Politics
Maine GOP Lawmaker Gears Up To Fight Anti-Marijuana Ballot Initiative
“It’s never great politically if your opponent’s on TV and you don’t have the funds to respond back.”
By Emma Davis, Maine Morning Star
As voters exited the Woodfords Club polling location in Portland on June 9, Alex Perez and Hairo Roque, both from Connecticut, asked them to sign a petition to roll back the recreational use of cannabis that Mainers legalized a decade ago. Similar scenes played out in Poland and other municipalities across the state on Election Day.
This effort to repeal recreational cannabis had seemingly gone quiet after the campaign missed the winter deadline to submit signatures to get on the November ballot. Now with about 40,000 of 67,682 signatures needed (at least 10 percent of total votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election), the campaign is eyeing the November 2027 ballot, said Caroline Alcock of Massachusetts, the group’s general consultant.
The campaign appears to be almost exclusively driven by out-of-state interests, meanwhile local cannabis supporters are getting organized in opposition.
“To make a bad poker reference, they are ‘pot committed,’” state Rep. David Boyer, who spearheaded legalization efforts back in 2016, said of the campaign’s sole donor, Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
Colin Mack of Brunswick, who is listed as the initiative’s proponent on the secretary of state’s website, told Maine Morning Star after the election that he’d thought that the effort was over. Though, he said he hasn’t been involved aside from being the local person to submit it to Augusta.
The proposed ballot referendum would do away with the commercial cultivation, sale, purchase and manufacture of cannabis starting in 2028, while still allowing personal use and possession of up to 2.5 ounces. It would also create new testing and tracking requirements for medical cannabis, which the Maine Legislature rejected earlier this year.
The petition is valid until the spring of 2027, 18 months after it was , and Alcock said the campaign plans to continue signature collecting through the summer.
Out-of-state influence
SAM Action, the political arm of Smart Approaches to Marijuana bankrolling the campaign, contributed $2 million back in December. As a nonprofit, the group isn’t required to disclose its financial sources.
SAM Action did not respond to multiple requests for comment. (The local Maine affiliate wound down shortly after the 2016 referendum and is not involved in the current petition, as far as its former lead Scott Gagnon knows.)
SAM Action is also the sole donor behind a similar anti-cannabis campaign in Massachusetts.
In both Maine and Massachusetts, there have been accusations of some signature gatherers misrepresenting the initiatives, leading Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) to encourage voters to read the full petition before signing.
Alcock said the talking points the campaign has provided to collectors are not misleading.
“We believe that it’s more of a strategy of opponents,” Alcock said of the accusations. “We are not out there telling anyone to be deceptive to voters or use anything aside from approved, verified talking points about it.”
While state law and the Maine Constitution require petition circulators to be a resident and registered voter in Maine, those residency requirements are largely unenforceable because of federal court rulings.
In 2020, Bellows was sued by a group that argued the requirements violated “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
A district court granted the group — which included We the People PAC, now-Minority Leader for the Maine House of Representatives Billy Bob Faulkingham, a nonprofit and a professional signature-collector — a preliminary injunction and in 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the residency requirement was likely unconstitutional.
The state entered into a consent order with the group, which continues today for all Maine citizen initiatives, to allow out-of-state circulators as long as they formally agree to submit to Maine’s jurisdiction for any investigation or prosecution of any alleged violation of Maine law.
Building a defense
Since the anti-cannabis petition resurfaced at the polls, Boyer has begun preparing to go on the defensive.
When the petition began circulating in the winter, Boyer opened a bank account and started having initial conversations with local and national groups about organizing an opposition campaign.
“I’m gonna have to dust it off and get registered with the state and start raising money,” Boyer said after signature collectors were spotted at polling places earlier this month.
His campaign isn’t aiming to get a competing question on the ballot, but rather to raise money for “vote no” signs, mailings, television ads and other ways to oppose the petition.
“We don’t need all the money they have,” Boyer said. “We don’t have to match one to one, but you know it’s never great politically if your opponent’s on TV and you don’t have the funds to respond back.”
This story was first published by Maine Morning Star.
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
