Alt-history: Kinky Friedman as Texas Gov

 

Kinky Friedman, who (in)famously, and hilariously, ran for Texas governor in 2006, and who passed away a couple of weeks ago, probably could have had the job if he had serious-ed up at some point.  That said, per that link, years of hindsight later made me realize that, at some point, he thought he might just win, that scared the hell out of him, and refusing to serious up was the antidote.

Texas Monthly offers its thought on what would have happened had he won. It first notes that he shot himself in the foot on at least one occasion when he DID get serious, per his "crackheads and thugs" comment. 

Personally, I thought he had no idea what his constituency was. If he really believed it was the Venn diagram overlap of people who wanted both legal marijuana and organized prayer in public school, it was pretty small.

And, it was pretty weird for a Jew who traded on his Jewishness to want prayer in public schools, but I digress. Back to the Monthly.

Good alt-history only changes one big thing. This changes one moderate serious one, by having state officials rule against Strayhorn Rylander on having "Grandma" as part of her ballot listing. It then moves from alt-history to alt-degeneracy with having Friedman challenge Democrat Chris Bell to a drinking contest to combine their campaigns.

After that, it gets seriously non-serious. And, so, we'll ignore analyzing that laugh track piece and look at reality.

Other than taking up the idea of Rylander not being "Grandma" (and using that to camouflage multiple marriages, too), here's the serious skinny.

It involves Kinky getting serious. Versus the other three, as I noted at the time, he had openings. Beyond that, his schtick wore thin with repetition anyway.

Other than the laugh track, per link No. 3, the first part of getting serious was, per link No. 3, figuring out your constituency. Since Kinky ran later, twice, and as a Democrat both times, that's easy. So, going more serious than the Monthly, we get Kinky to realize that Democrats don't back school prayer. But, would he have? After all, in 2006, some people were pushing him as being to the right of Tricky Ricky.

That said, alt-history also has to have some chance at really happening. Given that Kinky was still supporting prayer and the 10 Commandments in school as late as 2013, and went beyond that on religious intolerance by saying "love Jesus or go to hell," this had about as much chance as Kinky kicking away a rescue dog in Utopia. That second link in the paragraph is an adapted version of a newspaper column I wrote about his campaign. Sadly, per that first link, he almost won the Dem primary for ag secretary in 2010. (Contra Gilberto Hinojosa, skipper of the SS Texas Democratic Minnow, that's another sign of the ongoing weakness of the party statewide.)

Beyond that, the Monthly is laughable in another way. IF Kinky got just serious enough to be elected, by inciting non-Grandma and Tricky Ricky to attack each other even more, by knowing his constituency, and by belittling Bell, there would have been no second term.

First, he had no coattails, so no help in the Lege.

Because of that, the Lege would have dramatically tightened ballot petition signature rules for independent candidates. Kinky as incumbent would have gotten on the ballot again. Nobody else.

Second, the wingers would have co-opted his "five Mexican generals" on the border, or more serious versions of that.

So, the only real alt-history questions are:

1. How little would Kinky have gotten done in his solo term?

2. How badly would he have gotten crushed in 2010?

3. Who would the GOP crusher be?

That last one's the curious one.

In reality, Kay Bailey Cheerleader Hutchison challenged Tricky Ricky in the 2010 primary. Would Perry have been hors de combat after the 2006 loss, or stubborn enough to try again and possibly lose anyway? Would some other non-Bushie GOPer make the run? (In reality, Perry took 51 percent in a three-way primary. Debra Medina, No. 3, was a Tea Party nutbag.) As in, would Strangeabbott have thrust himself forward four years early? Can't see who else it would have been; John Cornyn wasn't leaving the Senate.

In this, we'll say that relative unknown Abbott has to go to a runoff against Hutchison, where he wins. Little else changes in Texas politics.

And, with all of that said, also consider this more of a takedown obit than my original.

RIP Kinky Friedman

Via Kuff, I saw the Trib story this morning. More at the Chron. Yet more at the Trib in a longform, focused on the 2006 gubernatorial race. 

As a newspaper editor, remembering that campaign, including being part of a group interview of Kinky after a campaign gig, I knew already then what Kuff learned years later:

Kinky was entertainer first, politician second. 

