I, Governor

I know I keep going back and retelling stories from my past, but I think its time for to share my greatest one to date. The time I ran for Governor of California…

For those of you who live, or at least lived in California during the great Gray Davis voter recall in the later half of 2003 (you know, when Arnie became the second star of the movie Predator to become an elected official), remember how every Tom, Dick and Harry (or pornstar) ran for office. I was one of those Tom, Dick and Harry’s.

My story begins at the end of August. I was gearing up to finally move out on my own and head to the east coast to pursue my goal of becoming a film maker. The local rock and roll radio station began airing ads for an online competition to get the most degenerate candidate they could find, and put them in the Governor’s chair up in Sacramento.

The rules were simple: The contestant needed to create 3 new laws he or she would put into effect as the Governor, and the number 1 thing they would change about the state. This was tough, I could easily say “legalize pot and prostitution”, or “lower the car registration fees” (which were really fucking high at that point), or I could say anything that would possibly make people want to vote for me. When I logged onto the website to see what the other candidates had in store for the state, I was shocked to see that no one really had any imagination, they all just said basically what I figured would be the most commonly given answers.

Now, I’m no politician (hell, I rarely watch the news), I’m no great debater, and I’m pretty sure I’d bankrupt the state by giving strippers a tax exempt status. But I wanted to win this contest, and I needed something great to unite the people behind me. After a few days of contemplation, I came up with these three simple laws, and one thing I’d change about California.

1.) Cheaper Beer

2.) Better Music

3.) Bigger Tits

“To help combat the war on terror, I would have the Pledge of Allegiance changed to Dennis Leary’s theme song ‘Asshole’, and dare the world to try and fuck with us again.”

Next, I created an account on the website and filled out my entry information (complete with the worst photo of me I could find at the time – my graduation photo). It was now time to pimp myself.

I contacted everyone I knew at the time, I told them to go to the website, and vote for me. I would like to say that the voting stage(s) were on the level and well thought out. But in reality, they were worse than a Presidential race in Florida. Let me break it down for you.

Voting Stage #1

Originally, anybody could log on to the website, and vote for their favorite candidate…as many times as they wanted to. No marking system was in effect, and people voted for themselves as fast as their page would refresh. This lasted about a day before it was fixed.

Voting Stage #2

This was the longest part of voting section, and where you had to be the slickest if you wanted to win. I’m talking real Karl Rove shit here. When the candidate of your choice was selected, and the vote was cast, the website would automatically install a small cookie on your hard drive that would block you from voting again. Well, anyone talented with a computer could isolate this cookie, delete it, refresh the page, and vote again. Before I discovered this little trick, I was actually number one in the polls. The citizens of this rock community really wanted me to be their Governor, and I was all for it. I thought it was a shoe in, until I came home from work one night and saw that I had done from 67% in the polls to 28% in a span of 7 hours. I knew something was afoot, so I contacted my good friend Marc and had him look into it. This is when we discovered the cookie, and this is when Marc became my greatest supporter. Each night he would spend several hours voting, deleting the cookie and voting again to make sure that I remained in the lead. The reason why he did this night after night was because the person in second place kept rigging the elections in his favor. It was only right that we fight fire with fire.

Voting Stage #3

This was the final stage of the voting process. The radio station finally caught on to the “cookie glitch” and they decided it was time to make everyone play fair. This time you had to have an account with the radio station’s website, and that way they could keep track of who voted for who. Now, I know what you’re thinking “Why not just keep creating new accounts and pad your votes?” and here is my response to that… That shit takes time. First you have to create a brand new email, and then you have to create a new account on the website. Remembering screen names and passwords that were all different (as to not raise suspicion) was a pain in the ass, and while I could of just written everything down for a quick reference, I decided that it was time to play fair and see if I would win fair and square.

About a week after the voting ended, I received a phone call from the radio station informing me that I had won, and that they were sending me to Las Vegas the following week! I was so freaking happy, I think I even danced a jig in the kitchen when I got the call. The PR rep for the station told me that I had actually come in second place, but when it was discovered that the winner had cheated (he created very similar email accounts and screen names on the site – such as “Rock001” and “Rock002”), I was the first runner up. I had a hearty laugh, and I wiped the sweat from my brow when he didn’t mention how many votes were for me that came from the same computer.

