Kinky Friedman Considering Run For Governor Of Texas

He Ain't Kinky, He's My Governor

As a campaign slogan, it leaves something to be desired: "Why the hell not?"

Anyway, the job — heavy on ceremony in Texas, where the real power lies in the lieutenant governor's authority to control the Senate agenda — does not daunt the curly-mopped Mr. Friedman, whose real name is Richard and who gives his age as 59, though adding, "I read at the 61-year level." Given those who have come before him, he said, "how hard could it be?"

Still, garbed in cowboy black, bearing a large silver Star of David on a chain and tooling around in an old white Nissan pickup with a Don Quixote statuette on the dashboard and chewed stubs of Cuban cigars in the ashtray, Mr. Friedman does acknowledge some ambivalence about his quest. This is his second run for elected office; in the first, he campaigned in 1986 for justice of the peace in nearby Kerrville, where "my fellow Kerrverts returned me to the private sector."

This is a man who, once he makes up his mind, is riven by indecision. So, he is often asked, is he serious? "Serious is not a word I would use, because I'm never serious," he said. "Some things are too important to be taken seriously." But, he said, "an alarming number of people think I could win."

Disdaining computers and the Internet as "the work of Satan," he writes it on an electric typewriter, rarely revising as he goes. (Thanks to a computer-literate friend, he does, however, maintain a sophisticated Web site, www.kinkyfriedman.com.)

His new campaign, he said, has won some encouragement from President Bush, a previous occupant of the Statehouse, whom Mr. Friedman calls a great admirer of his books, mostly comic mysteries with titles like "The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover." He quoted the president as calling Mr. Friedman his favorite fiction writer. " 'Course," he said, "George is not all that voracious a reader." He said Mr. Bush had also volunteered to be his "one-man focus group" for the campaign.

At a recent White House dinner, Mr. Friedman indeed told the president that he was running, the official said, but Mr. Bush replied that he could not endorse him until he knew Mr. Friedman's platform.

That, Mr. Friedman said, is an easy one. He wants to make the declawing of cats illegal.

"People who think this is frivolous should come back as a cat," he said. "I'd be a Buddhist, except for Richard Gere."

He was originally for the war in Iraq, he said, and argued with Willie Nelson about it. "He's a tyrannical bully," he told Mr. Nelson, "and we got to take him out."

"No," he says Mr. Nelson objected, "he's our president, and we got to stick by him."

In a Friedman administration, he said, Mr. Nelson would lead the Texas Rangers, unless he was called to Washington to head the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The campaign has won the support of the author Molly Ivins, who inspired his slogan when she asked why he was running. "Why the hell not?" he replied.

Ms. Ivins said in an interview, "I'm a great believer in entertainment in politics," adding that Texas had a tradition of singing governors. Mr. Friedman may not have much of a shot, she said, "but it's clear he's running, because he recently straightened his hair."

The success of his music and writing career has left him free to devote time to his Utopia Rescue Ranch, which shares the 500 acres of the summer camp left him by his parents and is a haven for some 60 homeless dogs, cats, donkeys, pigs and chickens. He supports it with fund-raisers, including one recently with the first lady, Laura Bush, and profits from his new Politically Incorrect brands of salsa and coffee.

His political campaign is a no-lose proposition, he said: "I'll either come out of it with a book, a wife or be governor."