Former Gov. Jesse Ventura said Friday that he eagerly agreed to Gov. Tim Walz's request for endorsement because the DFL governor won him over four years ago.
After Walz was elected governor in 2018, he called Ventura for advice during the whirlwind of the first 24 hours after his victory. Ventura said that neither of his other two successors, GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, sought his counsel.
So when Walz recently called Ventura for his endorsement, the former governor said he "thought a moment" and signed on.
That was just part of a feisty and entertaining 20-minute interview that Ventura gave Friday on WCCO Radio's Chad Hartman Show.
The former Reform Party governor, who served from 1999 to 2003, said he was aware of the backlash from Republicans over his endorsement of Walz. An hour before Ventura went on the air with Hartman, GOP challenger Scott Jensen brought up the endorsement on Minnesota Public Radio during the final gubernatorial debate.
The governor, Jensen said, was celebrating his endorsement by Ventura — "the same guy who is on with Alex Jones and said police better wake up to the facts that when you arm them to look like storm troopers and make them look like SS Nazi troops, that's a recipe for disaster."
In his interview with Hartman, Ventura didn't address that comment directly. But he blamed the Republican Party for the "deterioration" of democracy.
Republicans, he said, "won't even acknowledge Jan. 6 ... and yet they claim they're the party of law and order. Well excuse me, that was a violent attack on our Capitol that day and they don't even want it investigated."