I am writing to you as a Texan and as a voter. As such, I offer my congratulations to all of you for campaigns well run and political careers that have brought all of you to within shouting distance of the state’s highest office. Each one of you has much to be proud of. That said, polls close less than 24 hours from now, and it’s time for all of us who care about Texas do what’s best for its future. It is my hope that, after reading this letter, you will drop out of the 2006 gubernatorial race and join millions of Texans from across the political spectrum in casting your vote for Kinky Friedman.

It has been my privilege (55%) and my pleasure (45%) over the past few months to work with a talented (45%) and scarily committed (55%) army of volunteers and comically underpaid staffers in support of Kinky Friedman’s bid for the Governor’s mansion. I make no exaggeration in saying the following: these Kinky supporters have renewed and redirected my faith in politics, particularly Texas politics, in a way I would have told you was impossible a year ago. It is my belief that much the same is the case for disaffected voters statewide, that Kinky Friedman’s campaign has awakened something in the people of Texas: the kind of politics y’all practice has long since given up on awakening.

In a political climate too often characterized by divisive rhetoric, Kinky’s campaign has knocked down partisan barriers and wreaked unholy havoc upon conventional wisdom that defines Texas politics as an ugly, unattractive beast best left to the pathologically insincere and the criminally well-funded. For too long, we – and by “we” I mean “you” – have waged elections in entirely the wrong way, crafting messages for a given “base” and hoping that your small, unrepresentative sample of the population shows up in greater numbers than the other guy’s small, unrepresentative sample. A Kinky Friedman victory would entirely demolish the myth that this is the way to run for office. Imagine how much time y’all could save on micro-targeting and pollstering if your campaigns focused on all Texans, not just a small, pre-identified corner of an increasingly unhappy populace. Seriously, imagine it.

To find out your precinct voting location, go here:

http://team.sos.state.tx.us/voterws/viw/faces/SearchSelectionPolling.jsp

Please forward this to various and sundry!

Danni and I have now been to:

Del Rio
Laredo
Kingsville
Corpus Christi
Portland
Beeville
Goliad
Victoria
Angleton
Galveston
Beaumont
Lufkin
Longview
Tyler
Texarkana
Paris
Sherman
Wichita Falls
Amarillo
Lubbock
Big Spring
Midland
Odessa
San Angelo
Abilene
Brownwood
Waco

In all of those places we’ve encountered considerable support. In all of those places we’ve talked to random people who’ve wandered over to us because the Gov Bug is pink and I radiate sex and told us that they’re voting for Kinky, that their entire office is voting for Kinky, that their hardcore Republican grandparents already voted for Kinky, etc. These are places where the Democratic organization is supposed to be ironclad, where Chris Bell stopped running commercials he was so sure he had the county locked up. This is supposedly Perry country, where a candidate like Kinky has no hope of making even the smallest inroads. But none of those suppositions are true: all of Texas is Kinky country, and is Kinky country in a way conventional polls just aren’t showing.

HumanePAC, the political arm of the Humane Society, has published its
list of recommended candidates for 2006, and proudly, the Kinkster
heads the list for Texas. Excerpt below.

…

TEXAS: Kinky Friedman (I). Friedman’s candidacy has been breath of
fresh air in Texas, as he has criticized unethical trophy hunters at
the state’s “canned hunts.” He is also a well-known supporter of the
Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a sanctuary near San Antonio.

This our earth is a beautiful place full of good feelings and memories worth holding on to. If you’re like me, most of those good feelings come from Jane Seymour, star of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. One non Jane-Seymour-smiling-alluringly-at-me feeling I’ve found I like is handing out a bunch of bumper stickers and buttons and junk to supportive Longview residents, including a cop who said he didn’t know anyone on the Highway Patrol who liked Rick Perry, then driving off from a relatively subdued-seeming crowd assembled for another candidate with people yelling “Go Kinky!” at us at every corner, passing Stella, Chris Bell’s anxious, lonely seeming bus on the way out of town, then driving to a rally that had twice as many people each of whom was four or five times as enthusiastic as the Bell supporters we had left behind and somewhere on the order of ten times as attractive. There was a moment of incalculable anxst as we passed the Chris Bell Sleepwalking To November 7th Express in which a dozen Dire Straits songs were written, performed to rapturous applause, and retired to the quiet desolation of a pair of broken hearts permanently missing vital pieces – the pieces they lost to each other.

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A less ass-originating analysis: the enthusiasm and drive of Kinky’s county coordinators has Kinky yard signs and knowledge about what he stands for out in counties that aren’t officially organized, while Chris Bell has no presence in counties Democrats have counted on generating big numbers from for decades. Kinky doesn’t need a machine to get people to the polls, he just needs the network of friends he’s been making over two years of campaigning to get as many off their likeminded friends to the polls as possible. So let’s continue to do that, and in so doing knock the idea that you need to have an enormous warchest or the support of a major party to run for office out for the count.

I’m at the end of a fourteen hour day of Kinky campaigning, a day that has taken me through much of the valley, an area the campaign hasn’t had much opportunity so far to canvas with road signs or bumper stickers. Or, at least, that’s what I thought going in – turns out some of our coordinators from neighboring counties have been hitting up towns outside of their purview with signs. The more I talk to people – and granted, I’ve only been on the road for one day – the more I become convinced that the extraordinary creativity and drive of Kinky’s volunteers and the exceptional quality of Kinky’s message are going to combine to win this election, provided we can knuckle down and get out the vote now. Thanks in large part to Rob’s research, we know how close we are to our goal. It’s just a matter of pushing it the rest of the way.

It is early, early in the morning right now and I am writing from a hotel room in Del Rio. I didn’t see much of town as we drove in, save for an enormous H.E.B. and a number of palm trees. Starting at 8am tomorrow, Danni and I are driving from Del Rio to Laredo to Kingsville to Corpus, with stops at early polling locations in each town designed to generate whatever excitement we can about Kinky, about voting, and about Texas. If early polling numbers released so far are any indication, Texans are ready for a change and are turning out in record numbers to make that change happen. This is something I am privileged to be a small part of, having already voted early and voted for Kinky. I’m very much looking forward to seeing who else is taking part in what’s going to be the most memorable election in Texas gubernatorial history. I guess what I’m looking for, personally, from this trip, is a face to put on the millions of votes that are already helping to make Kinky our next Governor. What Danni’s looking for, primarily, is a way to convince me to stop pretending I’m Eddie Vedder and patch up my damn pants already. (more)

By four days into early voting in 2002, 2.17 percent of registered voters had voted, either in person or by mail in the top twenty biggest counties in Texas.

By four days into early voting in 2006, 3.53 percent of registered voters have voted in those same counties.

This is huge. If we keep turning out the vote like we have been, we’re looking at historic levels of voter participation. We’re going to continue to keep y’all updated as much as possible on the data as it comes in (and by we, I mean Rob), but don’t lose sight of the larger picture: we need to do everything possible to get as many people to the polls as possible. It’s hard work, and it’s not always fun, but it’s worth doing. There’ll be time enough to sleep on November 8th.