Bobby and Jesse: Reunion in Tucson

By Dick Russell, Special to The Kennedy Beacon

Monday, February 5: Outside downtown Tucson’s Fox Theatre, the line stretched for several blocks. By eight o’clock, they would need to open the balcony, extra seating to hold close to a thousand people. It was the largest rally so far of RFK Jr.’s burgeoning presidential campaign. As the crowd gathered, the candidate was meeting behind closed doors with the man who put independent politics on the map in 1998. That was the year pro wrestler Jesse Ventura stunned the nation by knocking off the two parties and claiming the Minnesota governorship.

The two had met once before almost twenty years earlier, when they went diving together off the coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. Since then, they’d spoken on occasion but never had the chance to reconnect in person. Now Jesse “The Body” had just moved with his wife into a winter home in suburban Tucson. And when Bobby asked if Ventura might introduce him here, Jesse happily accepted. 

I’d first brought them together back in 2004, and had the honor since of coauthoring five books with Ventura before recently publishing a biography of The Real RFK Jr. So I flew in from L.A. to usher the governor with a few words onto the stage. As we’d sat together in his backyard that afternoon, I told Jesse of a poll of under-thirty voters finding him the most popular choice to be Bobby’s vice-presidential running mate. This surprised him, wondering how younger people even knew who he was. 

Then he recalled how that age group had catapulted him into the governorship. He’d been advised that young people didn’t vote, but still insisted he get booked on every college campus, where they wound up “hanging from the rafters.” Ventura added: “Now they’re in their forties, and I can’t tell you how many come up to me saying ‘Governor, you were the first person I ever voted for.’ I tell them: ‘Don’t stop now, keep voting.’” 

At 72, Ventura remains in good shape, working out and playing golf on a regular basis. When we arrived at the theater, Bobby had yet to show up but the governor readily entertained some of the campaign staff. “I’ve always flown by the seat of my pants, speaking from the heart,” he told them. Informed “that’s how Bobby rolls, too,” Ventura replied: “If I get rolling, you may have to hook me off.” 

He then launched into political analysis. “The thing that irks me is that getting ballot access is not universal. It should be the same in every state, but they’re all different – by design. I’ll go into a little history.” He spoke of how the two parties had teamed up to keep Ross Perot out of the presidential debates in the 1990s, but made a miscalculation in Minnesota by allowing Ventura in. “The Democrats looked like they were being gracious, but it was calculated. They thought because I was fiscally conservative, I’d take away from the Republican vote. Well, it went the opposite. Because I was allowed to debate, I went from polling at nine percent to winning with thirty-seven!” 

Serendipitously, on this very day a new NBC News poll revealed that 34 percent of potential voters said they’d consider voting for Bobby. Now, when the candidate walked in, Jesse thrust out his hand and enthused: “It’s been too long, far too damn long.” Had he been scuba diving lately? Bobby wondered. The governor shook his head. “I have too many memories of the Navy, blowing up ships in the middle of the night. It’s kind of anticlimactic to go down looking for sponges.” Bobby laughed, then beamed as Jesse recalled JFK having created the Navy SEALs. 

“Bobby, how are you holding up through this?” Ventura asked. “So far so good,” Bobby replied and added: “I really have a lot to talk to you about.” First, though, NBC News needed him for an interview, while Jesse was to head upstairs to address a group of donors. There he quickly cut to the chase.

“They’re telling us we’re a divided nation today. No we’re not, all you need to do to stop the division is elect an independent! As soon as you do that, you’ll see the two parties get in bed together and start singing koom-ba-ya!” To laughter and applause, he continued: “I know, I’ve been through it. When I was governor of Minnesota, I had a Republican House and a Democratic Senate. For three years, whichever one I sided with generally prevailed. Until the last year – when they came together to oppose me, the commonsense middle. I’m fiscally conservative like a Republican, but I’m socially liberal like a Democrat. So I don’t fit either category.” Which, someone pointed out, is quite similar to RFK Jr. 

Jesse then went into a two-party tirade. “One of the people I brought into my campaign was the late great Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who said: ‘If you’re made to pick the lesser of two evils, it still means you’re picking evil.’ Think about it. My friend Ralph Nader put it best: ‘the two-party dictatorship.’ That’s what the country has turned into, and remember what John Adams warned us – when the parties take over the government, that’ll be the end of America.’” He went on to reflect on the congressional stalemate over a bill to alleviate the border crisis, “where they put their party ahead of their country.”

