CONCEPTUAL ARTIST ENTERS CALIFORNIA’S GUBERNATORIAL RACE

Santa Cruz Conceptual artist Lowell Darling has officially entered the race for California’s highest office, according to the San Jose Mercury News_.

“This isn’t a performance I’m doing,” said Darling, after submitting his elections paperwork clad in black jacket, jeans, and western boots and wearing a small button that read ARTIST’S PROOF.

Darling, sixty-seven, is the brother of well-known local Democratic activist Darrell Darling and no stranger to politics. He was on the ballot as a California gubernatorial candidate in 1978, when he won 2 percent of the statewide vote, and has since spent time in Europe encouraging foreigners, who are affected by American policy, to run for US president—which, by law, they can’t do.

Darling’s unlikely bid for governor this year is prompted by California’s high threshold for raising taxes. He, like many in politics, blames the two-thirds vote required of the legislature to boost taxes for not giving state leaders the flexibility, and revenue, they need to run California.

“Whoever’s elected governor won’t be able to get anything done [without the tax issue addressed],” he said.

The state currently faces a twenty-billion-dollar budget deficit.

If elected, Darling says he will go right to work fighting to remove the two-thirds requirement for raising taxes and won’t do anything until that’s done.

Darling will join likely candidate Jerry Brown, who served as governor during the ’70s, on the Democratic ticket. Brown, while all but promising a run, has not filed the necessary paperwork to qualify as of Monday.