Dear readers:

I read the papers. I listen to the radio. Sometimes I even watch television. I even, God help me, read the blogs.

While it is true that my long-time residence in Seattle’s harmonious and bustling Capitol Hill neighborhood has kept me from spending as much time at my primary residence, in Laguna Beach, California, of late, I have never considered my dwelling in Seattle, as deeply connected to the place as I am, as my primary residence.

No, from the first day I stepped into my beautiful wife’s parent’s charming basement guest room, just blocks from the glory of the Pacific Ocean, I knew I had come home. Truly home. It is in the small, low-ceilinged room, modestly furnished but carefully tended with all the hard-working virtue that immigrant Americans bring to our great country, to our great state, that my true home lies.

Therefore, just as I can tell you my true home, I tell you that my true heart sings with the timeless truths of the obligation to seek public service.

Therefore, given the successfully mounted effort to recall Governor Gray Davis of California and the subsequently well-documented rush to run what will certainly be remembered as the California Marathon, it is my patriotic and sacred duty to declare my candidacy for the Governorship of California.

However, in an effort to demonstrate my fiscal probity, I have declined either to raise funds or to file as a registered candidate. I can declare that my current campaign warchest contains twenty-three cents, a Canadian penny, two green rubber bands, and the tattered remnants of my recently-washed telephone list, a circumstance that helped clarify my position on fundraising.

It should further be noted my current status as a permanent resident of California – that is to say, the California state of mind – has been called in doubt by virtue of my long-term physical residency in Seattle. I come before you on this day – this great and glorious day – to dispute, refute, and rebut these scurrilous charges. My argument presented a moment ago is sufficient to prove my legal eligibility for the position, of that I have no doubt.

However, I feel strongly that a case should be made to my beloved constituents – my fellow Californians – that I am sufficiently acculturated to the California lifestyle and way of thinking to provide the quality of leadership that the Golden Bear state has always sought. I lay before you two arguments. The first is the simplest.

California has always been synonymous with change, with creativity, and with doing things your own way. Is not declaring my unfunded candidacy from the keyboard of my computer in Seattle consonant with these values? To paraphrase the campaign for the presidency of Barry Goldwater, in your hearts, you know I’m right.

My second argument, is, I think, the most elegant. I will conclude my remarks to you this evening with the pithy words that express it as succinctly as it can be said.

Dudes, hang loose.