Kinky Friedman is running for Governor in Texas. He is supposedly a resident and says he even voted for George Bush in the last two elections. The Texas Voter Files say otherwise.
Unless Kinky was living in another state, he has not voted in a primary or a general election since 1992. Is this really the person you want as Governor of Texas? Someone who doesn’t even care enough about the state to vote in the elections is not worthy to be an elected official. I believe Kinky is using this election to get his lounge act back on the road. What the current Governor and Legislature does to embarrass Texas is bad enough. Do we need a comedian who thinks Texas and the well being of the state are not worth his time or effort to even vote in the governor’s mansion? No!!!
I sure hope he doesn’t make it to the Gov’s. mansion. This country has a habit of electing clownish Texans to the presidency.
Then hereby donkeytale throws his hat into the 2008 race!
Satire, parody, whatever you choose to call it. Kinky’s been a crazy mofo for as long as I can remember, and that’s a looong time. It’s similar to Pat Paulsen’s parody campaigns from many years ago.
He hasn’t a sno-ball’s chance in hell of getting on the ballot, let alone getting elected. This is all about pointing out the absurdities of “politics” as practiced in the good ol’ US of A.
Relax.
It’s “theatre”
Enjoy the show. This is gonna twist some wingers’ panties into a great big knot. You do it with your T-Designs, he does it a different way.
Peace
Unfortunately, irony has been permanently lost as a communication tool.
Whatever happend to Abbie Hoffman anyway? He would still be alive if he was living in Texas…
Abbie Hoffman
Peace
Elections are not performance art and he needs to take his cheap show to the beer halls and out of Texas politics. I think he is total joke but there are people who will waste their vote on this total loser.
As opposed to wasting it on some nameless faceless democrat “Washington General” candidate?
I don’t think it funny. I think it is pathetic. I consider him the Ralph Nadar of Texas. There are people that really think this stooge should be governor.
I don’t know, Kinky got endorsed by the legendary Mojo Nixon. That’s gotta have legs.
Hmm, and for years Mojo has taken a pretty firm stance against foo-foo haircuts… I wonder if it’s Gov. Perry’s hair that drew Kinky’s attention to the office?
Given the choices we’ve had for governor I’d personally say “Not Voting” was probably the most honorable and honest choice, but that’s by the way. The good thing about Kinky’s “campaign” such as it is is that he has enough of a following that he very probably WILL be able to get on the ballot… and if nothing else, he and Strayhorn have done a good job of bringing into the conversation just how closed the system actually IS. I’d guesstimate that his chances of actually being ELECTED are about the same as mine…
But yeah, I signed a “Put Kinky on the Ballot” petition; I even went out of my way to do it.
And no, there’s no chance in HELL I’ll actually VOTE for the sorry sumbitch; I don’t like much about his politics. I just want the system opened up so that we have options, and Kinky’s the best lever to come along to talk about that since Ross Perot — and Kinky’s a LOT better press than Ol’ Ears ever was.
Anybody who’s got the cojones to front the “Texas Jewboy Band” in this state, you kinda gotta at least tip your hat to the man, y’know?
Well I voted in the primary because tehre were many good democrats running who needed my vote. If you signed the petition, you couldn’t vote in the primary.
That’s true, and for the first time in my adult life they held an election and I didn’t go. I’m kind of “D because not R” in inclination — the real world in Texas is that the Greens and the Libertarians and all the others are protest votes, not candidates, and I have as many, or more, differences with all the others as I do with the D’s — so if I’m going to vote the bastages out I might as well have some chance of actually DOING it instead of just whizzing into the wind because I’m unhappy with all the options.
But I thought about it and I discussed it with a couple of other folks and we concluded that, in practical terms, it doesn’t much matter to us who the dems put up; we could live with pretty much any of the various D’s running for governor, we’re in safe D congressional district, we like ANYONE running against KBH or Cornyn, and the R’s at this moment are so unreservedly and unrelievedly awful that our votes in the general elections are just about as solid as it gets. Any of the relevant D’s are better, or anyway less worse, than their R counterparts…
so it was “let’s try to fix the process” time.
And I was NOT gonna sign on for Strayhorn; even pigs gotta have SOME standards and Kinky’s campaign literature is mildly amusing to read.
If more people had voted for Radnofsky in the primary, she would not have ahd to waste valuanle time and resources on the runoff.
I really do need to start using the spell check. LOL
Like I said, I didn’t (and don’t) much care who the D’s put up against KBH —
Radnofsky’s been pushing hard for a couple of years now, and she STILL couldn’t pull 50% against candidates whose only appeal (or publicity) was that they were line items on the ballot. Kelly did what, one press conference? Nobody even KNOWS who the other guy was. That equates, after years of effort and a bunch of bucks, to “Radnofsky ain’t even beating the `none of the above’ vote.”
She’s got much bigger problems than the absence of people (who are NOT party members and who are only party supporters because all the other options suck MORE) who are looking further down the road than her races.
From my point of view, it doesn’t matter all that much; she’s not KBH, and she’s on the ballot, so I’ll vote for her — but if the system isn’t opened so we can get people on the ballot who aren’t simply different flavors of corporate shill, then we’re scrod regardless of which name goes on what seat. I want the neos out, but I also want to have some realistic options down the line… and I’m doing the best I can to balance the two needs.
Kinky’s got an snowball’s chance in a Big Bend August of actually getting past either Perry or Bell. If Strayhorn splits the R’s, it’s Bell, Perry, Strayhorn, Friedman, in that order. If she doesn’t, it’s Perry, Bell, Friedman, Strayhorn. The only way Kinky’s anything in the history books other than “also running: Friedman, Strayhorn” is if we can get the ballot access rules changed.
Kinky’s worst sin, like Nader, is that he’s running at a time when the party leadership D’s can’t find their spines, their brains, or their balls with both hands, a road map, directions, a flashlight, AND a state of the art GPS system — and, again like Nader, Kinky will be a convenient scapegoat when the D’s totally screw the campaigns and HAND the country back to the Rovians.
I will admitt we need better candidates. We need more choices. That is why I have started getting involved not only in campaigns but in the party itself. I am trying to get other “liberals” nationwide to get involved and take the party back. We need Yellow Dog Democrats who are liberal and willing to fight for equal rights for all and save our state and country.
Dig into Kinky Friedman and you won’t like what you find. He’s a total piece of work and would be a horrendous choice for elected office. Think Jesse Ventura only much worse.
The only good thing would be if it came down to he and the Dem choice because in the runoff all the facts would come out. Just hope it isn’t Kinky vs. Rick Perry or Kinky vs. Scotty McLellan’s mommy.
The only fact worth repeating (yet again) is that the Governor of Texas is a very weak post, power-wise. In Texas the Lt. Governor actually has more power than the Gov.
Like I’ve said before, it’s a very strange State.
Texas is screwed up in the way the governor is only a figure head but I would hate to see the moron Kinky as that figure head.
Zat so? Well, I’m now even more impressed that Bob Bullock wrote me a letter when he was Leut. Gov back in the early 80s. I was living in Austin at the time. He was championing some tax proposal that I thought would impact the mail-order business I was running. (Turned out I would have been wrong unless we got to be about twenty times as bigger as we ever had been.) I wrote him a letter telling him I thought it was a bad idea, and he took the time to write back personally and “set me straight.” I still didn’t agree with him but it was obvious his letter wasn’t a canned response and was personally signed.
Oh yeah, about Friedman, he has no chance of being elected. I mean, c’mon, the guy’s campaign slogan is “Why the hell not?”