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KSTP.com - 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS
Ventura stumps in Texas
Updated: 09/25/2006 09:20:53 PM

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Kinky Friedman began a three-day college tour Monday with former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, whose surprise victory in 1998 is serving as the template for Friedman's independent populist run for Texas governor.

"You can throw a monkey wrench into the machine," Ventura said, urging students at the University of Texas at San Antonio to vote. "You elect an independent and you send a message."

Ventura, wearing his long beard in a single braid, said the GOP and Democrats prefer the odds of a small voter turnout like the 29 percent of eligible voters who showed up to elect Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who is running for re-election.

Ventura, a former pro wrestler, acknowledged that same-day voter registration in Minnesota was a big help to him when he won that state's governorship in 1998 and that Friedman can't enjoy that help in Texas, where voters must register by Oct. 10 to cast ballots in the November election.

Friedman, who faces Perry, Democrat Chris Bell, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Libertarian James Werner in the Nov. 7 election, has repeatedly said he's trying to attract people who don't typically vote.

Ventura, who is accompanying Friedman on planned stops this week in San Marcos, Houston and College Station, said he and Friedman disagree on some issues, including immigration. Friedman wants 10,000 troops along the border to block illegal immigration. Ventura, who now lives in Baja California, Mexico, said he didn't want any kind of fence to stem the flow of immigration.

"You'll find as independents, we don't always agree on every subject, but you'll find we are in agreement that the Democrat and Republican parties are destroying our country right now. They're destroying our political process. They've turned it into a game of bribery.

Friedman talked to the standing-room-only crowd of more than 350 about a crime spike in Houston blamed in part on the Katrina refugees, but stayed away from his previous reference to them as "thugs and crackheads," for which he was criticized as being racially offensive.

"They say Kinky is a racist because I talked about the evacuees," he said. "Well, I'm smart, folks. I know that 250,000 evacuees are not committing these crimes. It's a small number."

Friedman also made no apologies for his stand-up comic routine from 1980 that came under fire last week because he had used the n-word twice in a joke.

"Humor is the weapon I use, humor to attack bigotry," Friedman said. "Remarks were pulled out of the kind of show we did that was designed to offend everybody."

Donna Peters, an 18-year-old freshman from Houston, said Friedman made a good impression.

"I'm not offended, not at all," she said. "I can relate to him and he connects a lot with young people."

But Heather Faulk, 21, of San Antonio, said less impressed. "He's contradictory," she said. "He's making it seem like a big party."