[Ed. Note: Men's Health did a recent article talking about just how fit Libertarian Party candidate & former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is. Johnson owns a 2:47 marathon PR and is a four time Ironman finisher including a 10:39 performance in Kona in 1999. The question came up on our forum when we were going to interview Johnson for Slowtwitch, and some intrepid folks realized that we already did, over 16 years ago. Reprinted below is Dan Empfield's interview with then-governor Johnson from August, 2000.]
INTRO: As most Slowtwitch.com readers know, we do not engage in your garden-variety interview. No use spending the time unless the person on the other side of the table has something interesting or out-of-the-ordinary to talk about. Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico, is certainly not ordinary, and we thought he'd probably give good interview.
We're not going to spoil the story with a lot of foreplay-ography. We'll ask the questions, he'll give the answers, and if this is the Gary Johnson we've heard about, the familiar political bob-and-weave will be refreshingly absent.
SLOWTWITCH: You've been generating a bit of news lately.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: I guess so. I don't notice it in New Mexico, but I guess there is a little bit of news being generated.
SLOWTWITCH: How many governors get to go on "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher"?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Right, right.
SLOWTWITCH: And to get called his hero?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: [Laughs]
SLOWTWITCH: You're one of the few who's had this distinction bestowed upon him.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: And according to Bill—which I don't know if this is good or bad—I'm the only one.
SLOWTWITCH: I don't know whether that's something you want to put on your resume or hide from public view.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: [Laughs] I agree... I agree, I don't know.
SLOWTWITCH: Your first triathlon was in 1980. That's a long time ago—which one was that?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: That was the Jay Benson Triathlon in Albuquerque, which was a five-mile run, 10-mile bike, and quarter-mile swim.
SLOWTWITCH: That hooked you?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Hooked me. I actually did all right. I want to say there were 150, and I should've been 16th, in the first one that I entered. I thought, wow, if I give this a little practice I ought to get better.
SLOWTWITCH: How many times have you raced the Hawaiian Ironman—three times, is that right?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Yes, three times.
SLOWTWITCH: Tell us about your best race in Hawaii.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: My favorite was my last one, because I had my best time. It kind of comes down that way, doesn't it?
SLOWTWITCH: You went at around 11:20; what happened since then?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: 11:20, then 10:54, then 10:39.
SLOWTWITCH: Now, was that your last hurrah?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Oh, no, I hope to do it 10 more times.
SLOWTWITCH: Have you gotten the hankering to race some of the further-flung races, like Nice, or one of the Southern Hemisphere Ironmans?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: We started a business in ’74 and sold it a year ago, so when I'm out of office I hope to do some of those things... which I'm looking forward to.
SLOWTWITCH: Do you get to train whenever, wherever you want, without people bugging you? I know you get up at oh-dark-thirty and do dawn patrol, but you don't have to have any Secret Service agents trailing you around, or anything like that, do you?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: No, no, I'm on my own. 4:45 I'm out the door. That's been the key, getting it in in the morning. I'm by myself all the time.
SLOWTWITCH: Are people bugging you while you're training, like, bending your ear about potholes?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Taking this morning as an example: What's been typical as of late is bicycling from Santa Fe to the ski area and back, and this morning I saw maybe two cars—that's typical. Nobody stops me. As far as I know they don't even notice I'm there.
SLOWTWITCH: How many triathlons are you able to do in a year? Is this a down year for you in participation?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: It's actually a down year. I slipped on my bike; I rolled a sew-up about four months ago and I really tweaked my knee. Technically, I have a sprained medial collateral ligament. Although I've done three [races] this year, that [accident] really did it. I didn't miss any training time; it's getting better, and in another three to five months it'll be completely OK.
SLOWTWITCH: Although we're not qualified to poke holes in your drug or prison policy…rolling a sew-up, you should know better than that.
GOVERNOR JOHNSONn: I SHOULD know better than that, and riding sew-ups all this time, it'd never happened before, and then it happened. Wow. So, not enough glue, not enough attention to it, and since then, for the first time in my life, I've switched to clinchers.
SLOWTWITCH: That's a sign of getting older.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: True.
SLOWTWITCH: A little-known fact is that quite a few years ago—when we owned Quintana Roo—we came quite close to moving the whole company to Chama. While I was on a reconnaissance of all the Gucci spots to put a business, having finished checking out Santa Fe and on my way to Durango, I came across Chama. Only a mutiny of my senior staff, including my wife, kept me from doing it. Perhaps you might like to comment on how beautiful Chama, New Mexico is, and how wrong my staff was not to overlook the fact that it lacks a Wal-Mart and an Edwards theatre multiplex?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: I think they did miss the boat. Northern New Mexico really is beautiful. I and my wife intend to relocate in Taos when this is all over with. And Taos DOES have a Wal-Mart and the multiplex. And it has skiing as good as there is on the planet, and a proximity to Chama, so that if we want to go over there it isn't that long of a drive.
