Jesse Ventura's biggest regret about his term as Minnesota's governor (that he'll admit publicly) boils down to one word: unicameral.

With the successful premiere of his new show on TruTV this week, Ventura had a wide ranging discussion with pro wrestling blogger Kevin Eck that briefly touched on his gubernatorial career.

Ventura, who called the four years "a life experience beyond belief," said his greatest failure was not consolidating Minnesota's two houses of its Legislature into one body -- unicameral. He pushed the issue heavily during his tenure, but it never came to fruition.

From the Baltimore Sun's "Ring Posts":

Is there anything that you wanted to accomplish as governor that you didn't?

Oh, yeah. My biggest failure was not getting a vote on unicameral – one house state legislature. We don't need two houses. Nebraska is the only state that has unicameral, and in their 70- or 80-year existence of it, they've never had a special session due to the fact that they couldn't find a conclusion to their budget. At the state level, we do not need two houses. In fact it violates the Constitution because it's supposed to be one person, one vote, but because you have two houses you have one person, two votes, because you have an elected representative and a senator. So that was my biggest failure, and that's because these guys – do you think for one minute they're going to vote on eliminating 67 of their cushy jobs? So you know what I was up against on that deal. You see downsizing all the time in the private sector but amazingly you don't see it in the public sector. I'll use Minnesota as an example. Do you know that in Minnesota we have 201 elected state legislators? That's more than California, and yet they're population is what, 30 million more than ours?

Back in 2002 (Strib article no longer online), Ventura's successor and then-House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty offered some insight into why unicameral never happened. As an amendment to the Minnesota Constitution, it would first have to pass through the legislatures and then face a public vote on Election Day.

House Majority Leader Tim Pawlenty, R-Eagan, said the Legislature properly serves as a gatekeeper for most constitutional amendments, deciding which ones should be sent to voters. But deciding whether an amendment for a one-house legislature should be put to a vote is akin to a conflict of interest, he said.

"Who should decide the issue of whether one-half of us should lose our positions - us or the people?" he asked.