It’s crunch time for campaigns trying to land measures on the November ballot. And with less than three weeks left before signatures are due, signature gatherers for a campaign hoping to put legal marijuana before voters are revolting, saying they haven’t been paid on time.
At the same time, two complaints—both with connections to another campaign to legalize pot— have surfaced against the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp (CRRH). Campaign officials are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the upheaval as the clock ticks. Signatures are due July 3.
The snafu over pay emerged on June 5, when nearly 40 signature gatherers for the CRRH campaign were supposed to be paid. The campaign, at that time, was waiting for a big donation, Campaign Director Jersey Deutsch says, and the paychecks weren’t handed out until the following Monday, June 9. It’s not the first time the campaign had cash flow issues. Several employees had checks bounce in late May.
By the time the late June 5 checks arrived, a small coalition of employees had decided to organize. Eight workers announced they were striking and handed in a scrawled a list of demands [pdf] that included $15 an hour and free pot for medical marijuana patients on staff.
Other items on the list:
•”Actually have some fucking sensitivity training.”
•”Longer training periods for new workers.”
•”Updates on number of total signatures made public knowledge no less than twice per work week.”
Some of the demands, like $15 an hour and overtime pay, were already in the works, Deutsch insists. Others, the campaign says, aren’t based in reality.
“I think they put some of those things in there just to raise questions,” says Leo Townsell, the campaign’s communications director. “If you put in reasonable demands in addition to unreasonable and spurious complaints, to an untrained eye it’s going to seem like we have a lot of problems here.”
The campaign can add a small contingent of raucous protestors to its list of problems. Demonstrators have showed up outside the campaign’s headquarters the last two days, confronting workers who walk through the door, Deutsch says. And they’ve approached CRRH signature gatherers on the street.
At the same time, two elections complaints have been filed against the campaign—both with connections to Democracy Resources, the firm gathering signatures for a separate pot legalization campaign.
The first complaint [pdf] was filed May 9 by Michael Hanna. Hanna’s the former president of Multnomah County’s main union, AFSCME Local 88. He’s familiar and friendly with former County Chair Jeff Cogen, who now works for Democracy Resources. In his complaint, Hanna says he sees paid signature gatherers working for CRRH often, but he says the campaign hasn’t reported spending any money on those workers. Hanna wrote he was concerned the campaign could be paying its employees by the signature, which is illegal in Oregon.
“Unreported expenditures are a red flag that the signature circulators are not being paid on the books,” Hanna wrote in the complaint, obtained by the Mercury. “It is apparent that something improper is going on, because signature gatherers have been collecting signatures, but payments made to them have gone unreported.”
The Secretary of State’s Office declined to investigate the claim, pointing out two political action committees connected with CRRH reported in-kind contributions connected to “wages, salaries and benefits.”
“There is no evidence within those records to indicate that either of the committees are violating the pay per signature provision, therefore we will not investigate this allegation.”
Even so, Deutsch concedes CRRH was fined for delayed campaign finance reporting.
The second complaint [pdf] came from an employee of Democracy Resources, Kyle Gates. Gates says he was collecting signatures on May 21, when he came across a CRRH signature gatherer named Duncan Lopez on SE Hawthorne. Gates says Lopez told him we was being paid to gather signatures, but Gates noticed the man wasn’t toting a signature sheet reserved for paid employees. Instead he was using e-sheets, signature forms that can be printed off the internet and are supposed to be used by volunteers, the complaint says.
“He told me he was being paid, but had been instructed to carry the e-sheets until he received his Circulator ID,” Gates wrote in the complaint, referring to the ID the State of Oregon issues to approved professional signature gatherers. “This is a serious breach of the rules as I understand them, and I decided to report this incident in order to protect the integrity of the initiative system.”
The CRRH campaign concedes that activity was problematic, and told the Secretary of State’s Office it arose from a misunderstanding. The campaign says it’s taken steps to make amends, and immediately destroyed Lopez’s signature sheets. It was unclear Friday whether there was a formal finding in the case.
CRRH also alleges Democracy Resources, and Gates in particular, has tried to poach its signature gatherers, offering higher pay. The Mercury asked Townsell and Deutsch what they made of those actions, and neither would say much.
“If you’re asking whether New Approach is deliberately sabotaging our work, we don’t believe that’s the case,” Townsell says. “We can;t be thinking we have an enemy in a campaign with similar ideas.”
