If you get a chance, check out this story on video [You can find video here. Look for the piece titled "Friedman, Ventura Court Young SA Voters", because they don't make it easy to link directly to it --ed.]. Ventura has really let himself go, and he looks like crap. I liked his bald look while governor, but the crazy braids he has now are pitiful.Kinky Friedman, making no apologies for recent racially charged remarks, began a three-day college tour [at the the University of Texas at San Antonio] Monday with Jesse Ventura, the former Minnesota governor whose surprise victory in 1998 is serving as the template for Friedman's independent populist run for Texas governor. ...
The independent Friedman faces Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Libertarian James Werner in the Nov. 7 election.
Ventura is accompanying him on planned stops this week in San Marcos, Houston and College Station.
Ventura, wearing his long beard in a single braid and a SEAL Team cap, railed about Republicans and Democrats preferring a small turnout like the 29 percent voter turnout in the last Texas governor's race and urged the students to vote for Friedman and boost the overall voter count.
UPDATE: I'm not a big fan of John Branch, the editorial cartoonist for the Express-News, but he did capture Ventura's nutty look quite well in this cartoon.
1 comment:
Yeah, when strange characters enter politics, they often think their personalities will carry the day, and that's usually true at first. But their strangeness can be a liability in the end.
Sometimes these characters figure out that they have to temper their strangeness so they can appeal to a broader electorate, and then they play politics as usual. Sometimes they can't change their behavior (or won't), and they usually don't last more than one term. Ventura is a good example of the latter.
If -- and a REALLY big if -- Kinky gets elected as governor of Texas, I predict he won't last more than one term either.
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