Later on that afternoon, I got another call from the DJ’s that were promoting the contest, and they interviewed me on the air after announcing my victory. And from there I was whisked away to a life on the road as a newly appointed gubernatorial candidate.

My first order of duty was to register to vote, and to apply for the running of Governor. This is where I finally made the choice if I was a Democrat or a Republican, unfortunately Communist wasn’t an answer (kidding). Once that was taken care of, I had to acquire a certain amount of signatures of registered Democrats (65) to be considered a valid write-in candidate. Believe me, that was more difficult than it seemed.

The first public appearance I made was at a tailgating party at the local football team’s stadium. I stood out in front of this booth with loud rock music playing behind me asking everyone if they would like to sign my petition to make me their Governor…Yeah, that went over about as well as a vasectomy on a woman. I had never been told to “Fuck off!” more times in one day than I did in that 2 hour period. I was able to secure 15 signatures, so it was a decent start. My main complaint is that I didn’t know what to do, and my handler was in the same boat. He was a promotions rep for the station, and his boss told him to make me happy and to get me signatures. We were both grasping at air, and doing our best to make it work. I was happy he wasn’t an asshole, and he was happy I wasn’t a diva.

My next appearance was at the mall in downtown San Diego where I was down for a movie preview to go see the new movie featuring The Rock. The original promotion was to get people to quit smoking cigarettes in exchange for movie passes. Well…we decided to mix it up a bit. We offered them free movie passes in exchange for signatures. Sure, some people did it for the smokes, which worked out great because I looted the cigarette bag before I left that night. Far be it from me to pass up free smokes.

I finally got the red carpet treatment a week later when a tricked out limo pulled up in front of my house to take me to Hooters to watch the football game and to drink it up with my constituents. That was good times, and I’m glad the limo driver was my DD.

While I was in Vegas (another story for another time), I received a call from my handler telling me that the station had arranged for me to debate Larry Flint on the air the following week. I accepted his challenge, and spent the week preparing material to use on the air that didn’t involve the word(s), shit, cock, cunt, douche bag, tit, and any usage of, or involving the word ‘fuck’. By the time the big day rolled around, I felt that I was ready to take on Mr. Flint, and win.

I put on the best shirt I owned at the time (which looked terrible by the way), got a new hair cut, and drove up to the radio station to face my destiny (and my wheel chaired opponent). Everyone was really hospitable and accommodating while we waited for the big man to arrive at the building. We waited, and waited, and waited, waited. He never showed. He wasn’t in town just to debate me, he was also in town to promote the grand opening of his new club in downtown San Diego. The opening took priority, and because of a nasty car accident on the 15-South from L.A. we were left without a debater. Luckily for us, one of the other DJ’s came in and did an impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger for the debate. This guy was funny as hell, and he kept the jokes coming. So much in fact that I couldn’t keep up with the antics, and the best joke I got out was about how in my administration we’d make boob jobs a $10 dollar co-pay.

With that said and done, I went about my business until a week later when it was time to vote.

That was a bit of a nerve wracking day for me, I knew I wasn’t going to win, there was no way in hell that I’d win the election. That’s not to say that I didn’t want it. Everyone thought (or at least joked) that if I won the key to the Governor’s mansion that I would do nothing but fuck up the state (more so than it already is). I’d like to make it clear right now, that had I won, I would have done my best to bring the state back up to code, and make Delaware the laughing stock of the United States (seriously, who cares about Delaware?).

A limo was coming to pick me and my good friend David up and take us to my election party (held at a strip club no less), and that was going to be it. I would kick it for a couple hours and look at naked women while waiting to see who actually won the election. I remember sitting in the VIP section of the club, getting a lap dance, and regret that I didn’t do more with the slight celebrityism that I had been granted for those precious weeks.

Well, the votes came in and Ah-Nold won by a landslide, the patrons of the club gave me their condolences and went back to getting their grind on. The PR rep and an attending DJ presented me with a backpack with a ton of CD’s, radio station t-shirts (which I still wear), and some concert tickets…actually, they were concert tickets to the show that I really wanted to go to, but didn’t have the money to afford... KISS and Aerosmith…

4 years later, I still look back on those weeks and smile. For that brief time I was a local celebrity, and people knew who I was (kinda). It was a great experience, and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. Plus, every once in a while I get to relive the old days when I get asked to come down to a strip club and judge a contest. So, sometimes being an ex-whatever the hell I was, has its perks.