In fact, I think that, despite admonitions from people like me to "Pivot" to more serious, like Jesse Ventura, then in the middle of his Minnesota gubernatorial time, he was actually afraid he might win.

At the same time, he had the most confused campaign in the world, on stances. The Venn diagram of people supporting both legalized marijuana and open prayer in public schools ain't big in Texas today and was microscopic in 2006. And, tho he ran as a Democrat later, it was as a ConservaDem of some sort, then, too, a Jim Hightower who couldn't get serious and couldn't get left-populist, trying to get Hightower's Ag Commish seat, and I don't think the punditocracy in 2006 got him. And, on him being a ConservaDem and one other thing, in 2006? Yeah, it was fun joking, spinning off him stressing his Jewish heritage, about how he'd bring kosher government to Austin. Given all his other stances, today? He'd be turning the DPS loose on pro-Palestinian protestors as much as Abbott did. (That's the pro-Palestinian protestors at places like Rice and UT that ConservaDem Kuff still won't mention.)

Contra Kuff, Kinky being in the 2006 gov race didn't cost the Dems the chance to beat Tricky Ricky Perry. Milquetoast Chris Bell wasn't winning, no way, no how. (And, contra Kuff, it was actually a six-person race; the Libertarians were in, as was write-in James Dillon.)

So, since Kinky's been out of the political angles for years, this doesn't warrant the focus of a full takedown obit of Kinky, but it is a mild one, and a bankshot on Kuff, too.

Texas progressives wonder if Beto's gonna get Kinky-schizophrenic

A brief Roundup, written in advance of vacation. I'll add anything Kuff has, from the road or at the start of the new year.

Besides the "Abbott Tax" (but remember, R.F. O'Rourke took lots of oil and gas money himself in the past), Beto's going after Abbott for vetoing rural broadband legislation. OK, this? It's "nice," but it ain't where the political money is, especially since R.F. has said he ain't backing off all his prez campaign gunz statements. Beto Bob is not yet nearly as schizophrenic as Kinky Friedman, who infamously in 2006 wanted to both legalize pot and put public prayer and the Ten Commandments back in schools, but he's getting there. (Today, I think Kinky, unlike Jesse Ventura up in Minnesota, was actually afraid of the possibility he might be elected, and so, never would stop some degree of clowning.)

The bullet train to real estate grifting (it IS, that's the only reason there's a stop at Roans Prairie) is in court, with the state saying it can't use eminent domain. The Texas Central honchos claim they're a railroad, vs. Kenny Boy Paxton saying the don't currently have a line or tracks AND they're not likely to secure necessary financing to finish it. It's a cold day in June when I agree with Kenny Boy, but there you have it. Already a year ago, in one of several pieces I've written on this, contra Brains and Kuff, though Kuff's reader-commenters had more brains two years ago, cost estimates had doubled. Meanwhile, Strangeabbott had flip-flopped on it. If R.F. were smart and looking at the 'burbs, not Hale County or whatever, he'd go after this.

==

And now for other stuff.

Tex-ass wingnuts efforts to ban books have moved from school libraries to your local public library, and not just in the reddest of red small rural areas. Places as big as Victoria face this fight. 

Californians ARE Californicating Texas if In-N-Out outnumbers Fuck You the Squirrel, aka Bucee's. That said, the Monthly piece ignores that Rick Perry's Tex-ass Miracle was built on Ill Eagles (along with legal immigration from elsewhere, plus smoke and mirrors), not just the start of Californication. It is interesting in that it notes R.F. beat Havana Ted in 2018 among native Texans, but not really a surprise. Many Californians coming here are NOT from the Bay Area; they're Orange County and Inland Empire who like Texas more than Phoenix.

Read about polluting soap chemical maker BASF and its connection to oil-and-gas refining polluting on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Off the Kuff discusses a couple more redistricting lawsuits, a new one filed by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer over CD35, and an earlier one filed by a state prison inmate who objected to the practice of counting inmates where they are being incarcerated rather than where they live for the purposes of apportioning districts.

SocraticGadfly noted that Ronny Jackson and other Texas winger Congresscritters want to fight the effects of climate change, but only when it affects cops, and without admitting that the likes of Winter Storm Uri are connected to climate change. 

