Austinist Interviews Kinky Friedman, Who Kindly Asks You to Save Yourself for Him

And it’s looking very interesting in a lot of places, and the polling, of course, is irrelevant. I mean, the polling is all likely voters. Now, if you didn’t vote last time, in the governor’s race, you’re not a likely voter. So when they call you, and you say you didn’t vote for Perry or Sanchez, then they don’t care about your vote in the poll. So that’s – I, too, am an unlikely voter.

"Sold American" (on political advertising)
Most people think that the candidate they see most on TV is the most serious one. No candidate is quote, serious if he’s not seen in TV commercials. Doesn’t matter if it’s Jesus Christ who’s running against Rick Perry, Rick Perry would win. And people would think Jesus was a flake, because he wasn’t in the TV commercials.

"The Boogie Man" (on voter turnout, or lack thereof)
They spent a hundred million bucks last time to drive 71% of us away from the polls. Because people are just disgusted with politics. And because I’m the only candidate that can motivate voters to vote. So that’s the key. Now if I motivate them enough to get 37, 40% of them to vote, then we’re gonna lose probably, Perry will win. But if we go up from there, if it’s like Ann Richards and Clayton Williams, when they had 50% voting…It’s the young people that don’t vote, and older people like myself that haven’t voted in a while. If we come back, we ain’t coming back to vote for Perry or Strayhorn.

So it’s very logical: a big turnout - “It’s all about the turnout, Stupid.” That’s it. If the turnout’s big, I’m the governor; if it’s small, Perry’s the governor. I don’t see a scenario where Carole can be.

"Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight" (on the Democrats’ chances)
Well, that goes without saying –

"Tramp on the Street" (on the state of education)
Well, we’re losin’ ‘em now (the best candidates and qualified teachers), as you know. So they’ve got to be appointed; you’ve got to appoint people who have actually seen the inside of a classroom; you got to – the whole system of the 3200 appointments Perry makes are all – just like the Secretary of State. Just – he was a used car dealer in Weatherford, Texas, very wealthy guy, big fundraiser, big Republican fundraiser – and he shames the legacy of Mary Martin, from Weatherford. We’re number one in executions, toll roads and property taxes; and we’re 50th in education, 50th in care of the elderly, you know. You know the story with children’s health insurance – and so I mean, this could all be turned over if the young people vote – it will all be done, it will be different –

The real problem is I don’t think the real politicians have even dealt with education; they’re not making it the centerpiece on the table. They’re making banning gay marriage the big issue. Because they knew it would take peoples’ eye off the ball.

"The Take-It-Easy Trailer Park" (on young people’s role in the political process)
Yeah, nobody voted. They’re all gone fishin’. I have no faith in the young people voting, no. They’ve never done it yet – there’s no reason why they should – there’s a good reason why they should, because they can run the state – in fact, they ought to. Well, I see why they didn’t vote for someone like John Kerry. Because he was an empty suit just like some of the others. And really, my – if you ask what I’m all about, it’s getting the politicians out of politics. It’s taking Texas off of Ebay. Texas has been played like a cheap violin by these people; and I say, every time a bell rings, another lobbyist gets his wings.

"Popeye the Sailor Man" (on Jesse Ventura and bureaucrats)
And I admire Jesse Ventura, who refused to meet with a lobbyist the whole time he was governor of Minnesota. People overlook that – that’s important. Can Rick Perry say that? You know, he meets with them every day. That’s why he can’t do anything. When you ask what has he done? He’s helped the insurance industry a great deal; he’s helped the toll roads a great deal, he’s helped the home builders a great deal; if you build your house, Man, and it’s all fucked up and you try to get any redress, you won’t. Because the home builders are in Perry’s pocket.

Ventura once he was in, didn’t have to answer to the lobbyists, but how do you get to the point where we can get people into office, that aren’t answering to the big money?

It’s basically having an honest person in there that’s as disgusted with politics as the rest of us are. I mean, I’m truly disgusted with politicians. Everything is tinged by them and controlled by them; the TTC for instance. Drive around Texas, you’ll see, “TTC, stay off of this property.” I mean, it’s a horrible idea. And this Trans-Texas Corridor – the mile, and now the Transportation Secretary is saying, it may be 23 miles on each side, in certain areas. It’s a land grab – and that land is – the people that are going to own that property are the same ones who own the governor. That’s all it is.