As Bobby showed up at the door, Jesse continued: “I get to introduce somebody now, haven’t done that probably since the WWF [World Wrestling Federation]. Anyway, here’s a man I hope can pull off an upset, and help destroy the two-party dictatorship that we live under, and bring us into a new era of politics in America.” 

After Bobby and the donors lined up for selfies, he went back downstairs to speak privately with Jesse. About forty-five minutes later, a few staffers were allowed into the room. The two had already covered considerable common ground – including their meetings with Fidel Castro and their friendships with the writer Hunter Thompson. 

Now Jesse returned to the pivotal topic of ballot access. “We’re going to be able to make it, we’ve got a plan,” Bobby assured him. Jesse then raised the specter of Donald Trump. “I despise Trump,” he said. “Let me put it to you this way, Bobby. The Republicans kicked George Santos out of Congress, right? You’re telling me that, in deceiving his voters, Santos committed more egregious crimes than Trump has? General Kelly, former head of the Marine Corps, wrote at the end of his book, if we re-elect this man, God help us.”

Yet, in one of political history’s great ironies, he added: “Trump followed me to a T. I didn’t do fundraisers, I did rallies. That’s what he did.”

“How did you raise money?” Bobby asked.

“I didn’t. First let me categorize – the Democrats and Republicans combined spent $12 million in Minnesota in 1998. I raised and spent $300,000.”

“Wow, how did you do that?” Bobby persisted.

“The press flocks to me. And I had a statewide radio show. What did Trump do? National TV show. He copied me right down the line.”

He was still fuming over what happened on January 6, ”when the Republicans allowed the Confederate flag to be carried through my capitol. They haven’t apologized for it, barely even acknowledged it. Good thing I wasn’t security that day, I hate to tell you what would have happened to that Confederate flag guy.”

Jesse was rolling now. “Where do I stand on wars? I’m against all of ‘em! Every war in my lifetime has accomplished nothing – except to make people rich.” 

Bobby nodded fervently in agreement. Jesse described his father’s six Bronze battle stars from World War II, but his later opposition to the Vietnam War at a time when his son was still gung-ho. “I told him about the domino effect of communism that I’d learned in school. My dad said, ‘Is that what they’re teaching you? That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life. You want to know why we’re fighting the Vietnam War? Because somebody’s making big money!’” 

“That’s right,” Bobby said. 

“I was fortunate enough to go over there and come back. I said, ‘Dad, you were right.’ He said, ‘I knew I was right, the problem is sometimes as a young person you’re not gonna listen and have to learn it the hard way.’” 

The theater was almost full. As Jesse prepared to enter the auditorium, he spoke about another matter close to his heart. A decade ago, his wife had been stricken with a seizure disorder and none of the prescribed medications worked. “We were beside ourselves,” he recalled. They drove to Colorado, where medical marijuana had become legalized. The cannabis drops did the trick. “From that day forward, she never had a seizure since. It pissed me off that health care would pay for all these drugs that don’t work, but not cannabis, which does.” Today, in Minnesota, where adults are now legally allowed to possess and use marijuana, Jesse and his son Tyrel have entered the cannabis business. 

Standing before a packed house, Jesse told the people: “I’m here in support of Robert F. Kennedy’s bid for President of the United States…. He will make it on ideas. That’s what I ran on in Minnesota and the people responded, the voter turnout went sky high. Bobby can do the same thing nationally.” He asked the crowd to “imagine the world we would live in today if the two Kennedy brothers had lived. There would have been no Vietnam, no Cold War. We’d be friends with Cuba…. Maybe it’s time to reelect another Kennedy.”

To chants of “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby” and “USA USA USA,” RFK Jr. walked onstage. He began by paying tribute to the man who preceded him. “When we met for the first time, my kids were ecstatic about the idea of going scuba diving with Jesse. We spent the day on the boat and did a bunch of dives. Jesse enthralled the kids with stories about his life as a Navy SEAL and diver during the Vietnam War, and being the governor – and Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. It was a high point of their lives. And we’ve remained friends ever since.”

As he went on to address the crucial issues of our time – the chronic disease epidemic, the crisis at the border, the takeover of housing by the big corporations – and what he would do to make a difference, Governor Ventura stood watching from backstage, nodding his head, rocking back and forth … and smiling. 

Dick Russell is an award-winning environmental journalist and the author of several books on climate change and nature, as well as a biographical portrait of The Real RFK Jr.