Wow! Great news from the Lone Star state: Voters will have not one, but two independents to chooose from when they vote for governor this year. If either wins they would be the state’s first Independent governor since Sam Houston. One, Carole Keeton Strayhorn is a former Republican and mother to former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Numero Dos, Kinky Friedman, is a mistery novel writer and frontman for that great country band, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys.
The last time Texas had an independent candidate for governor was in the year 1859. This November, there will be two. Both Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn were told yesterday they had enough signatures to get on the ballot. Strayhorn collected more than 100,000 valid signatures, Friedman collected more than 130,000.
“This is unprecedented and historic,” said Kristi Morgan-Turner Smith County Campaign Coordinator for Kinky Friedman. “There’s not only one, but two viable independent candidates on the ballot for Governor for the first time in 150 years in Texas, and there was a huge response for both candidates. We had people coming that hadn’t voted in 20 years.” The governor’s election is November 7th. We talked to someone from Strayhorn’s campaign earlier today who says they are very excited and thank everyone for their support. [/quote]
Damn, it’s days like this I wish I was a Texan.
For a some good laughs, check out the multimedia stuff on Kinkster’s website. (My personal favorite is the Press Conference with the talking Kinky action figure… “You can criticize me all you want, just don’t circumsize me anymore.”)
I know nothing about Kinky, as I don’t follow Texas politics now that I’m living elsewhere. Strayhorn as I recall, always seemed like quite the machine politically. I’m actually a little surproised that she hasn’t manage to get nominated by one of the major parties yet.
Well, that action-figure press-conference commercial (or any of the campaign commercials) at the link above should help you catch a glimpse into his soul. Or download some of his tunes–I might suggest “they ain’t makin’ jews like jesus anymore.” The only book of his I ever read was a little weird, but…
See, now I don’t really know much about Strayhorn, although I heard that she was sort of a machine. I think her presence has got to make Governor Perry a little nervous as well. (Although Kinky is reportedly ahead of Strayhorn and the Democrat in the latest poll of likely voters.)
I think this is gonna be far-and-away the most interesting race of 2006.
Is it true he makes G. W. Bush look smart?[/quote]
I don’t know, but I attended a fancy function in Austin a couple of years ago and was given a cool certificate welcoming me to the Lone Star State. It bears an original signature of Governor Perry and the sig looks like that of a 7th grader – very slow, simple, methodical tracing of the letters. If I have the time one of these days I’ll see if I can photograph it and put it up here for you. You know that some people claim a signature reveals a lot about a person.
Yeah, I’d say Bush looks like a mensa guy compared to Perry. Bush was actually a pretty good governor, In mine and I think most Texans opinions. Whatever you think of his presidency, Bush did a pretty good job as governor and was actually a moderate who did pretty well at striking the apprpriate balance for Texas. Perry on the other hand (at least through his 1st term before I left the state) came across as purely political and having absolutely no concern for anything but his own pocket book. It was complete political infighting for a couple years there because Perry basically set out to punish anyone who wasn’t on his side politically. He ran probably the nastiest campaign I’ve ever seen from any politician. Hell, he even went out of his way to repeatedly rip one of his own state’s universities after his chief of staff got in a fight at a football game there.
