Assuming no sudden crisis, he will finish up plans for a trip to Las Vegas.

Seriously?

Close, Friedman maintains, except that before any gambling gambol, he would want his priorities heading toward reality. He wants to allow casinos on Indian-held lands in Texas and have a listed office telephone number, "so I could talk to people and they'd feel more a part of the governorship than they do now."

Friedman, 61, a writer, singer and humorist making his first try for public office, pitches himself as refreshingly different from Perry, independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Democrat Chris Bell, who have combined for more than half a century in office. Libertarian James Werner also is on the Nov. 7 ballot.

With a few exceptions, Friedman has disdained multi-point proposals and has preferred to cast himself as a good-hearted governor-as-shepherd. When the hired hands scatter, he has said, the good shepherd stays to protect the herd. That's who he promises to be for one four-year term — before running for president, he said, perhaps kidding, last week.

Before any out-of-state jaunts, Friedman would want appointed advisers and agency heads in place. But positions wouldn't necessarily be filled by the notables he has named as favorites in campaign stops.

Friedman has floated Willie Nelson for head of a new energy agency, Lance Armstrong as his head coach on public education and Billie Joe Shaver as a spiritual adviser/poet laureate. He also has mentioned Jimmy Buffett as a tourism guru and Strayhorn, a former schoolteacher, as a capable education commissioner.

And he hass vowed to consult supporter Jesse Ventura, the retired professional wrestler who won a term as Minnesota's governor as a third-party candidate.

Friedman said: "I don't really think that I can run this state with Jesse Ventura, Lance Armstrong, Jimmy Buffett and Willie Nelson, OK? But I think there's a lot of great qualities in people that are being excluded from the government. And I think politics has been the reason."

After Election Day, Friedman's campaign would yield to a transition team headed by Dean Barkley, whom Friedman imported from Minnesota to direct his campaign.

Barkley, a longtime third-party activist who helped guide Ventura to his unexpected win in 1998, said he would consult former governors who have shown independent streaks. They would include Ventura, Angus King (Maine), Richard Lamm (Colorado) and Lowell Weicker (Connecticut).

Like Ventura, Friedman would welcome applications from anyone before choosing officials such as a health and human services commissioner from finalists screened by a panel of advisers. Friedman and whoever is lined up to be his chief of staff would make the selections, Barkley said. Barkley said he would head the transition, not the governor's staff.

Barkley, who led an advisory panel in Ventura's transition before becoming his director of the state's Office of Strategic and Long Range Planning, said Friedman's governance philosophy will match Ventura in that he'll "get out of the way and let [staffers and agency appointees] do their job."

Steve Schier, a political scientist at Minnesota's Carleton College, said that if Friedman does imitate Ventura, "you can expect a quality cabinet of policy technocrats and a hands-off governing style by the governor. Jesse recruited many able people and let them run their departments with a free hand. He had little interest in policy or administration, so that worked well for him."

Schier said Ventura's popularity later wore thin partly because of his visceral dislike of politics and politicians: "It became very difficult for him over time to maintain a functional working relationship with the state legislature," especially when the economy soured, and he grew ineffective. Ventura, whose job approval ratings had dropped, did not seek re-election.

Steven Bosacker, Ventura's chief of staff in the transition and while he was governor, said that once residents realized Ventura intended to be a serious governor, job applications flooded in.

Some 25 major department heads were chosen on merit after being culled by panels of citizens. Finalists were interviewed by Ventura, Bosacker and Lieutenant Governor-elect Mae Schunk.

Once Friedman settled on his leadership team, legalizing casino gambling would top his desired changes in state policy.

The state has battled Indian-owned casinos for years, and a federal judge shut down a Tigua casino in 2001. Friedman wants Indian casinos in business and foresees Texas legalizing casinos around the state to generate billions of dollars for schools. Attorney General Greg Abbott has said lawmakers would have to act before casinos would be legal.

Suzii Paynter, director of the Christian Life Commission, which opposes expanded gambling, said Friedman's casino hopes have no immediate chance. "Wishful thinking," Paynter said. "We've had a lot of very strong anti-gambling votes," she said, referring to House rejections since 2004 of proposals to legalize video lottery terminals at horse and dog tracks.

Other items on Friedman's to-do list include changes in law to make it easier for independents to run and harder for former state employees to lobby state agencies. He would usher in an energy agency focused on renewable energy sources including biodiesel in school buses. And he would place 10,000 National Guard troops on the Texas-Mexico border, up from 1,500, even if the move requires him to declare martial law.

Friedman wants to decriminalize the possession of marijuana and put a moratorium on the death penalty while the state reviews its criminal justice system. He has said that both the revamped business tax and an increase in cigarette taxes adopted this year should be reversed and that the gasoline tax and oil and gas severance taxes merit small bumps. Half of the members of university boards of regents would be university students.

In most cases, whether he succeeds would depend on how the Legislature — almost certainly consisting entirely of Republicans and Democrats — takes his advice.

Barkley said Friedman would do well to get two priorities done in his first few months. "He'd be doing pretty good," he said. "You don't have a magic wand as governor. He has the bully pulpit, that's it."

King, who led Maine as an independent from 1995 through 2002, said he followed up his initial win by hiring two lobbyists — one Democrat, one Republican — to help him work with lawmakers.

"The Legislature ultimately had control in terms of doing anything I wanted to get done," King said. "Therefore, I had to figure out a way to work with them. You can't spend all your time fighting with them."

Still, King said, governing as an independent gave him tremendous freedom. He didn't limit appointees to members of a particular party.

He did not have to consult constituencies — either labor unions or big business, for instance — on whether an action would cause politically unpalatable repercussions.

He concluded that he was doing well when first Republicans and then Democrats picketed his office . The GOP was upset over his reaching a state budget after consulting Democratic leaders. Dems proved unhappy that he vetoed a cigarette tax increase, which he later signed after lawmakers agreed to cut the state income tax proportionately.

John Fainter, a lobbyist and former chief of staff to the late Gov. Ann Richards, said Friedman would have to come to terms with legislative leaders, who are likely to remain Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Tom Craddick of Midland, both Republicans.

"He's going to have to have a way to establish a working relationship with the legislative leadership on a day-to-day basis," Fainter said. "It isn't going to be, 'I'm going to just sit up here and smoke a big ciga, and everything is going to fall in place.' "

Lamm, who was Colorado's Democratic governor from 1975 through 1987 before he sought the Reform Party's presidential nod in 1996, said independents have to recognize that major parties are positioned to work against them.

"You face a strong institutional base in both parties that look at you as a short-timer," Lamm said. "You're an aberration, not any kind of pioneer."

"It takes a certain amount of diplomacy and reaching out," he said. "You never know until you get there."

Friedman, who says he already has chatted with Dewhurst, said he understands the need to work with lawmakers while reaching out to the people. "I don't think it's going to be a big deal," he said. Referring to Perry, Friedman said: "I can do better just through force of personality. The charm offensive will work, to a degree."

W. Gardner Selby writes for the Austin American-Statesman.

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