[Skip]

Two pro-pot candidates won their respective contests. In El Paso, Texas, Beto O'Rourke defeated an eight-term incumbent for the democratic nomination for the House of Representatives. And in Oregon, Ellen Rosenblum won the attorney general's office with a pledge to make enforcing marijuana laws a low priority.

Hopefully with so many marijuana issues on ballots nationwide, we can get a big turnout from marijuana supporters this year and more marijuana prohibitionists will be defeated.

The race received national attention because of O'Rourke's position in support of marijuana legalization. In his second term as an El Paso city representative, O'Rourke pushed for a resolution calling for a re-examination of the drug war, which has killed tens of thousands in neighboring Mexico over the past decade. He also co-authored a book on the same subject.
The drug war is "a failure," O'Rourke told HuffPost in April, adding that marijuana is "the cornerstone of the cartel economy" and thus fuels the violence in El Paso's sister city.
Reyes (O'Rourke's opponent), a Vietnam veteran and former border patrol officer, responded with a TV ad charging that O'Rourke was encouraging drug use among children.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1554661.html

GOOD!

if a mainstream politician can say anything positive about weed and win we are making some progress ........

[rives]

Good deal! Interesting about Texas, an 8-term incumbent would seem to be a very difficult opponent to overcome. We have got to start voting in greater numbers - there are certainly enough of us to be a force to reckon with.

Pro-Legalization Challenger Beats Incumbent In Congressional Primary

Marijuana legalization supporter Beto O'Rourke has defeated prohibitionist eight-term Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for Texas's 16th Congressional district. Reyes is also pro - drone!

O'Rourke vocally supports marijuana legalization, while former Border Patrol official Reyes built his career on the War On Drugs.

O'Rourke got 51.3 percent of the vote to Reyes' 41.3 percent, according to election results from the Texas Secretary of State's office early Wednesday morning, reports Phillip Smith at StoptheDrugWar.org.

In early 2009, when he was an El Paso city councilman, O'Rourke championed a council resolution calling for a national conversation on legalizing and regulating drugs as a possible solution to the drug cartel violence just over El Paso's border in Mexico. The mayor vetoed the unanimously-passed resolution and the council was set to override the veto until Congressman Reyes butted in to the debate and threatened that the city would lose federal funding if it insisted on pushing the legalization conversation.

The override vote failed, but the national conversation on legalization has only gotten louder and louder.

Now, O'Rourke is all but certain to be the next congressman from the heavily-Democratic district. His voice will fill the anti-prohibition void left by retiring Reps. Barney Frank, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

Tom Angell, LEAP: "It's increasingly clear that the era of drug policy reform being a political third rail is over"
The O'Rourke victory comes just two weeks after Ellen Rosenblum defeated former U.S. attorney Dwight Holton in the Democratic primary for Oregon's attorney general, a campaign that largely centered on Holton's role in cracking down on state-legal medical marijuana on behalf of the Obama administration.

"It's increasingly clear that the era of drug policy reform being a political third rail is over," said Tom Angell, media relations director for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Supporting clearly failed prohibition policies that cause so much crime, violence and corruption is becoming a political liability."

It should be noted that LEAP, as a 501(c)(c) nonprofit organization, does not and cannot support or oppose candidates for elected office. "I'm only passing on this breaking news and commenting on the changing political dynamic surrounding drug policy reform issues," Angell said.

Watch this anti-O'Rourke attack ad that Reyes put out focusing on the drug policy issue to see exactly what DOES NOT work in politics in 2012:

https://vimeo.com/37489037

Beto Orourke

https://i.huffpost.com/gen/625103/thu...URKE-large.jpg

A Texas congressional candidate who favors marijuana legalization beat eight-term incumbent El Paso Rep. Silvestre Reyes Tuesday in the Democratic primary for the congressional district closest to Mexico's Ciudad Juarez.