Now, if I were to take you three (motions to writer and friends), and appoint you to important positions in my administration, that wouldn’t be graft, it wouldn’t be patronage; it would be me picking three people, young people that I don’t know real well, but I know they’re not Crips or Bloods, you know? They’re not Republicans or Democrats, their passion is not Tom DeLay’s passion. Tom Delay is a perfect symptom; and so is Rick Perry. They’re not evil; they’re just a symptom of people who have forgotten what they’re there for. They’re there to serve the people of Texas. You know, Jesse gave me some very good advice. He said, Be yourself. That way you never have to remember who you are.

"Skatin’ on Thin Ice" (on honesty in politics)
The main thing I’m finding is that people are begging for a little honesty; they are drooling for it; they want a little bit of truth. And when I look back over what I’ve done – as a musician, and as a novelist or whatever – and truth-telling is what ties it all together. And as the old Texas proverb goes, ‘When you tell the truth, have one foot in the stirrup.’ And it’s dangerous to tell the truth sometimes.

I’ll give you a good example. On Sixty Minutes, when I said I support gay marriage and I support prayer in school. And I submit that no other candidate can support both of those. They can’t. The party tells these people what to think. They cannot do it, so whatever you think of Chris Bell, he can’t support prayer in school, whatever you think of Strayhorn, she can’t support gay marriage. And anyway, a lot of response has come from that, and a lot of people, at the point where I said I support those two things, a lot of people said, you know, they say, I’m voting for that guy. Because they knew instinctively, that guy’s not making this up. He’s telling the truth, even if we don’t agree with him – usually they don’t agree about one of them. You know, Republicans will never support gay marriage and Democrats will never support prayer in school. When the truth is, if you’re lookin’ at the Columbine High School shootout there, I saw a letter from one of the fathers of one of the kids that was killed. And he says, Don’t attack the NRA. He said, It’s not the NRA that did it. It’s not guns that did this, you know? It’s basically spiritual values - the absence of them, that did it.

In other words there’s not only no Ten Commandments in the schools, there’s no spiritual values of any kind. There’s no God in the school, and the only time those kids prayed is when they prayed for their lives. That’s the only time. And that – there are problems with prayer in school. But I’d rather deal with those problems. I’d rather deal with the problems that come from legalizing casino gambling, rather than letting all the money from the Indian casinos here drift out of state as it’s now doing – and you know, if you don’t believe me, my source is Jerry Jeff Walker, which is not a very good source – not reliable, but – Jerry Jeff plays a lot of casinos. And he says that $70 million has been given by Louisiana gambling interests to keep gambling out of Texas. So imagine if those gamblers – 5 million went right to Ralph Reed (sp) reportedly, the head of the Christian Coalition, there. So if these people are paying $70 million to keep gambling out of Texas, how much would it be worth to us? Well, I tell you what it would be worth; it would be worth billions, to us. And then we just have to keep it out of the lobbyists’ pockets.

Here’s an example of what politicians do. They will tell you that the smoking ban hasn’t hurt Austin. They’ll tell you that the food and beverages consumed in restaurants is just what it was before the smoking ban. Okay? What they won’t tell you is that it’s the same because restaurants like Applebee’s, and – big chains are doing very well, and are buying out everything else. But every neighborhood bar is dying. Okay? Every one of them. So while the Continental Club may survive, or Antone’s – because they’re famous – even though they don’t like it any more than anybody else – the ones that aren’t so famous are not going to make it. They’re the ones, really, that are going to go. And so what you’re doing is homogenizing the whole culture, here. And what’s the price tag on that? For the live music scene. And yet the financial results are pretty much the same, according to the – you know? But we’re turning into just one big Applebee’s.

"We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You" (on lifetime politicians and lobbyists)
The Crips and the Bloods (Democrats and Republicans) are the same guy, admiring himself in the mirror. They’re indistinguishable – and all they do is hold onto power, forever. Between Strayhorn and Perry you’ve got 59 years of political – life. And you can call it whatever you want, I wouldn’t call it political service, exactly, but – George Washington served two terms. He turned down “King,” of the country – and became president, after two terms he got out, got back into private life, that’s what the Founding Fathers expected. They didn’t expect George Washington to become a lobbyist, and a consultant, and hang around, and – do what lobbyists do. So the lobbyists are doing very well. They are thriving.

