James Janos Chickens Out

Someone convinced him not to be a spoiler, I guess:

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has decided not to run for U.S. Senate in that state, he told CNN's "Larry King Live" Monday night.

Jesse Ventura says he decided not to run in part because he didn't want to submit his family to media scrutiny.

Ventura, a former professional wrestler, had said last week he was weighing whether to run. The deadline to file for the race is Tuesday.

Ventura said he was "close" to running against incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, but he decided against it because he didn't want to submit his relatives to the kind of media scrutiny they endured when he was governor.

As I said, the freak show that is Janos continues unabated. Every time he sees an opportunity to try to regain relevance or political power, he's going to head fake and cause a ripple. He would not have won a Senate seat had he chosen to run this fall--he would have siphoned off enough of Al Franken's support to throw the election to Norm Coleman. As it is, Franken has a tough road ahead of him.

--WS

James Janos to Run for the US Senate

UPDATE WS @ 1128 AM: Janos says he won't "make a decision" until the filing deadline. This was probably a false alarm...

Yeah, would it kill me to call him "Jesse Ventura?" As a matter of fact, yes it would.

In an interview with NPR's David Welna that ran today former Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura, Ind-Minn., says he will run for Senate, challenging incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., whom Ventura defeated for governor in 1998, as well as Democratic nominee and former Saturday Night Live humorist Al Franken.

Ventura, born Jim Janos, tells Welna that the main reason he's running is because of Coleman's support for the war in Iraq. "That's the reason I run," he says. "I run because it angers me...All you Minnesotans take a good hard look at all three of us. And you decide: if you were in a dark alley which one of the three of us would you want with you?

Ventura had a stormy tenure as governor and horrible relations with the Minnesota press corps. Thus, it was the June issue of a local wine magazine where he chose to drop hints about his pending campaign.

"I'm not a politician, I'm a statesman," he told Wineheads. "I do one term, and then I go back to the private sector. If I get back into the fray again this year, it's only because I've been gone five years back to the private sector. That's what I did when I was mayor. That's a statesman. That's not a career politician."

I think that effectively ends any chance Al Franken had of ever being a US Senator. And no, Janos isn't going to win either. The Republicans just had a Senate seat handed back to them on a silver fucking platter.

Typically, voters don't think "yes, who would I want to be in a dark alley with me" because, well, that would mean that they would have to imagine themselves as being total fucking idiots to have gone into the dark alley with Janos, Coleman and Franken in the first place, and if a large number of voters are imagining themselves doing something stupid, well, you end up with...Governor Ventura.

I hope I'm wrong.

--WS