That was the last I thought of it until rumors started popping up the next day that the governor was, in fact, either in town or on his way. People claimed to have seen him. A friend of the governor’s assured me that Ventura himself was having dinner with his family at the mansion in Minnesota, and that his suitcase wasn’t packed. He had left the Reform Party in February, and he had no thoughts of returning now.
Then I got a call from a Capt. Jay Swanson of the Capitol bureau of the Minnesota State Police. At first,I thought was just a friend putting me on, but Capt. Swanson proved quite sincere. Turns out the governor’s security detail had become increasingly concerned about a man who looked and sounded like Ventura, and might be passing himself off as The Body himself. At the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, this pseudo-Jesse apparently had so many observers befuddled that the barrage of press calls to Minneapolis nearly shut down the capitol switchboard. Capt. Swanson wanted to make sure this imposter wasn’t actually claiming to be the governor himself, and he thought perhaps I might have come across him.
A few quick calls revealed that the phony Ventura had been meeting, greeting and handing out business cards with an LA. number. He called himself Jesse Ventuna, as in the fish. So I put in a call to Mr. Ventuna, whose real name, it turns out, is Richard Carmichael. For Mr. Carmichael, who is 41, Ventura’s rise to fame was incredibly fortuitous; he just happens to look and sound exactly like the man. He recently quit his job as a sales representative for a grocery wholesaler to pursue other interests, primarily his role as a Jesse impersonator. He appeared last year on the Tonight Show–he rode on a float but didn’t get to show off the accent–and has had about 10 corporate jobs so far. He gets as much as $1,500 for a whole day, or $300 an hour.
Carmichael-Ventuna was shocked and dismayed to learn that the Minnesota state police were checking into him. In fact, he says he called them a while back but no one called him back. He wanted to offer himself up, free of charge, as a body double, in case Ventura was ever in danger and needed a decoy. “I’m getting something from him,” Carmichael explained. “I wanted to give something back.” He says he never actually tells people he’s Ventura, adding, “I’ve done a lot of studying on him and I would never misrepresent his political platform.” When he watched one of the two dueling Reform candidates speak, for instance, Carmichael was careful not to clap. “I just wanted to go out and have a little fun,” he said. “I think that convention needed it.”
I asked Carmichael to do his impression for me. “Ask me a question,” he said. (There’s something you rarely hear from the real governor.) “OK,” I said, “which of these Reform candidates, Pat Buchanan and John Hagelin, do you support?” “At this time,” he answered, suddenly transformed, “I’m not throwing my hat into anybody’s ring.” Pretty dead on–and on message, too.
As I was leaving the convention hall, some members of the Ohio Reform delegation were selling collectors items: “Jesse Ventura for President, Reform 2000” buttons. “He came by here yesterday and waved,” an older woman said. I told her she’d been misled. She looked crestfallen, and I wished I hadn’t said anything.