SLOWTWITCH: Have you ever thought of how scenic a Heron Lake triathlon—close to Chama—might be?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Absolutely. I've thought about triathlons throughout New Mexico. My present job has precluded me from organizing anything like that. I've actually thought about something for years, what I call the Big J Challenge: A 50-event competition over a one-week period, trying to come up with some enormous first prize, like a quarter-million for the winner. I still dream about winning an event, so I'd tailor it for me. I'm talking golf. I'm talking tennis. I'm talking darts. Pool shooting. Downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, running, swimming. That's the event that I've talked about forever. But, then, I'm just talking.
SLOWTWITCH: A man after my own heart. Now, I know you're the top executive of one of America's 50 states and this may sound like a strange question, but, governor, are you a politician?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: I'm going to argue that I'm the least political of all the 50 governors. That comes from my stance on drugs, and believing that it's the biggest issue in this country that's not getting addressed at all. And that effectively pulls in any political career. I'd never been involved in politics before being governor. I introduced myself to the Republican Party two weeks before announcing my candidacy. But you can't be governor of a state and not be political; you can't be governor and not be a politician.
SLOWTWITCH: You brought it up, so let's go there. You're in the news these days. You are the highest-ranking elected official to take the flip-side approach to the drug problem. You're for legalization of marijuana and a more European approach to harder drugs, which is to say, treating it as more of a public health issue.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: You got it.
SLOWTWITCH: This has not always been a part of your platform. What got you thinking about this, and what made you finally go public with your views?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: First of all, a pledge to the people of New Mexico. Hey, if you're going to elect somebody who's never been in politics before, what are you electing there? Might you have the opportunity to put somebody in office that'll do the things that should be done, but that nobody else does? That's what I thought my mandate was. I thought my mandate was to put the issues that ought to be on the front burner on the front burner regardless of the political consequence.
Where I arrive at this drug issue is from the governor's standpoint, and I'm not the only one. I'm just one of 50 governors who spend... I spend... half the money that I spend on law enforcement, half the money I spend on courts, half the money that gets spent on prisons in New Mexico—just like any other state—is drug-related. Is there a bigger issue in this country that might have a solution? I don't think there is a bigger issue, and that's how I come at it.
Being a triathlete is an important ingredient in my position. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do coffee, I certainly don't do drugs, and yet at one point in my life I've done all those things. I just want to point out to people that at one point in this country's history it was against the law to drink alcohol. And it SHOULD be criminal if you're going to drink and do crime, or do harm to someone else. Same with marijuana.
Don't smoke marijuana. Don't do drugs. Don't drink. It's an incredible handicap. Don't do it. But not for a minute do I think it should be criminal. Same for marijuana. Don't do it. But look, if you do it, and you don't do harm to anyone else, if you're not getting in a car and driving... And again, it's never going to be legal for kids to do it, or buy it, and it's never going to be legal to sell it to kids. But for an adult who's smoking marijuana in his own home, arguably not doing harm to anybody but themselves, I don't think that should be a crime. I don't think anybody should go to jail for that.
SLOWTWITCH: I humbly suggest that it may be possible to hold that view and still have a successful political life.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: That may be the case. And I know you know this, perhaps this IS the best politics. The best politics is putting the issue out there.
SLOWTWITCH: That allows me to segue into something else. Some percentage of your average folk undoubtedly assume you're kooky. Exhibit One is the fact that you race Ironman. Exhibit Two is your stand on decriminalizing marijuana. Our readers are uniquely aware that racing triathlons does not make one kooky and may actually promote sanity. Has an endurance athlete's outlook on life, or unique set of habits, or training and racing experiences, evolved together with other life experiences to draw you toward your view on drugs? Or is one totally unconnected with the other?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Competely connected. You hit it right on the head. There's a discipline involved, as you know, with working out. With that discipline comes confidence. The ability to put this out there and, what's the worst case? It'll all fall on me. And none of that's worst case, because I've got to look at myself in the mirror until this is all over with and ask, did I really do everything I should have done in this office? That gets back to training. You've got one person you can blame for your performance. And actually you never blame yourself for your performance. If you're working out on a regular basis, there just isn't a bad race.
SLOWTWITCH: You're not going into adventure racing or anything like that, are you? I mean, you're a triathlete, right?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: That's something I'm looking at, after I get out of this office, I'm looking at a few of those.
SLOWTWITCH: We'll forgive you for that. Final question: If I make it out to Chama again, how about riding over the pass to Antonito, Colorado—and we'll take the narrow-gauge railroad back?
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: It's a deal. You line that up, we'll put it on the schedule. But maybe we can ride back. How far is that?
SLOWTWITCH: It's at least 50 one way. And there's a little bump in the middle.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: As you know, where there's an up, there's down.
SLOWTWITCH: Point taken. As YOU know, you're on a strict schedule, so I've been told by your office, so we must wrap this up.
GOVERNOR JOHNSON: Yes, I've got to get off of here and go talk about vouchers with somebody else. Otherwise, man, I'd talk about triathlon all afternoon.