Rick Casey speculates about what might happen if Donald Trump runs but does not win Texas in 2024.

Mark Pitcavage presents some random facts about white supremacist tattoos.  

Mandy Giles is now blogging at Parents of Trans Youth. Elise Hu looks back on her 2021. InnovationMap presents Houston's top three COVID research stories from 2021.

 Reform Austin introduces us to some school librarians who are fed up with and fighting back against book bans.  

Susan Hays and Nonsequiteuse eulogize the great Sarah Weddington. 

National

Can Colorado River basin states, namely the lower basin, cut 500,000 acre-feet from their annual usage, or more specifically, keep 500K more in Lake Mead? Color me skeptical until it happens. It's a voluntary/incentivized plan, and we've seen how well, or poorly, those work with water. That's even more true because this one does NOT only target junior rights holders. Plus, if Nordhaus-Schellenberger "environmentalist" John Fleck thinks it's a big deal, I'm skeptical right there. Also, per Fleck, while it's not "chump change," it's still less than 7 percent of the lower basin's allocation. It also does nothing to address Lake Powell directly, if it has less and less to send downstream.

RIP Joan Didion, but don't eulogize her too much.

TX Progressives tackle voting rights, the border, and more

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes former President Carter all the best for a full and fast recovery and salutes Jason Day's PGA Championship win as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff reports on another Voting Rights Act lawsuit, this one filed on behalf of low English proficiency voters who have been denied the ability to bring a translator of their choice to the ballot box with them.

For a time, many Houstonians considered it a point of pride that the city repealed the use of Red Light Cameras in 2010. But as Texas Leftist has recently discovered, a Houston without camera accountability has become much more dangerous for all transit users...Even deadly.

Not a trace of irony has been found to be present in the recent pronouncements of a certain Democratic so-called frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs -- with an assist from the biting cartoons of Ted Rall -- illustrates some of the things making Clintonites so nervous of late, none of which have anything to do with e-mail servers or sagging poll numbers.

Socratic Gadfly runs Kinky Friedman's old Five Mexican Generals border control plan through a Donald Trump filter, just for a bit of fun.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is sorry to say Nueces County thinks a husband can kill his wife's lover with impunity.  Stand your ground just the way a Republican likes it. Your wife is your property.

From WCNews at Eye on Williamson. There is so much Texas could do for those in need, but our GOP state leaders choose to do nothing. As a consequence Only Texas Remains above the 20% uninsured rate.

Neil at All People Have Value asserted that the nine bikers shot dead in Waco this past May may have been wrongly killed. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

======================

The Makeshift Academic reviews the landscape in Texas on the Affordable Care Act.

Nancy Sims considers the value of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus' Mayoral endorsement.

The Houston Justice Coalition calls for an investigation into the actions of three sheriffís deputies who forcibly conducted an illegal body cavity search publicly on a woman in Harris County.

Scott Braddock knows the real reason why Ken Paxton is still in office.

The Texas Living Waters Project reminds us that the best time to plan for a drought is when you're not in one.

Kinky Friedman's new Mexican border plan

When Donald Trump went mucking around the Texas-Mexico border last month at Laredo, I got to thinking about failed Texas gubernatorial candidate (well, failed in everything this side of dogcatcher of Utopia) Kinky Friedman and his five Mexican generals plan.

First, with all the GOPers in the clown car, why isn't Kinky running for president on some sort of independent angle?

Second, why doesn't he update to the five Donald Trumps plan?

Instead of giving five Mexican generals access to a huge pot of money in a bank or whatever, but taking some of that money away, every time someone crosses the border, clone The Donald four times (scary) and put five of him on the US side, paying every illegal immigrant who he sees money to go back to Mexico. Or Guatemala. Or China. (At least 10 percent of the southern border-crosses come from further south than Mexico, and not all southern border-crossers are Latino.)

Of course, the Donald refuses to accept that these are people simply trying to improve their lives, just like his ancestors.

Do I hear "Five New Jersey bankruptcies," anybody?

