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Lowell’s 2010 campaign focused on a single issue: He would do nothing until the two-thirds majority rule on budgets and revenues locked into the infamous Prop 13 from 1978 was repealed.

"My only promise is to do nothing… until the two-thirds majority rule is changed."

From Lowell Darling, Candidate for Governor--

Having been a Bush exile living in Rhodes and Berlin for some years, I returned to America to discover the economic rumors were not rumors. We were broke. What were the reasons? What was the solution?

I couldn't agree with myself on how to make and spend my money half of the time. But California had to agree with itself 2/3 of the time. When it comes to budgets and revenues, California requires a 2/3 majority consensus.

This fact made me feel guilty. Prop. 13 passed in 1978, the year I first ran for Governor as an art performance. Back then my response to Prop 13 was to declare that I would hire Reverend Ike as State Treasurer and replace taxes with incredible good luck. To me this made as much sense as Prop 13. Today the idea makes even more sense.

Ironically, Reverend Ike died on the day I decided to run again, July 28, 2009. We only met once, on the San Diego Freeway, when he drove past my pink and black 1956 Plymouth in a sky blue Cornish convertible, top down. As he drove by he pointed at me and smiled. That was the day I decided to run for Governor in 1978. I hope he’s still driving that car in Heaven.

In 2010, a group called Californians for Democracy was trying to gather enough signatures to get what I was proposing on the ballot: that budgets and revenues should not be controlled by a 1/3 minority rule, which Prop 13 allows.

My campaign and this film are essentially subliminal advertising for reversing this part of Prop 13. This time we failed. I lost, and so did California. Am I bitter?

No, I am thinking of running for President on the slogan “No We Can't”.