Kinky Friedman on the campaign trail in 2006. (Getty)

Richard “Kinky” Friedman, the iconoclastic musician who won 12 percent of the vote as an independent candidate for the Texas governorship in 2006, is laying the groundwork to run for the governorship next year as a Democratic candidate.

In a letter on his Web site that was addressed to “fellow Texans,” Friedman said he could stitch together a winning coalition of Democratic and independent voters to wrest from Republican control an office that a Democrat last won in 1990.  

“I intend to run a serious campaign, one that grows the party,” Friedman said. “I intend to visit and listen to the voices of neglected communities, small towns, suburbs, and rural areas, often where Democrats have lately feared to tread.”