#RickPerry 2.0 and #RickPerrysTexasMiracle = Kinky Friedman 1.0

Being against Dodd-Frank and attacking big banks in the same breath, as former Texas Gov. Perry did in his presidential campaign announcement, is about like Utopia dogcatcher, novelist, raconteur and independent Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman favoring legalizing pot, on the one hand, and putting public-led prayer in public schools on the other hand.

Both represent pandering at high levels of shamelessness and low levels of artfulness.

As for his alleged economic miracles while governing Tejas? It was about oil and illegal immigration. That's why I said "hasty lumbago" to him when he announced he wasn't running for re-election. Most Republicans, including in Tejas, want to cut the immigration pipeline to zero. The oil part of that? Rick Perry didn't invent fracking, and the Saudis have now found how to undercut it on price.

So, move along, folks. Per the saying in Perry's own Texas?

All hat, no cattle.

And, let's not forget, per the picture, that abuse of power indictment hanging over his head.

Texas early post-runoff election rumors

Kinky Friedman, moving from campaigner to general gadabout (for now), has reportedly borrowed an idea from Dan Patrick for his latest border-patrolling idea. Rather than "Five Mexican generals" being bribed to patrol the border better, it's "Five Mexican generals with bars of Ivory Soap" to keep out stinky Ill Eagles. A Texas Ranger will patrol for stinky Mexicans already here and report direct to The Stinking Anglo Formerly Known as Danny Goeb™. (Feel free to borrow.)

Joe Straus reportedly has bought a tranquilizer gun and Taser, and they're both located under the Speaker of the House's podium, within easy reach, just in case possible future Lt. Gov. Danny Goeb needs to be "managed" if he's ever in the Texas House. There's no word if he has a psychiatrist on cellphone speed dial.

Patrick, meanwhile, would reportedly set strict conditions on debating Democratic lite guv opponent Leticia Van de Putte. He allegedly would ask her to pass a "clean Mexican aroma test." Mental health issues were not going to be allowed to be part of any debate, he allegedly said.

Van de Putte, meanwhile, was rumored to be taking a page from LBJ's famous 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater, namely, a slogan: "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

David Alameel may have been overheard saying that he would spend "whatever it takes" to not lose to John Cornyn by more than 15 percentage points. 

Ken Paxton allegedly decided he would take Alameel's self-financing Senate campaign one better in his run for state AG. There were rumors he was discussing setting up a private trading site where he could sell investment shares in his campaign.

Greg Abbott denied rumors that The Stinking Anglo Formerly Known as Danny Goeb™ had asked if the wife that Abbott had recently discovered to be Mexican-American stank. He also denied rumors that he threatened to run over The Stinking Anglo with his wheelchair if The Stinking Anglo ever talked about his wife again.

Perry joins Abbott as hypocrites on big goverment

Rick Perry opposes reductions in force in the Texas National Guard. Because! Because, so much, that he made up a laundry list of reasons.

As for those natural disasters, if you'd concentrate on not overpumping groundwater and reducing what Texas is doing to cause climate change and global warming, you'd mitigate disasters and save a whole bunch of money right there.

As for "War on Terror," please, Rick. Go back to your video cameras to catch the bazillions of illegals you said they would. Maybe you should have taken a page from Kinky Friedman and pasted money on each camera or something?

#Astroturfing endorsement groups — part of political silly season

As primary election season approaches in the Abandoned Pointy Object State, part of the fun is seeing candidate-critters talk about who is endorsing them in their battle to replace Kinky Friedman as Head Dogcatcher of Utopia, or whatever the hell race he is in this year.

Example Numero One? From our mild-mannered Deputy Dawg of an Ag Secretary, now challenging David Dewhurst and the gang in the GOP Lite Guv primary:

Citing his proven record of fighting to secure the border and reforming our failed immigration system without amnesty, a coalition of Texans announced today their support for Todd Staples for Lieutenant Governor. The Border Defenders Coalition is a group made up of law enforcement, landowners and business owners living and working in the border region. 

Speaking of you-know-who, I think he actually stole something from the old Kinkster. His PR goes on to say:

Staples commissioned two accomplished U.S. military generals to conduct a strategic military assessment to identify problems along the border and make recommendations for real solutions. The assessment helped develop his 6–point plan to fix our failing system that starts with securing the border and does not include amnesty. Staples also wrote a book, Broken Borders, Broken Promises, revealing what is truly occurring on the frontlines of the border war. 

