My guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect...

(State Security may not have been full of computer geniuses, but still, I had to be careful).

Of course, I faced opposition. The first time I ran (for the office), I lost by a few votes because I ran against a man. During the campaign, because I had to go round the faculties and talk to individuals, people asked me who would look after my home if I became the DVC and were in top management.

What was it like to be governor?

In high school I got voted most likely to get voted for something. Even though I was the only one who voted, it still felt terrific being nominated.

Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney? The fact is, you ran in '94 and lost. That's why you weren't serving in the Senate with Rick Santorum. The fact is, you had a very bad re-election rating, you dropped out of office, you had been out of state for something like 200 days preparing to run for president. You didn't have this interlude of citizenship while you thought about what you do. You were running for president while you were governor.

The security situation was volatile and scary because security forces were deployed around the parliament with the intention to intimidate the members of parliament to not vote against the extension of the term of the governor because it is not in the interest of the public.

I’m very interested in looking at that possibility of running for governor. I am looking at it seriously.

I started stating that maybe I should run for governor. Well, it caught on like wildfire. I felt I'd boxed myself into a corner—if I didn't attempt to do this, I would lose my credibility. And in the world of talk radio, once that happens, you're finished.

My first few years as governor were during the period when people talked of long hot summers to come. We had had the Watts riots just prior to my taking office and racial tensions were very high. Without informing the press, I traveled up and down the state meeting with minority groups and leaders, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in headquarters they had in various community projects. I wanted to know firsthand what their problems were, what was on their minds, and what we could do to change things.

I qualified because I was an outstanding candidate.

Garner: Before we get off the electoral process, they wanted me to run for Governor [of California] about 8 years ago — ahem — and I didn't want to do it. I wasn't gonna get in with that--
Tavis Smiley: Now you wish you had.
Garner: No, no, no.
Tavis Smiley: Hey, Arnold [Schwarzenegger] won.
Garner: No. I think I could have won easy, but I don't think that they ought to have somebody like me or Schwarzenegger as Governor. It's no way to run a state.

No one knows, and few conceive, the agony of mind that I have suffered from the time that I was made by circumstances, and not by my volition, a candidate for the Presidency till I was dismissed from that station by the failure of my election.

I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.