GOP would like pot amendment to go away
Republicans have worked too hard effecting their complete dominance over Florida politics to let a bunch of stoners mess things up.
They’ve abandoned their pro-business, small government ways. One-time Jeb Bush Republicans have assumed the guise of neo-redneck demagogues. They can’t allow potheads to make it all for naught.
Country club Republicans who know better have gotten down in the gutter to exploit racial and social resentments. They’ve demeaned themselves, going after immigrants, drag queens, librarians, schoolteachers, Black activists, college professors, public health docs, historians, acclaimed novelists, transgender children, abortion providers, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Mickey Mouse. They’ve pretended that terms like diversity, equality and inclusion are fighting words.
They’ve employed the kind of vicious rhetoric Floridians haven’t heard since Jim Crow days. All because this culture war stuff is supposed to ignite their voters and deliver the 2024 election to Republicans.
But their cage-fighting strategy comes with a flashing-yellow caveat. Even if MAGA voters turn out in full force, Republicans still need Democrats and independents to underperform at the polls next year.
The Republican margin of error is already tiny, given the broad swath of Floridians they’ve alienated. Teachers, professors, librarians, Disney workers, drag queens, etc., also vote. But Republicans figure that a lack of enthusiasm for old Uncle Joe among Democrats and independents will be enough to win 2024.
Obviously, they can’t abide some extraneous electoral issue messing things up — something that might excite Democrats. Especially, young Democrats who otherwise wouldn’t bother voting.
Republicans sure as hell don’t want an initiative called “Adult Personal Use of Marijuana” on the 2024 ballot.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has signaled that she won’t let that happen. In a certified letter delivered to the Florida Supreme Court on Monday, Moody said she would oppose allowing the proposed constitutional amendment legalizing recreational marijuana on the ballot.
Republicans don’t want pot as a running mate to Joe Biden on the Florida ballot. Because marijuana can do what Joe Biden can’t — rouse the apathetic wing of the Democratic Party.
Moody was required by law to submit the proposed recreational cannabis amendment for review by the Florida Supreme Court after at least 222,881 voters had signed a supporting petition. By last week, 786,747 signatures had been gathered, with just 104,776 more needed to outright qualify for the 2024 general election ballot.
But Moody told the justices that she believes the referendum summary fails to meet the “single subject requirement” for a state constitutional initiative. (She promised supporting briefs would be filed later.)
It’s hard to fathom that the gang of lawyers working for “Smart & Safe Florida Committee,” which has already spent $38 million trying to get the recreational marijuana measure on the ballot, failed to concoct a clear and succinct summary.
“Allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption” seems pretty damn lucid to me.
The attorney general’s actual concern, of course, is that a ballot measure legalizing recreational marijuana will come with what the Brookings Institution, in a 2016 publication, called “cannabis coattails.” Brookings posited that pot initiatives on state ballots increase the turnout of a certain demographic that Republicans would rather stay home on election day. Brookings, looking at both medical and recreational marijuana state initiatives, found a significant increase in 18-to-29-yearold voters when pot was on the ballot. Which theoretically translates into more down-ticket votes for Democrats.
The marijuana advocacy group NORML claims that weed legalization measures on state ballots increase overall turnout by 5% to 10%.
An analysis by Cannigma, an online marijuana information clearinghouse, found that the marijuana effect on state elections averages a more modest 1.7%. But Florida is famous for elections in which a 1.7% swing would have altered the outcome. A 1.7% difference in the 2018 gubernatorial election and Florida would not now be suffering Ron DeSantis’ war on woke.
I suspect the attorney general really, really doesn’t want to test the cannabis coattails theory in 2024. Not in a state in which a 2016 medical marijuana initiative was approved with 1,904,709 more votes than Floridians cast for Gov. Ron DeSantis last year in his landslide victory.
Florida’s Republicans may feign fire-eating populism, but these men of the people sure don’t want to give actual people a voting say on legalized recreational marijuana or abortion access or assault weapon bans — all overwhelmingly popular outside of MAGA world.
The GOP’s faux populists know ballot questions like these would have coattails long enough to blow up an election.