First, were there no "failed US generals" available? This is like advertising "authentic Mexican food" instead of "Chinese imitation Mexican food."

Second, it just goes further toward showing that you can round up about any sort of endorsements you want, especially if you have the paperwork already ready for them to form their very own organization.

Third, if we're going to have such fake groups, let's have really fake fake groups.

I’m looking for a group like the Left-Handed Albanian Plumbers of Greater Dallas who Meet in the Sons of Hermann Hall to come out and endorse somebody. Maybe the Kinkster? I'm sure he and the Jewboys have played a gig or two at Sons of Hermann, after all.

Maybe the surviving members of the cast of Monty Python can pull out something like this and create some Astroturfed fake civic organizations for us all.

Or better yet, I can create a business designed to crank out such fake endorsement groups.

Hey, Matt Angle? I got one for you:

"Pro-Choice Businessmen for David Alameel."

Just don't tell them about all that good pro-life Catholic stuff he does.

Dear Kinky Friedman: Please, please, STFU and GTHA

That second acronym, in case you don't figure it out, is "go the hell away."

Now, why would I say that to the larger-than-life novelist, musician and raconteur?

Because, the semi-pro comic by virtue of being a rank amateur at politics, is talking about running again.

First, he's no Democrat, even if he ran as one before. Wanting to restore public prayer in schools is one sign, along with his "those who don't love Jesus can go to hell," and apparently not meant as a jest, since he also wants to put the 10 Commandments on school walls. Supporters in his 2006 gubernatorial race trying to push him to Rick Perry's right is another sign.

I mean, that race was so bad, I called it "The Four Stooges." (Sorry, in-the-ditch Dems, but Mr. Vanilla, Chris Bell, while the least stoogy," still was.

Sure, Kinky was great fun as a political humorist. But he would no more drop the humor to be serious than he would drop the stogie, and wound up, beyond his nutbar ideas, being a political migraine cluster headache.

Idea? Let's update his 5 Mexican generals idea and put 1 peripatetic Kinky on the border.

Meanwhile, if he wins a contested primary for a statewide Democratic office, it will be a new low for the party.

Of course, it will be an even greater low if he wins an UNcontested primary for a statewide Democratic office.

And, it could happen. He almost won the 2010 Dem primary for state agriculture secretary. 

Indeed, it would be enough of a low if he ran and hit the 40 percent mark. (He got almost 48 percent in 2010.) It would show that a number of Democratic voters are rural-conservative enough, naive enough or uninformed enough to fall for cheap, non-progressive populist pitches.

Tiger Woods and Obama are flat with Teapot Tommy

Charting new column inaneness, Teapot Tommy Friedman says Dear Leader is just like Tiger Woods.

No, really.

He’s not Jimmy Carter. He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing. He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game. He needs to get back to basics.

Actually, he's worse than Carter on degree of conservatism. Like Woods, he's been in bed with plenty of mistresses, in his case the whores of Wall Street.

He's not a political natural; he's benefited from weak opponents, the soft bigotry of low expectations (read: a black man who doesn't sound like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton), he's never had "his own swing" except that of neoliberalism and suck-up-itis, and he doesn't know what "basics" are.

I'm not even going to try to explain, or even understand, the rest of the column.

Texans getting Kinky once was enough — except for Kinky

Now, the cigar-choping nutbar musician/novelist Kinky Friedman, so politically inept in the 2006 Texas governor’s race that he couldn’t figure out that people who agreed with him on gay marriage legalization and those who agreed with him that those who didn’t love Jesus should go to hell were most definitely not in the same circle of political groupings, wants to run for the statehouse again — as a Democrat.

Forget it, Kinky (other than for column fodder for we newspaper writers and bloggers). You were last in a four-horse race; besides your quasi-fundamentalist take on Jesus, your comments on “jailhouse Negros” and others will land you dead last in the 2010 Democratic primary, too.

Pundits misunderstood Kinky

I’ve read pundits in the last couple of days talking about why Rick Perry was going to be re-elected governor of Texas. In general, they talked about how Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn split the center while Bell did pretty well with the left, or what passes for the left, or is alleged to be the left, here in Tejas.

