Jesse Ventura
American professional wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota (born 1951)
Jesse Ventura (born James George Janos; July 15, 1951) is an American politician, Vietnam veteran, actor, and retired professional wrestler. After achieving fame in the World Wrestling Federation, he served as the 38th governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003. He was elected governor with the Reform Party and is the party's only candidate to win a major government office.
Born in Minneapolis, Ventura was a member of the Navy Special Operations Underwater Demolition/SEAL Teams during the Vietnam War. After leaving the military, he embarked on a professional wrestling career as a heel from 1975 to 1986, taking the ring name "Jesse 'the Body' Ventura." He had a lengthy tenure in the WWF/WWE as a performer and color commentator and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2004. In addition to wrestling, Ventura pursued an acting career, appearing in films such as Predator and The Running Man.
Ventura entered politics in 1991 when he was elected mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a position he held until 1995. He was the Reform Party candidate in the 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial election, running a low-budget campaign centered on grassroots events and unusual advertising that urged citizens not to "vote for politics as usual". Initially ignored as a novelty candidate, Ventura defeated Democratic state attorney general Skip Humphrey and Republican St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman in a major upset.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jesse Ventura” as american professional wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota (born 1951). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american professional wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota (born 1951). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q311161. VIAF identifies the subject as 38362693. The Library of Congress control number is n85247381. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951, 1999, 2003 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jesse Ventura” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.