James Janos is born in Minneapolis. After adopting the name Jesse Ventura at the start of his professional wrestling career, he ran as an anti-establishment candidate with the Reform Party. Ventura's defeat of St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman (Republican) and State Attorney General Hubert "Skip" Humphrey III (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) in the 1998 gubernatorial race was national news, and his tenure as governor lasted from 1999 until 2002.