Just when you thought everyone and anyone had jumped into the gubernatorial election, along comes a first: an animated candidate — what a concept.
LOS ANGELES – With only several days left to be eligible as the next governor of California, and hundreds of people already signed up to replace Governor Gray Davis, Homer Simpson is the latest candidate to register.
The Fox Network's move to put Simpson on the ballot comes after allegations that MTV put Ozzy Osbourne on the ballot to add political drama to its reality-TV script for The Osbournes —thus boosting ratings. It now seems that the necessary sixty-five signatures gathered by Osbourne's campaign are those of MTV employees.
"Homer Simpson embodies earnestness, honesty and middle-America family values." —
Dylan Silverstein, Fox Network exec
Dylan Silverstein, a Fox executive, said, "We're dead serious. At his best, Homer Simpson embodies earnestness, honesty and middle-America family values."
And when cell phone giant Verizon heard about Fox's entry, they promptly entered their "Can-You-Hear-Me-Now?" guy into the race.
AN ANIMATED CAMPAIGN: Simpson says that while he doesn't consider himself "one of them political kinda guys," nonetheless he'll give it his best shot. While the rest the of the U.S. weighs the larger issue of California being the country's laughingstock, California itself is sorting through the ethical and legal nitty-gritty of whether an animated character really could govern the world's sixth-largest economy.
It seems, however, that Governor Davis may have the final laugh in California's battle for the absurd. According to sources close to the governor, it would take only 11 million eligible people (roughly, the adult population of Los Angeles) to register and pay the $3500 gubernatorial entry fee in order to wipe out the state's entire $38 billion deficit.
Those same sources suggest that Gray Davis himself started the whole recall campaign in order to raise money to cover the deficit.
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