In unofficial results, Beto O'Rourke scored 23,248 votes for 50.5 percent of the vote, clearing the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Reyes tallied 44.4 percent. The 2012 Democratic primary boasted more than 10,000 additional voters over 2010, sending turnout up from 9.8 percent to 14.2 percent.

"Can you all just confirm for me that this is really happening?" O'Rourke asked a crowd at his victory party after the results came in, according to the El Paso Times. "I want to thank all of you for making this possible."

Reyes was less exuberant in defeat, slamming "my opponent who deliberately ran a nasty, dirty campaign."

The race received national attention because of O'Rourke's position in support of marijuana legalization. In his second term as an El Paso city representative, O'Rourke pushed for a resolution calling for a re-examination of the drug war, which has killed tens of thousands in neighboring Mexico over the past decade. He also co-authored a book on the same subject.

The drug war is "a failure," O'Rourke told HuffPost in April, adding that marijuana is "the cornerstone of the cartel economy" and thus fuels the violence in El Paso's sister city.

Reyes, a Vietnam veteran and former border patrol officer, responded with a TV ad charging that O'Rourke was encouraging drug use among children.

This is the second high-profile Democratic primary this month where the candidates squared off over marijuana prohibition. On May 15, Ellen Rosenblum won the Oregon attorney general's office on a pledge to make enforcing marijuana laws a low priority.

In the final weeks of the Texas race, O'Rourke had somewhat downplayed his views on legalization. He said that it was a low priority for El Paso voters and not something he would pursue in Congress.

"He's backed off a lot on the talking points about the need to legalize marijuana or the impact it has on this border community," said Richard Pineda, associate director of Sam Donaldson Center at University of Texas El Paso. "I think that it's unlikely he's going to be a champion for that issue."

Local political observers dismissed the idea that pot policy had much to do with voters' ballot box decisions.

"Other, bigger issues have come into play," said Gregory Rocha, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso. Foremost among them, he said, was a perception that Reyes had become an entrenched, corrupt incumbent. The congressman was hit hard by allegations that he had steered $600,000 in campaign funds to himself and his family members via consulting jobs.

Those charges were pushed by the Campaign for Primary Accountability, an anti-incumbent super PAC that targeted Reyes with what it said were $245,000 in independent expenditures. Much of that money was spent on negative television ads.

"They've done the dirty work," said Rocha. "Just like what we've seen in the Republican campaign: the super PACs did the dirty work for Mitt Romney."

After O'Rourke won, the super PAC, which Reyes had criticized for accepting money from wealthy GOP donors who include Joe Ricketts, released a statement: "Rep. Reyes had all the benefits of incumbency. Beltway lobbyists showered money on their long-time friend while Washington party leaders with marquee names tried to lend him their stature.

"The voters exercised their franchise and chose Beto O’Rourke," the statement continued.

Reyes, in the final days of the race, became increasingly negative in response. His campaign aired an ad highlighting O'Rourke's arrest for driving while intoxicated in the 1990s, and he made several statements claiming his opponent was a closet Republican.

Reyes "did try to put forth a pretty nasty ad of his own," said Rocha. But voters weren't buying it: "It was pretty bombastic. Pretty much on O'Rourke's character, with not much link to public policy."

This article has been updated to include the latest results.

Finally, Texas is on the road to some relief....maybe we can oust Dewhurst next...

[OLDproLg]

GREAT!!

The south is last to move forwards....
Baby steps is all we get though?
Made my day Skip!

[AOD2012]

Read this on Huffington Post yesterday. Most definitely an awesome thing to happen. Hopefully it is just the beginning of a trend of things like this happening.

When rational people really start thinking about it, the way things have been going down the past 70 years really is ridiculous.


Keep it green everybody.


aod

[DoobieDuck]

Skip thanks for posting, important developments indeed! DD

[zymos]

In case people missed it, from the Huffpost article quoted above:

In the final weeks of the Texas race, O'Rourke had somewhat downplayed his views on legalization. He said that it was a low priority for El Paso voters and not something he would pursue in Congress.