Kinky Friedman entering race for governor
Kinky Friedman entering race for governor
Associated Press
SAN ANTONIO - Musician-turned-mystery author Kinky Friedman is bringing his Lone Star wit to the Texas governor's race.
Some 13 months before the established political parties select their nominees in the state primary elections, Friedman and his trademark black cowboy hat and Cuban cigar were entering the political arena Thursday morning for what he's promised will be an unconventional campaign.
"I want the thing to be fun," he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. "But you can do something fun and still have it be important."
The 60-year-old Friedman, whose nearly two dozen books include "Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned" and whose campaign bumper stickers proclaim "Why Not Kinky?", chose the grounds outside the Alamo, the symbol of Texas independence, to officially begin his independent campaign.
"It's just this choice is decaf or regular, paper or plastic, these two political parties," he said of Republicans and Democrats. "It's no choice at all.
"Now we'll have a choice, a voice, and see if it means anything."
He'll have a formidable challenge just to get on the November 2006 ballot since filing regulations clearly favor the traditional parties.
Friedman will have up to two months in 2006, following the March primary, to collect 45,540 valid signatures on petitions to get him on the ballot later in the year as an independent. That's 1 percent of the votes cast in the November 2002 governor's race.
But according to filing rules, signatures he collects can't come from people who voted in that primary. And if there's a primary runoff, the signature period shrinks to 30 days after the runoff.
"We'll get it," he says confidently. "Things will happen."
Incumbent Rick Perry is expected to seek a second full term but a pair of fellow Republicans, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, have been mentioned as rivals for the GOP nomination.
"The Kinkster's independent candidacy is no less of a joke than what Democrats have put up in recent years," says Luis Saenz, Perry's campaign manager.
Friedman's one-liners often play on his Jewish background. He quotes Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, both friends, and views the success of Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California as a sign he can prevail similarly in Texas.
Friedman, whose given first name is Richard, picked up the nickname Kinky for his wiry curly black hair when he was going to school at the University of Texas in the 1960s.
After graduation, he joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Borneo. He had some modest success on the entertainment circuit with his band, The Texas Jewboys, attracting the attention of Rolling Stone Magazine in 1972 and eventually touring with the famous all-star Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue in the mid 1970s.
A decade later, he traded music for a typewriter and wrote the first of 17 mystery novels. His readers include former President Clinton and President George W. Bush and both had him as an overnight guest at the White House.
In 1986, he ran unsuccessfully for justice of the peace in Kerrville, where he lives on a ranch nearby. Until now, it was his only bid for political office. More recently he has been writing a column for Texas Monthly magazine.
A key element of his campaign is the fight against what he calls the "wussification" of Texas, which he defines as political correctness run amok.
He favors legalizing casino gambling to solve the state's education finance dilemma, would push for life without parole to provide an alternative to the death penalty and create a Texas version of the Peace Corps, enlisting the help of his friends in the entertainment industry.