Wrong.

Obviously, none of these pundits was actually familiar with Friedman supporters.

Many of his backers openly called Perry a RINO ― a Republican In Name Only.

When you have people openly pushing Kinky as being to the right of Perry, he’s not trying to split the middle.

Unfortunately, too many people who WANTED a centrist candidate thought exactly that Kinky, though, proving once again that it’s too bad we can’t give voters an IQ test, or better yet, a PQ (Political Quotient) exam.

It’s also too bad we can’t do that for pundits who pen analysis a mile wide and an inch deep.

Who says Kinky’s wrong on wanting to abolish TAKS?

Colorado and Utah have already headed down this road

Everybody is saying Kinky Friedman’s call to get rid of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, the state’s standardized test battery, will mean a loss of federal education funds.

BUT, as the Great Newspaper of Dallas, the Morning News,, has listed in a Sunday column by Ryan Sager, “Colorado and Utah have openly rebelled against No Child Left Behind’s federal testing regime by passing laws exempting themselves from it.”

I knew that, but had forgotten all about it until reading Sager’s column. So, the “Conventional Three” of the Four Stooges are dead wrong on this one.

Any Kinky fans reading this, feel free to spread the idea.

Why Kinky won’t win; comparing him to Jesse

1. Ventura was the only independent in the race in Minnesota; Kinky has to share that appellation with Grandma.

2. The media market is MUCH different. In Minnesota, the only major media market is Minneapolis-St. Paul. Outside of that, you have the medium-small markets of Rochester, Duluth and Moorhead. MSP makes up half the state’s population.

Here, though, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston are each as big as the entire state of Minnesota. Austin and San Antonio are both major media markets as well. El Paso is a semi-major market. McAllen/Lower Valley and Laredo/Middle Valley are both midlevel markets. Abilene, Midland/Odessa, Amarillo, Waco/Temple/Belton and Longview/Marshall are all as big as, if not bigger, than all of the non-MSP markets in Minnesota.

In short, it takes a LOT of money for TV buys to compete in a statewide race in Texas. The Internet hasn’t changed things that much — at least not yet.

Name recognition may offset some of that, but it’s not like Kinky, nickname and all, has the same recognition level as The Redheaded Stranger himself, Mr. Willie Nelson.

3. The “getting serious” factor. Kinky could have been better coached than he was for the Oct. 5 debate without being sanitized or put in lockdown. And he wasn’t. Ventura had actually had previous political experience, so he didn’t need quite as much coaching or handling.

So, that leaves Grandma and Verizon wondering if they can’t get voters to coalesce behind them to knock off Gov. Helmethair.

The Four Stooges have debated; your turn to sound off

I was doing my normal Friday night fall work of covering a Lancaster Tiger football game, so I didn’t get to watch the debate, or glorified joint press conference, as these things usually are.

But, now’s your chance to sound off, with the two polls below, both on who you think will win the race, and what voting percentage the winner will draw.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Who do you think will win the gubernatorial race

Bell Friedman Perry Strayhorn

Free polls from Pollhost.com

What will the winner get as far as vote percentage?

40 or more 38-39 36-37 34-35 32-33 30-31

Which of the Four Stooges will get my vote for Texas governor?

Simple: The first candidate to make a full and unequivocating pledge to kill electricity deregulation will have a huge inside track.

Bit of potentially good news: Phil King and other members of the Lege are talking about capping dereg. We’ll see after Nov. 7.

Kinky Friedman more organized than Chris Bell?

Bell missed speaking to the Duncanville Chamber of Commerce for lunch today. The staff writer at our newspaper group said he had gotten overscheduled, but didn’t have any information on where he was that caused him to miss the lunch.

Could have gotten a lot of coverage. Our suburban newspaper group covers a territory of more than 300,000 people; I don’t know if the Morning News was there or not.

Will Texas get Kinky Nov. 7?

Adapted from my Sept. 21 Today Newspapers column.

Texas is arguably seeing its most interesting gubernatorial race since the days of Ma and Pa Ferguson back in the 1920s.

Take a look at what we’ve got.