The $4 billion that the Mean Grandma found in her purse, that she and Perry are calling a budget surplus? Which is a great word for it. Because that’s really what the politicians call it. It’s really overtaxed Texans, that’s what it is; and that money should go back to the people that are spending – 15 percent of your taxes should come back to you. Because the Democrats are tax and spend, they’re not going to do it, and the Republicans are tax, and can’t count right –You know? So the only one that can do it is somebody from the outside the system coming in, to – give it back to the people who it belongs to. I mean, the chances of their spending that money on education or something are zero; it will be some frivolous bullshit.

And if we – my feeling is, that the Crips and the Bloods will keep playing the games – they’re insider games. Like the Special Sessions. Those are insider games. And so we don’t know what’s going on. We know nothing is going on. Nothing is delivered. For the wrong reasons. So it’s our money – and the kids get nothing, the teachers get nothing, education gets nothing – they may get themselves a raise or something. And, even if they put a Band-Aid on the thing, you know – which they didn’t even bother to do last time, they just said, we couldn’t do it. Now, look at it a little deeper. Their whole leadership is Republican. They control the whole damn leadership, and they can’t get it done. And the Democrats control the people. And they can’t get anyone in office.

So I mean, it might really truly be time for an Independent in there, and when I say, you know, musicians can better run the state than politicians everybody laughs and I say you know, we won’t get a lot done in the mornings, you know – but we’ll work late, and we’ll be honest. And the fact is, [the] kind of people like musicians are decent. They’re not like politicians.

So really the word, knowledge, political knowledge; knowledge of government, can I run a government? Do I have the knowledge? Well, I will tell you that knowledge should never be used as a hammer to hurt people. And that’s the way it’s being used by the politicians. I think knowledge should be used as a key. It should be a key. And it should open that cage of bureaucracy; and of corruption, which is – which if anything, Hurricane Katrina taught us. I mean, that’s the real lesson, is – that from the White House – well, the lesson is, don’t appoint somebody’s roommate head of FEMA. I mean, I don’t think, you don’t want to do that. But – I mean, the guy was doing fine, until the hurricane came along. I mean you know, he was doing fine as head of FEMA, and rockin’ right along, and then the hurricane came. And in its wake you saw, even before, you saw. As soon as the crisis started, you saw it from the White House to the Mayor of New Orleans, there was not a Rudy Giuliani that happened to be around. There was no Winston Churchill to be found. Just a bunch of paid-off, patronage, corrupted politicians and bureaucrats.

Taking a man out of New Orleans, a blind man, and leaving his Seeing Eye dog there, in the flooded house. Bureaucracy. And no cavalry, by the way. No one’s going to come to help us fix this; if you’re waiting for someone to fix our education system, or to fix the border, they ain’t going to do it. And of course criminal justice, well...ridiculous.

"Wildman from Borneo" (on being an outsider)
One thing I know for sure; it (serving as governor) will be easy. Okay? I mean, this just isn’t hard, it’s just – quite easy, and the fact that I have no political experience is a big, big plus. I’ve got a lot of human experience, because I’m 61 years old – as I like to point out, I’m too young for Medicare and too old for women to care. So, in other words, I’ll do very, very well. But a guy my age who’s had the human experience that I have…in the 59 years that Strayhorn and Perry were in politics, I was doing other things, like being in the Peace Corps in the jungle; touring with Bob Dylan; playing the Grand Ole Opry; sleeping at the White House under two presidents. This guy is really the judge of a big chili cook-off. He doesn’t have his finger on a nuclear button – he doesn’t have a hell of a lot of power, but he’s got a huge amount of influence. And that’s the difference between me and Perry.

"Hobo’s Lullaby" (on the role of governor)
There’s a lot of little things, you ask, what can you do? I could open the Indian casinos Day One I’m in office. Snap my fingers, it’s done. Don’t need the Legislature.

