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COPYRIGHT 2005 Texas Monthly, Inc.
The business card of the only announced independent candidate for governor reads "Kinky Friedman is allowed to walk on the grounds unattended. If found elsewhere, contact:" and then gives his home address and phone number in Medina. Fittingly enough, he handed me one of those cards at six-thirty in the morning on the first Thursday in June, after I'd encountered him pacing on the front lawn of a house he keeps in North Austin. He looked like a back-pew mourner at Johnny Cash's funeral: black felt cowboy hat, black lizard-skin boots, unfaded Wranglers, black snap-front shirt, and a black leather vest he said was a gift from Waylon Jennings. In his right hand was a black jacket made for him by famed Nashville Western wear tailor Manuel that he calls his "preachin' coat," and in his left was his ever-smoldering Cuban cigar. [paragraph] Our mission that morning was a three-whistle-stop visit in Galveston, and while we awaited the arrival of Little Jewford, Kinky's inveterate keyboard player, business manager, valet, and, today, his chauffeur, the candidate started to fret: "Your next governor's wardrobe contains just two outfits, the preachin' coat and the vest, and I can't decide which to take" Perhaps sensing he was revealing too much, he shifted to his campaign. "I just saw on Imus in the Morning that Don's got a 'Kinky for Governor: Why the Hell Not?' sticker on the wall behind him in the booth. That's the kind of national media that the Rick Perrys of the world can't buy." Ten minutes later, Jewford appeared, a short man in a Hawaiian shirt with the basso profundo voice of a game show host. After he'd reminded the candidate to turn off his coffeepot and television and performed the bigger chore of assuring him that he could bring both outfits, we set out to politic.
It was an early stage of phase one in Kinky's campaign, as devised by strategists Bill Hillsman and Dean Barkley, the chief architects of Jesse Ventura's shocking victory in the 1998 Minnesota governor's race. Unlikely as it sounds, they're calling this his "listening tour," but its real goals are three: Keep Kinky in the public eye, establish him as a serious candidate, and persuade registered voters to sign the petition that will put him on the '06 ballot. As adept as he is at getting attention, and as seriously as he takes himself, Kinky is confident these goals will be met.
Right as we hit the highway, he saw the tape recorder rolling. "The Capitol in Austin was built for giants, but it's inhabited by midgets!" he said. "The statue of Janis Joplin on top of the dome should be hiding her eyes, because right there down below her it's...
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