Minnesota marijuana party grapples with spoiler label in swing races

Several members of Minnesota's Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party are pushing to change its name to the Constitutional Liberty Party, a direct response to allegations that conservatives recruited marijuana candidates to act as spoilers to Democrats in 2020.

A resolution was passed Wednesday to hold a special meeting to rename the party. But its chair and founder said he doesn't plan to call such a session.

"This is, I think, a tempest in a teapot," Oliver Steinberg said. "The Grassroots Party has been around since 1986. Its mission is not over, and it has a constructive role to play in this very critical election year."

The party's internal turmoil has emerged ahead of the state's candidate filing period for 2022 and as some pro-marijuana activists are grappling with allegations that their party was used as a spoiler in several critical legislative and congressional swing races in the election two years ago.

In eight of those races, Steinberg said he believes conservatives recruited candidates to file for office under one of Minnesota's two major pro-legal marijuana parties. To win major party status, a candidate from that party must win at least 5% of the vote in a statewide race.

In several of those close races, Democrats said the marijuana party pulled enough votes from their candidates to hand Republicans victory. Minnesota's DFL Party and top Democrats also support legalizing recreational marijuana use for adults.

Candidates running under the banner of the proposed Constitutional Liberty Party could flip that strategy, likely pulling votes from Republican candidates instead of Democrats.

Steinberg said three people moved to change the party's name in a meeting called for another purpose. He said he didn't expect the push to go any further.

But Steinberg expressed his own frustrations with the strategy employed by conservatives two years ago, saying it hindered the cause of pro-legalization activists.

"That kind of mischievous interference, it isn't that it spoils things for the DFL, it spoils it for the party that has been polluted by this kind of cheating," he said. "And it spoils it for the electorate and the people who go in good faith to the voting booth and perhaps aren't quite as well informed as it would be good for them to be."

In 2020, some of the registered marijuana candidates didn't campaign or have any connection with the pro-legalization parties. Some of those candidates had ties to Republican politics or posted on social media in favor of conservative candidates.

One of them was Adam Weeks, who ran on the Legal Marijuana Now Party ticket. In a voicemail to a friend, he said Republicans had recruited him to draw votes away from U.S. Rep. Angie Craig in the Second District. Weeks died before the election but still pulled in nearly 25,000 votes. Craig narrowly beat GOP challenger Tyler Kistner by about 9,000 votes.

In southern Minnesota's First District, DFLer Dan Feehan lost by roughly 13,400 votes in a race where a little-known pro-marijuana candidate drew more than 21,000 votes. Democrats blamed that candidate for handing the race to the late GOP Rep. Jim Hagedorn, as well as helping Republicans win at least two state legislative seats.

State law allows anyone to sign a candidate affidavit, pay a filing fee and run for office under any party banner. It's challenging to police, but Steinberg said he plans to file a complaint of unfair campaign practices to the Department of Administration if there's evidence the strategy is being used again this fall.

Marijuana candidates and their supporters scored major victories across the country in 2020. Five other states, including South Dakota, passed ballot measures to legalize recreational and medical marijuana. Medical marijuana, but not recreational, is allowed in Minnesota.

The state's other major cannabis party — Legal Marijuana Now — is not planning to directly address any Republicans who might run as marijuana candidates this fall.

"I encourage Democrats and Republicans to run in the weed parties. If the RINOs [Republicans in name only] want to run as WINOs [weed in name only], I figure the more the merrier," said Chris Wright, who's running for governor under the Legal Marijuana Now Party banner. "We're here to throw the ruling parties out of office."

Despite his concerns, Steinberg said he still doesn't support the move to change the party's name, calling it just as "deceitful" to voters as what conservative groups did in 2020.

"Since we started the Grassroots Party, we have never engaged in deceiving the public," he said. "Our strength, or strongpoint, or moral political power, if we had any, comes from the fact that we were willing to be witnesses to the truth."