ED'S JUST A REGULAR GUY RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR

I spent four hours with Ed Thompson on Thursday, and he never went "off the
record." Not once. Never caught himself and said don't write that down.
That's the first thing I like about him.

Here's the second thing. A pen and pad aren't nearly adequate to gather up
all the quotes and anecdotes that tumble out of his mouth. A Shop-Vac would
work better.

One quick story from the campaign trail to become Wisconsin's next
governor: "I won a cheese curd-eating contest in Little Chute. Who could
eat half a pound of cheese curds the fastest. A Fox News anchor was the
defending three-time champion. I clobbered him. I was thinking I'd need
dynamite to go to the bathroom."

Despite that concern, Thompson is running as a regular guy. He's also
running as a Libertarian, which normally means you could shove a
bushelbasket of cheese curds up your nose in the town square and still no
one would notice your candidacy.

But you already know what's different about Ed Thompson, how his big
brother Tommy used to be governor. Ed looks a lot like Tommy, but more
impish. And I'm guessing that Tommy was wearing socks on Thursday.

Ed is not expecting his Republican brother's endorsement, "but I expect his
vote," he says. His more immediate concern is getting at least 6% of the
vote in the Sept. 10 primary so he can qualify for matching campaign funds.

Thompson - Ed, that is - pulled up in front of my house at 5:30 Thursday
morning. He had invited me to get up at this obscenely early hour to join
him for George Webb restaurant hopping. His image of an Ed-head from
Milwaukee is someone you'd find eating real food at Webb's, so he went out
to shake some greasy hands.

His driver, Roosevelt Moore, used to work with Thompson as guards at the
federal prison in Oxford. You don't have time to hear about every
interesting job Thompson has had over the years. One of them was
professional poker player, which he gave up after pushing $15,000 into the
pot during a tournament in Las Vegas, only to see his ace-high flush beaten
by a full house.

Thompson has abandoned most of his vices. He gave up drinking eight years
ago, though he'll be happy to serve you one at his supper club in Tomah,
Mr. Ed's Tee Pee. And he crumbled up his last pack of cigarettes during a
coughing fit five years ago.

Let's see - gambling, drinking, smoking. That leaves politics. And Thompson
only fell into that because he was so mad that Wisconsin authorities
slapped him with four felonies after raiding his bar and finding video
poker machines there in 1997. The charges were later dismissed after a
parade of prospective jurors said they couldn't convict Ed over something
so stupid.

That episode of government intrusion is when Thompson realized he's always
been a Libertarian. He ran for mayor of Tomah and won. And after touching
the cloak of wrestler-turned-Minnesota-governor Jesse Ventura, he decided
last year to make a run for Wisconsin's top office.

The way he sees it, people are fed up with entrenched and corrupt
politicians and ready to seriously consider a plain-old, hard-working
third-party guy to be governor.

"Lunchbucket Joe - that's what I am, that's what I've been all my life," he
said.

"He's more for the working people," said Vince "Speedy" Garcia, an auto
mechanic dining at the Webb on 20th and Mitchell.

Thompson's not a mainstream Democrat or Republican, but it doesn't hurt to
hear what he has to say about cutting state spending, supporting school
choice, favoring medical use of marijuana, or your favorite issue.

Don't automatically dismiss him, as he said one small-town editorial writer
did, as "swimming at the shallow end of the Thompson gene pool."

The deep end is overrated.