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    The other Florida ballot initiative that could influence the election

    Mars Posted on

    Leigh Ann Caldwell, Theodoric Meyer, Alec Dent
    | Washington Post

    A ballot measure in Florida could help bolster the state’s Democrats, particularly Vice President Kamala Harris. And this is not an initiative to overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

    Amendment 3 would legalize the recreational use of marijuana and will also be up for a vote in November. Harris isn’t going to win Florida, but political strategists say it could help narrow the margin in a state that supported Trump in the last two elections.

    “The abortion (initiative) has gotten a lot of attention, but the impact of pot could be just as big, if not bigger,” a Florida Republican strategist told us.

    The pot initiative could attract young voters and rare single-issue voters who would likely lean Democratic. A new poll from the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab found that 83 percent of likely voters under 35 said they support the pot ballot initiative.

    The abortion and marijuana ballot measures “are going to attract our type of voters,” said Jim Margolis, a campaign consultant for Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

    Harris is not contesting the extremely expensive state that Democrats have largely abandoned, and Mucarsel-Powell is not getting much financial help from the party because of the large number of Senate races Democrats have to defend. But pot supporters are investing heavily in getting voters to support the ballot measure.

    “We can’t afford to do it, but someone else does it for us,” Margolis said, referring to turnout efforts.

    Marijuana campaigns don’t mention Harris, Mucarsel-Powell or any other candidate in the election, but supporters of pot legalization have spent more than $80 million, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. Combined with more than $50 million worth of ads from abortion rights supporters, that could shift voters to Democratic leanings.

    The positions of the candidates

    Democrats argue that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is only helping them because his campaign to defeat the pot measure helps voters associate Republicans with opposition to the initiative. DeSantis went on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Monday night to denounce the ballot measure.

    DeSantis’ opposition pits him against former President Donald Trump, who last month came out in favor of the initiative, an attempt to remove the issue from the political equation even though he had a mixed record on the issue as president, notably by returning to the decriminalization of the Department of Justice. advice and undermine state legalization laws. He and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have opposed efforts to give the marijuana trade access to banking system resources.

    Harris supports legalizing pot. “I just think we’ve gotten to a point where we have to understand that we have to legalize it and stop criminalizing this behavior,” Harris said on the “All the Smoke” podcast last month.

    It hasn’t been a central plank of her campaign, but she has included legalization and access to banking in a recent multi-pronged economic agenda focused on black men. She spoke out in favor of legalization and decriminalization in 2018 as a senator.

    Previous

    Recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states and Washington, DC. Most of these efforts were successful through electoral initiatives. (Four states rejected legalization efforts on the ballot.) Florida passed a medical marijuana bill with 71% of the vote in 2016.

    In Arizona, four years ago, a marijuana legalization initiative passed with 60 percent support, and advocates say it likely helped secure Biden’s narrow victory in the state.

    Stacy Pearson, who worked as a senior policy consultant for the Smart & Safe Arizona campaign to legalize recreational marijuana, said the pot ballot initiative and a ballot measure to fund education made a difference in the presidential race where Biden won by about 11,000 votes.

    “There is no single reason why Biden was successful in Arizona in 2020, but marijuana has to be on the short list of issues that helped,” Pearson said, noting that it turned out that voters rarely voted.

    In Arizona in 2020, 270,000 more people voted on the weed issue than voted for president, a strong sign that it helped increase turnout.

    Mars
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