A Texas Tribune editor recalls working on the 2006 independent gubernatorial campaign of Kinky Friedman.
We’re testing using AI-powered tools to provide an audio version of this story. While this audio recording is machine-generated, the story was written by human journalists. Kinky Friedman died Thursday. His obituaries have listed his various endeavors: Peace Corps volunteer, bandleader, provocateur, satirist, singer-songwriter, mystery novelist, essayist, perennial candidate for various offices .
The Kinky Friedman for Governor campaign headquarters in Austin had a store offering merchandise, including shirts, caps and bumper stickers.I joined the campaign seeking to escape a life that was becoming unbearable to me after 30 years as a professional musician.
The Kinky Friedman campaign's logo was designed by Austin concert portrait artist Guy Juke. The campaign relied on colorful art.Kinky further offered an aspirational vision to voters that was long on slogans, if short on details. It spoke to Texans' deep sense of identity, including distrust of government.
The teardrop trailer designed by Austin artist Bob “Daddy-O” Wade for Friedman's campaign. Widely known as the Gov Bug, it was usually full of merchandise, but it was also pressed into service to hold some of the tens of thousands of petition signatures delivered to the Texas secretary of state for verification.
For a man who avoided real jobs, Kinky was relentless. He was on the road all the time, all over Texas, in front of anyone who’d have him. And plenty would — he was an incredibly engaging presence who read rooms as only politicians and performance artists can. He shared a gifted politician’s knack for making you feel, in a brief one-on-one encounter, like you were the only person in the world. If he had an engagement at 2 p.m., he considered himself late if he wasn’t there by noon.
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