We can rename those four highways that I want to name after Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Buddy Holly, and Bob Wills.

Get rid of the toll roads. Get rid of this horrible Trans Texas Corridor that is cutting through some of the oldest farmland and ranches in Texas, dividing towns and counties – For what? I mean is it – you think it’s going to relieve congestion in Austin? Plus you’ll be paying a toll to a Spanish company. You know, for the next 50 years.

How about the toll roads in Houston and San Antone, that we’ve already paid for once, that we’re now – have turned into toll roads? We’ve already paid one time, we’re doing it again? And they said, “As soon as this is all done, then the toll road will go away.” No. It never does. It never does. It goes on forever.

So we’re going to have to have ‘em. Somehow we’re going to have to get the money in order to have ‘em. But – I mean, that’s one way we could lose. Because I do think it’s going to take a revolution to throw these guys out. Now, can we have one?

"Somethin’s Wrong with the Beaver" (on the politics of border concerns)
Another great example of lack of common sense: Just on the news tonight, Perry has fired the task forces – he’s dropped all of the drug task forces. Just at the time when the border is exploding. So now you got DPS trooper trying to deal with MS-13s, with major drug cartels. Big narco people. And – so the trained units are all gone. Or will be gone as of March 31st. I mean – is it common sense, this is the time to let those people go? Or is it common sense that you relocate them all to the border, and you try to do something here. You need the entire Polish Army; you need the Canadian Mounted Police – and I’ll tell you who agrees with me, Bill Richardson, from New Mexico. The Governor of Arizona agrees. Has Perry even talked to those governors? Does anybody know? He certainly hasn’t met with them. Is it possible that a coherent plan might be worked out?

We’ve got a Republican ambassador to Mexico. Tony Garza. Who by the way, his favorite author happens to be Kinky Friedman. He’s a Bush-appointed guy. He married the richest woman in Mexico. There’s a guy I’d start with. You know? Let’s talk about the border. Let’s focus some energy on it. Because people just kind of miss – when they talk about the Minute Men, say. You know you’re probably against the Minute Men, I’m probably for them. But that doesn’t matter. What’s more important is, what happened when they left Arizona? When they pulled out? Who do you think were the happiest, most relieved people in over a thousand miles? It wasn’t the drug runners, and it wasn’t the illegals and it wasn’t the law enforcement, and it wasn’t the property owners; it was the politicians. They didn’t have the border on the news every night. It hurts the Republicans real bad, politically. Because the Mexicans are trending there. Trending Republican. From Catholic Democrats to born-again Republicans. And they don’t want to mess with that. So for political reasons, again, the wrong reasons, the Governor is ignoring the border until he’s forced to do it.

"Carryin’ the Torch" (on the historical significance of the election and his campaign)
And so this – but I don’t see this as an election, in November. This is really a moment in history. That’s what it is.

When Perry says, “I’m proud of Texas, how ‘bout you?” And I say, “Ask not if you’re proud of Texas, ask if you’ve made Texas proud of you.” And right now, the majority of people feel that we haven’t. That when the future generations look back on our time, they’re going to say, these people were not visionaries.

The past, everybody’s proud of. Because when Colonel Travis drew the line in the sand at the Alamo, that was when Texas was born. I’m doing the same thing. I’m drawing a line in the sand. And if enough Texans will cross it – especially young people – if they’ll cross that line – we’re going to win. And it has nothing to do with the amount of money these bastards have, [and] if they’ve got – and the big questions to be asked is not, I don’t care if he has 20 million, or 30 million – where did he get it? Where did this money come from? And why? That’s what we need to know, about both Strayhorn and him. Was it just a bunch of wealthy donors that love Perry so much that they gave him money? You think that? I don’t think so. I don’t want to shake people up, I don’t want to make them think, I don’t want to do any of that; I want to win this race. Because, really, by November, believe me, the soul of Texas will be riding on this campaign. And that’s the truth.

If you want to find out more about getting Kinky Friedman on the general election ballot, first and foremost, don’t vote tomorrow, then visit Kinky’s Official Website for more details. And if you want to find out more about selling Kinky campaign paraphernalia in your retail store, please contact geto13@hotmail.com.

*Picture of candidate (c) M. Odam*