First is a blood feud match between the man that some of us progressives at times think almost makes President Bush look competent, Gov. Rick Perry, aka Gov. Helmethair, and the “one tough grandma,” whom you expect to see be pistol packing along with mouth shooting, Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn etc.

Next, you have a Democrat, Chris “Verizon” Bell (can you hear me now?), whom one would think ordinary be drooling at what is in essence, to some degree an intra-Republican fight as well as a personal steel death cage match. But, the man with a down-home ethical sincerity level not often seen in politics also seems to have a political personality that engages about as well as a blown clutch on a ’63 Chevy pickup.

When big-time Democratic campaign donors like trial lawyers appear to think the same thing, and to think it enough to make out their checks to Grandma instead of Verizon (although that is changing somewhat), you know that you’re not a “buy” in the political futures market, although that’s started changing recently.

And then you have Kinky — Kinky (“Sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar”) Friedman, author, musician and all-around raconteur, trying to break through the good ol’ boys and good ol’ girls with a refreshingly different campaign, albeit one that is threatening to somehow become more repetitive and more incomprehensible at the same time.

Now, whether Kinky is the answer or not, obviously the other folks are worried about him. Bell, perhaps worried about finishing fourth, seems to be the leading sniper, but Kinky is his primary target for getting votes anyway, especially as Bell shows Friedman is a hard-core conservative inside his populist schitck. However, the Perry and Strayhorn camps have started taking at least an occasional shot at the ol’ Kinkster, too.

One thing is for sure. With Kinky in the race, the state won’t have an abysmal voter turnout like it did in the 2002 general election.

As with many political race, at times it seems like this is the lesser of two, er least of four, evils, type of election.

Perry is beholden to special interests too thick to count. Among those with the deepest pockets are Cintas, the Spanish construction firm wanting to do partnership business in Texas as Cintas-Zachry, to build the state-long Trans-Texas Corridor toll road. Not all of Perry’s beholden interests are those with deep pockets, though. Or, at least, they aren’t first thought of for their deep pockets.

People who are concerned about First Amendment religious liberties issues note that Perry has jumped in bed with the Religious Right to a degree and in a way that practically makes George W. Bush look chaste in comparison.

And, speaking of that, you know that if Perry wins, he’s going to get talked up for national office in 2008. That’s even though there’s been no advance groundswell for him like Bush had in 1998.

Strayhorn? If it weren’t a blood feud, started when Perry pushed the Legislature to clip some of the Comptroller’s Office’s powers, what else would it be? And, do we really want someone who claims she can win the general election but was afraid to battle Perry in the Republican primary? And Strayhorn has already burned enough bridges with the Legislature, not just Perry, that she might have trouble being an effective governor.

(And, speaking of that, what’s with Chicken Little GOP women politicians over Perry? First, it was our Head Cheerleader, Kay Bailey Hutchison, ducking a prize fight with Rappin’ Rick, despite her snow job that it was because she really just wanted to best serve Texans in the Senate. Then, it’s Left Cross Grandma deciding a primary dropout is the better part of valor.)

Beyond sparring with Perry over some financial accountability issues, until the TTC hit the fan, her only real disagreements with the governor were personal, not political. As for TTC, and some disagreements on TAKS or other education issues, there’s non-Republican choices rather than trying to decide which of two Republicans to select.

Chris Bell? Nice man, from what I see. Decent. Ethical. Ethical enough to force both the Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives to break their sit-on-their-hands see-no-evil stance on the House Ethics Committee and actually censure the now-resigned, now-fallen Rep. Tom DeLay. He did also get some reputation for trying to improve political ethics while on the Houston City Council.

But, besides his charisma deficiency, can anybody really name anything else he has done in politics? Granted, cleaning up political ethics is good work, and hard work, in and of itself. And, he’s starting to get some traction out of the issue of underfunding of Texas state parks.

But, within Texas Democrats, he’s arguably on the conservative side; his work as a scheduler for Republican lieutenant governor candidate Rob Mosbacher in 1994, even if working at Mosbacher Energy at the time, should underscore that.

On the plus side, as a former journalist, one would hope that a Gov. Bell would continue to stress ethics, and open government as well.

And, that leaves Kinky Friedman, former headliner for the Texas Jewboys and murder mystery writer. Jokes aside about him bringing kosher government to the state, his own words perhaps say it best, when he said, “Can I screw it up any worse?” Probably not.

