[Sosfbay-discuss] If a bodybuilder turned actor can do it, how about a Jewish cowboy country singer?

[Wes Rolley]

By Andrew Gumbel in Wimberley, Texas
Published: 23 October 2005

Some people run for high political office because it appeals to their
vanity. Some run because they believe they can really win. When Kinky Friedman,
hitherto known as an eccentric Jewish cowboy singer turned mystery
novelist, is asked why he is campaigning as an independent in next year's Texas
governor's race, he likes to respond with a question: "How hard can it be?"

If that sounds like a wisecrack, Friedman has plenty more where it came
from. His campaign is littered with Jewish jokes, politician jokes, gay marriage
jokes ("they have every right to be just as miserable as the rest of us"),
even jokes about the current governor, Rick Perry, and his famously perfect
hairdo. "I've got a head of hair better than Rick Perry," Friedman boasts, to
loud guffaws from his audiences, "it's just not in a place I can show you."


For the first few months of his campaign, conventional wisdom had it that
Friedman's candidacy was itself a joke, a way of sticking it to Texas's
luridly headline-worthy establishment without committing himself to much more
than a stream of one-liners to entertain the crowds. Certainly, he can be
counted on to show up to events in his trademark jeans, cowboy hat and leather
waistcoat, puffing on a fat Cuban cigar as he goes through his well-rehearsed paces.


His team has produced a hilarious campaign cartoon making fun of Texas
politicians as they speak broken Spanish on the campaign trail and invoke
Jesus at every turn. One valuable fundraising asset is a Kinky talking doll.
One of the 25 lines it spouts: "Friedman is just another word for nothing left
to lose."

By now, though, it is clear the campaign is much more than a joke. Kinky
has been earning himself both attention and warm praise in the Texas media for
his witty articulation of a commonly felt disgust at the state's political
leadership. He's running at a more than respectable 18 per cent in the
latest opinion poll with more than a year to go before election day.

Perhaps most significantly, the Texas establishment is floundering all
around him. Tom DeLay, overlord of the state's congressional delegation, has
just been charged with conspiracy and money-laundering. Public opinion is
appalled at the governor and the legislature for relegating the Texas school
system to 50th place among the 50 states.

Any political capital Governor Perry may have accumulated in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, when his state became a conduit for federal money for
the flood of incoming evacuees and he put on a passable show of competent
leadership, started to deplete as soon as Katrina's successor, Hurricane Rita,
hit the Gulf coast. State officials encouraged two million coastal residents to
take to the Texas highways simultaneously, resulting in 100-mile traffic jams,
fuel shortages and general consternation.

The way Friedman and his campaign managers see it, if he can present himself
as a genuine alternative to a disgusted electorate and mobilise at least
some of the 75 per cent of Texas voters who didn't bother to show up for the
last governor's election, he stands a real chance of winning. What he has
revealed about his politics which has not been much at this early stage -
suggests he is a fiscal conservative with moderate to liberal social views. In
other words, he has something to appeal across the spectrum.

Governor Perry has money and the backing of the national Republican Party
from George Bush on down, but he is also struggling with low approval
ratings and faces a nasty primary against the state comptroller, Carole Keaton
Strayhorn.

The presumed Democratic candidate for governor, Chris Bell, has been almost
invisible. None of them will find it easy to make a case based on their
experience. As Friedman wickedly puts it: "Politics is the only field of
human endeavour where the more experience you have, the worse you get."

What Friedman is launching is a classic American populist campaign. At a
time when the Bush presidency is hitting the rocks, there's probably no better
state to try it than the spiritual home of George W and his entourage.
Friedman's modest celebrity doesn't do any harm, either. Celebrity, after all,
worked for Jesse Ventura, the wrestler who became governor of Minnesota in 1998,
and for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator turned Governator of California.

Tellingly, Friedman's campaign manager, Dean Barkley, used to work for
Jesse Ventura and knows a thing or two about insurgent campaigns - especially
ones regarded by the political establishment as a joke. "We're going to
revolutionise the world, one governor at a time," says Barkley, a rugby
player in his spare time who enjoys the odd cigar himself.

Ventura, it must be said, was less than successful once he reached office,
spending much of his time on extracurricular activities and flaming out at
the end of a single term. Barkley said his big mistake was to wage war on the
legislature, uniting the Republicans and Democrats against him. Already,
Friedman has been noticeably gentle on the Texas legislature, pouring most of
his scorn instead on the state leadership (with the help of a salty testicle
joke involving the governor, lieutenant governor and house speaker).

When Friedman first thought about throwing his hat into the political ring,
the famous Texas political columnist Molly Ivins - no mean humorist herself
- responded: "Why the hell not?" That line is now an established campaign
slogan alongside many others.

The road ahead is complicated, however, by Texas's deep resistance to
independent candidates. Not only can Friedman not take part in the
primaries next March. He actually has to convince tens of thousands of voters
not to vote in the primaries and sign a petition supporting his candidacy in the
November general election instead. "Save yourselves for Kinky!" is the watchword.

At a typical recent event outside a coffee shop in Wimberley, in the hill
country not far from Austin, the Texas capital, Friedman was greeted more
like a rock star than a politician. A jokey country band called the Pluckin'
Idiots warmed up for him, and the crowd, arrayed on three sides of a courtyard,
cheered his every line. Some were liberals, some conservatives. Soon they
were all chanting:

"Kinky for governor! Why the hell not?" Kinky himself deadpanned: "Bring me
whatever you've got. I'll sign t-shirts, posters, bumper stickers - I'll
sign anything except bad legislation."

-- 
"I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much
and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on."
-- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024
http://www.refpub.com/