cornerstone of his budget proposal --
which the legislature must vote on before it adjourns in May -- is a $1.1
billion sales tax rebate, with an average family receiving about $775, and
a $1.6 billion income tax cut phased in over four years.

He's also begun to fulfill his promise to improve education and reduce
class sizes by dedicating 70 percent of new government spending to
education. The 2.9 percent increase in government spending is half that
averaged by his predecessor, Republican Gov. Arne H. Carlson. And he has
proposed investing the first installment of the proceeds from the state's
tobacco lawsuit, about $1.3 billion, and using the interest to finance
endowments and foundations for medical education and research, health
programs and programs to help families move from welfare to work.

Ventura has made his share of rookie missteps. He suggested that his wife
Terry should be paid $25,000 a year for the official duties she conducts as
the state's first lady, then backed off after he received a hail of
criticism. His nominee to head the state's natural resources committee
resigned after reports surfaced that he had repeatedly been cited for fish
and game license violations. And he caused a stir when it was reported he'd
received a special permit to allow him to pack a handgun -- not only in
public but at the Capitol.

Still, said Senate Majority Leader Roger D. Moe (D), "Overall, I'd say he's
done a very good job. . . . Most of my complaints, I'd have to say, would
be of the nitpicking variety."

Republicans give him more guarded praise, saying the governor should have
offered more dramatic tax cuts and rebates.

"We're a little disappointed because we thought he was going to be more of
a fiscal conservative," said House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty (R). "I
will give him credit, though, for slowing down the rate of spending."

Ventura described his budget as one befitting his centrist political
beliefs. In an interview in his office this week, he expounded on that
philosophy.

"The way I look at it, 70 percent of Minnesotans, and maybe even 70 percent
of the nation, are not being represented politically," said Ventura, who
shares the governor's mansion with his wife of 22 years and their two
teenage children. "I believe the Republicans and the Democrats have reached
levels of extreme, where they're out there representing 15 percent extreme
left and 15 percent extreme right. And the 70 percent of us who are more
centrist have to then choose between the lesser of two evils."

Ventura said he won because voters were tired of doctrinaire and
ideological partisan politics and were eager for a plain-talking leader
beholden to no one. As a Reform Party candidate, he took no money from
political action committees and raised a fraction of what his opponents
did. That decision, he says, has left him remarkably free to speak his mind.

"Jesse's really not a politician at all," said Dan Cole, an on-air
personality at KFAN. "A lot of people think he's just a dumb wrestler, but
he's very smart and a great debater. It's street smarts, and people just
respond to him."

Bill Hillsman, Ventura's media strategist, said Ventura's success will
depend on his ability to engage the public and use it for leverage, since
he doesn't have an established party to help him fight for his issues.
"Jesse's got a direct wire between himself and the people who put him in
office," Hillsman said.

Ventura calls himself a social liberal and an economic conservative, whose
guiding principle is that the government should stay off people's backs,
out of their personal business and away from their wallets. He noted that
he only had a few weeks after his January inauguration to prepare his
budget. Future budgets will be more daringly conservative, he said. Among
his cost-cutting ideas is eliminating one chamber of the state legislature,
which would save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year.

Ventura also has some ideas that would be political suicide for other
politicians. Without commiting himself, he has said he would listen to
proposals that prostitution and some drugs be legalized.

"If some guy wants to go into the privacy of his own home and take LSD and
he stays in his own home and he puts no one else in danger but himself
inside his own home, why is that illegal?" he said in the interview. "Now
if he takes it and gets into a car and starts driving around the metro
area, where he's a danger to someone, well, yeah, at that point the
government has a point to come in."

Ventura is a staunch supporter of abortion rights, but he still appears to
be working through some other issues. When an aide asked his opinion about
the death penalty, which Minnesota does not have, he said: "I'd be happy to
pull the switch on a lot of 'em. But boy, if you make a mistake, this is a
person's life you're talking about. So, I'm okay with not having it."

Ventura's ideas often seem to be filtered not through an ideological
spectrum, but through the spectrum of his personal grievances. Ask him
about welfare, and he'll lecture you about the value of work and note the
example of his childhood friend's father, whose job collecting rubbish
brought him boundless fulfillment. His anti-regulatory bent often seems to
stem from his disdain for the state's $50 tax on personal watercraft, of
which he owns five.

The apparent absence of a dogmatic approach to governing seems to appeal to
many younger voters disenchanted with both major parties. Of those who
voted in November, 15 percent registered on the spot. Most were young
people, and pollsters believe most cast their ballots for Ventura.

Carleton College political science chairman Steven Schier characterized
Ventura's outlook as "erratic centrism" and said that he seemed "more
radical in thought than substance."

Ventura's governing style was on display in staff meetings this week. Aides
came and went all afternoon to discuss dozens of topics. Ventura
enthusiastically engaged, questioned and delegated.

At one point, a health department administrator began briefing him on an
obscure Medicare provision that some states believe to be unfair. Ventura
cocked his head in her direction and said: "Give it to me in one big
layman's term." The bottom line, the administrator replied, is that the
policy rewards inefficiency and punishes efficiency.

"Oh, well there you go," he said in his upper Midwest accent, reminiscent
of the movie "Fargo." "That goes right against my philosophy. That's kind
of like property taxes. If you improve your property, then you're going to
owe more money to the government. But you sit there and let your property
deteriorate and you owe less taxes. What kind of message does that send?"