Kinky style : May I offend you for your vote?

[janneke]

Kinky style: May I offend you for your vote?

Friedman feeling his way from career as musician, writer to politics.

By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, April 07, 2006

Offensive strategy? Heck yeah, Kinky says

Musician-writer Kinky Friedman, kind of a flashing neon sign running for governor, has lately explored a theme that could make his bid shimmer or burn out. He wants to win by provocation or, as he framed it in an expletive-laced conversation, "the more people I offend, the more people will like me."

Friedman, 61, declared his candidacy last year by vowing to "de-wussify Texas." He and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state comptroller, are trying to reach the ballot as independents by raising 45,540 votersignatures each. They have until May 11 to turn in petitions.

Greg Thielemann, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas, signed a Friedman petition and said he sees Texans who usually tune out beginning to tune in.

"He hits nerves," he said. "In some ways, the more outrageous he becomes, the more nerves he hits. I'm not even sure it's a strategy that is designed to win votes. It might just be him."

Voters could eye five candidates for governorin November counting GOP Gov. Rick Perry, Democratic nominee Chris Bell and Libertarian James Werner. And the victor could carry less than half the vote for the first time since Ann Richards took 49.5 percent in 1990.

Friedman, stressing his desire to legalize casinos in Texas and to enlist Willie Nelson and maybe Lance Armstrong as advisers, told 200-plus people at St. Edward's University on Monday that Texas needs an offensive governor.

"That's the problem with politicians; they don't want to offend anybody. In so doing, though, they offend all of us." Friedman later questioned any conflictbetween cracking wise and delivering a message voters weigh seriously. "I'm not a politician," he said. "I'm a compassionate redneck; relate to me different than these guys or you won't get accurate results."

Saying he's not sure how he'd fulfill his goal of returning surplus state revenue to taxpayers, Friedman gestured toward aides. "If these guys have their way, within time I'll have a sharp, eight-second answer to every (expletive) thing, and it'll be just like any (expletive) idiot can give you. I know: That's a politician."

So sayeth Friedman

Friedman has long honed humor that hurts in irreverent songs and detective novels. Now he's at risk of injury by excerpt. In a November CNBC interview, for instance, he was pressed on a line in his 1987 novel, "A Case of Lone Star," comparing New York to "a Negro talking to himself."

Friedman said he saw nothing wrong and even said of sexual predators: "Throw them in prison and throw away the key and make them listen to a Negro talking to himself." Video excerpts appeared online on the Burnt Orange Report, a pro-Democrat blog.

This week, Friedman called the line "a poetic way of describing a junkie. I mean, you could say a heroin addict walking down the street. But if you're writing prose, you might say a Negro talking to himself." The line did not cause an uproar, though his campaign reports fielding a few e-mails.

Like other challengers, Friedman bemoans Perry's five-plus years as governor. Unlike others, he acknowledges his own proposals as unfinished — a trait that may have fueled the launch of an anti-Friedman Web site that purports to single out his inconsistencies on issues such as abortion, the death penalty and his voting history.

At St. Edward's, he swung hardest on illegal immigration, saying: "Perry's policy has been: Bring us your tired, your poor, your gangs, your drugs, your terrorists, your bombs, welcome to Texas. You know, that's why you find dead bodies in the back of cargo container trucks on Texas soil."

Perry said Thursday that he ushered in the first Senate panel on the border and has been to the border more than other statewide officials. "It's one thing to criticize, but to criticize without knowledge is even worse," Perry said.

Perry's campaign called Friedman's border proposal ludicrous. That plan calls for breaking up the border into five jurisdictions, assigning each one to a Mexican general, and putting millions of dollars into bank accounts for each.

"Each time we catch an illegal crossing through a general's jurisdiction," Friedman has said, "we withdraw $5,000 from that account. That'll solve the problem." His position on immigration has been wobbly. On March 28, his campaign provided a statement describing Friedman as favoring a guest worker program and language classifying illegal immigrants as felons. But Friedman repudiated the felon element at St. Edward's; a spokeswoman said the initial statement was posted erroneously.

Friedman said Tuesday that he never called immigrants felons, calling a reporter "full of (expletive)" before apologizing. As governor, he said, he'd consult Govs. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Janet Napolitano of Arizona plus Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, on how to help on the border.

Humor as his guide

On education, Friedman favors doing away with the state-mandated test taken by public school students. At St. Edward's, he said: "Right now we have 254 counties, 254 independent school districts. I think we have 254 monkeys. I want one gorilla running this thing. And the kind of person I want . . . is a guy like Lance Armstrong, who is capable of inspiring millions of people, who's got great guts, and who has managed to irritate the French for seven years in a row. A guy like that who said, 'OK, I'll fix education in Texas,' and it would get done." Aides afterward told Friedman there are more than 1,000 school districts.

Friedman later called Armstrong's role hypothetical; he has not talked to him of it.

The candidate wants schools to teach the Ten Commandments, which he calls the 10 suggestions. "I would have some kind of revolving prayer, a multiple religions thing."

Other Friedman ideas: Expanding biodiesel use for cars and buses; a listed gubernatorial phone number with times folks could call him to chat; a moratorium on executions; limited or no contact between Friedman and lobbyists; and a 1 percent bump in the state's severance tax on oil and gas.

His damn-'em-all summary: "Get the politicians out of politics. I want the guy who says never re-elect anybody.

"Everything I say is serious, even the 10 Mexican generals. One eye is laughing, and one eye is crying. That's the way it should be. Humor sails very close to the truth. And I try to sail as close as I can to the truth without sinking the ship."