To unpredictability

Texas Democrats are screwed when it comes to statewide office but I'm stupid enough to hold out a little hope that maybe there's a slight chance in hell. Articles like this only fuel that idiocy and eventually lead to an even more painful hangover the day after an election.

The most likely scenario, of course, is that the 2006 gubernatorial election will end with the Republican nominee winning by a comfortable majority—say, close to 60 percent. One thing that could change that forecast is the Kinky factor. The former Texas Monthly columnist has destabilized the field by declaring his independent candidacy for the job with a logical query: How hard could it be? Before you dismiss him as a joke, remember that there were few Minnesotans who ever thought they would elect a governor with his own action figure in toy stores. But in 1998 Jesse Ventura, running as a Reform party candidate, beat the “real” politicians at their own game with a paltry 37 percent of the vote. Is it possible that Texas has enough iconoclasts—the sort of voters who, when in high school, elected the school mascot homecoming queen—to win the election? Not really. Minnesota allows instant voter registration, and Ventura was aided by long lines of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old wrestling fans who were first-time voters. But could Kinky siphon enough votes from Perry that an underdog Democrat could squeak in with less than 40 percent of the vote?