That said, as a populist-type candidate, Kinky has positions that haven’t totally meshed with each other, and some that are as inconsistent with each other, in their own ways, as those of career politicians.

Comparisons with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura end here. Ventura had been mayor of a Minneapolis suburb before running for Congress. While his positions also weren’t totally coherent, he usually had more organization behind them.

But, Friedman may be right, contrary to big media assessments here in Texas. Maybe he can’t screw up any worse. Or maybe people are so tired of Texas politics and lame two-party candidates not to care.

As for some people saying they’re offended by his language, have these people said anything about that of President Bush or Vice President Cheney? Uh-huh.

Yet, Friedman at times sounds like he’s pandering so much to religious conservatives to get snuggly with them that he threatens to make Perry look chaste.

And he certainly doesn’t understand the First Amendment, nor 40 years of Supreme Court rulings, with wanting prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in public schools.
Even worse, his recent Kilgore comment that “If you don’t love Jesus, go to hell,” shows that this man is anything but inclusive.

Kinky Friedman is no progressive.

And, if you can’t even win a small-town, small-county race (Kinky lost a 1986 justice of the peace election in Kerrville), how do you expect your populist schtick to do anything statewide, without substantive ideas behind it?

In any case, here’s how I see the race going down to the wire.

Perry’s got a big war chest. Saturation TV, radio and print ads will be coming out the wazoo soon.

Strayhorn? If her fourth-place standing continues much longer, the Democratic trial lawyers’ checks will dry up more and more. Look for her to up the personal nature of the attacks. Her campaign, more than any of the other challengers, has to be geared specifically against Perry.

Bell? If a corpse can indeed pull 40 percent of the vote from the Texas Democratic base (see Tony Sanchez, 2002), he could win a four-way race, especially if some of Grandma’s traditional Democratic donors start returning home to roost. If nothing else, if a corpse actually can pull that 40 percent, then Verizon Bell might be living proof of that.

Kinky? He has to hope that Strayhorn hits harder as she continues to trail, and that Bell and Perry turn the snipers on each other as they try to narrow things to a two-person race.

Nov. 7, will we stay the course, seat a Democrat, or see a cigar-chompin’ dark horse charging hard up the rail, if he doesn’t keep tripping over his own hooves?

Stay tuned.

They don’t make Jews like Jesus any more — or nutbars like Kinky Friedman

With his school prayer and Ten Commandments in the classroom comments, he sounds so determined to get tight in bed with the Religious Right as to make Rick Perry look chaste. Yet, many of the RR probably don’t appreciate his comment that “those who don’t love Jesus can go to hell,” at least not the salty language part.

And, the RR sure isn’t hopping between the sheets with some guy who wants to legalize grass, either.

Kinky is NOT Jesse Ventura. Ventura got himself elected mayor of a mid-sized city before running for governor in Minnesota. Now, while governor, he quickly started looking like just another politician, trying to get his wife on the government dole and such. But he was still light-years ahead of Friedman.

As for other entertainer-politicians to whom Friedman compares himself? Reagan was giving his rubber-chicken political speech for years before running for governor. Schwartzenegger married into politics.

AND, in both cases … although often underinformed, they were:
A. Closer to the mainstream than Kinky, and
B. Major party candidates with handlers, etc. to cover their gaffes and information blanks. Kinky’s still running his campaign like a lounge show.

Now, I voted Green for president in 2004, and if the Green gubernatorial candidate qualifies for official write-in status, I’ll pull that lever again, there being no Social Democratic party in the U.S.

Chris Bell, among the three other top-tier ballot line candidates, is starting to catch fire with the Texas parks funding issue, but only a bit. If he could only sound like he was catching fire, it might be different.

Two years ago, when I saw my first Kinky for Governor bumper sticker, the idea sounded interesting, provocative and even worthwhile. But, as his repetitive nightclub jokes-and-schtick routine wears thin (sorry, Kinky, there’s no Texas Catskills in the gubernatorial race), it is, while not nightmarish, at least sounding like an old 78RPMer, having finished playing its song, endlessly slamming the needle against the label at the center.