Even so, there’s been a curious undercurrent of tension between the campaigns. Paul Stanford, a chief petitioner behind CRRH who succeeded in getting a legalization measure on the 2012 ballot, says he was involved in the early stages of New Approach Oregon before the campaign shut him out, spurring him to file his own measures.
And earlier this year, a Canby attorney held up New Approach Oregon’s first try at an initiative petition in the Supreme Court, saying he preferred Stanford’s proposal. Stanford told the Mercury he didn’t know the man.
CRRH has a long way to go if it hopes to get both of its measures—a constitutional amendment and a change to state law—before voters. It’s still roughly 75,000 signatures short for one, and nearly 50,000 signatures short for the other, according to numbers Deutsch provided.
Still, he says: “We are 100 percent confident we will be able to make the ballot.”
The “War on Marijuana” has been a complete and utter failure. It is the largest component of the broader yet equally unsuccessful “War on Drugs” that has cost our country over a trillion dollars.
Instead of The United States wasting Billions upon Billions more of our tax dollars fighting a never ending “War on Marijuana”, lets generate Billions of dollars, and improve the deficit instead. It’s a no brainer.
The Prohibition of Marijuana has also ruined the lives of many of our loved ones. In numbers greater than any other nation, our loved ones are being sent to jail and are being given permanent criminal records which ruin their chances of employment for the rest of their lives, and for what reason?
Marijuana is much safer, and healthier to consume than alcohol. Yet do we lock people up for choosing to drink?
Let’s end this hypocrisy now!
The government should never attempt to legislate morality by creating victim-less “crimes” because it simply does not work and costs the taxpayers a fortune.
Marijuana Legalization Nationwide is an inevitable reality that’s approaching much sooner than prohibitionists think and there is nothing they can do to stop it!
Legalize Nationwide! Support Each and Every Marijuana Legalization Initiative!
Wage theft is more than just a “snafu”.
Good job to these workers for fighting back!
The curious undercurrent of tension that the author describes can be described as follows.
Stanford, for the longest time has cowed the local legalization movement into falling behind him. As his fraudulent behavior has become known over the years, more and more activists have fallen away. When you combine this with the naive and unrealistic OCTA, you see the need for better, untainted leadership that is not lining its own pockets illegally. Thus, all of the big pocket donors who have donated to NAO won’t even give Stanford the time of day.
Stanford’s take on his exclusion from NAO is, as always, a twisting of the truth to the point that it is an outright lie.
What is at stake is Stanford’s phat ego and avaricious desire to become a player on some sort of political level. The ability of NAO to break away and succeed has been nothing short of an assault on Stanford’s manhood.
Go NAO! Let’s get this baby legalized. Let’s leave Stanford in the dust.
Oh, and if the Mercury or any media source had the stones to report on the fraud that is Paul Stanford, it might win a Pulitzer.
Nigel Duara’s piece from the AP a few years ago comes the closest.
Here are the latest reported signatures for the various initiatives. NAO is on the cusp.
http://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/2014-monthly-submission-log.pdf
Sensitivity Training?
Putting that first on your list sure makes it hard to take anything else seriously.
new approach oregon also advocates a bill that would make it a felony for any child to possess cannabis. it would destroy the ability for medical patients to grow. is the fraud behind paul stanford all the medical patients hes helped for decades? or is the fraud behind new approach oregon a bunch of fat cat international big business corporate funders that want to influence politricks wiht there billions? i dont know anthony johnson but i do know politics. new aproach oregon is funded by the same corporations and influences that want prisons full and the prison industrial complex to continue…. paul stanford is a local man. and has remained in the scene since the 1980s. crrh you get my vote and i hope portland hasnt become so invaded by big business corporate fat cats that we do see through the facade created by those who can afford to buy the media.
This story raises many issues. The most important is that marijuana prohibition is a total failure. It must end. There was an appropriate time for advocates of marijuana reform to have the internal debate about how to end prohibition. That time has passed. The sponsors of New Approach Oregon did a good job of getting input from many stakeholders including me and Paul Stanford. NAO is well drafted and learns much from Colorado and Washington. Everyone who wants to end marijuana prohibition should unite behind NAO and actively participate in the campaign. Stanford should suspend his campaigns and shift his resources to supporting NAO. Marijuana reform may be leading in the current polling, but it is close, this is a midterm (low-turnout) election and opponents of marijuana reform may try to make Oregon their last stand. Sheldon Adelson recently donated millions of dollars to oppose a medical marijuana initiative in Florida. We can’t let minor issues or squabbles squander this historic opportunity.
The other issue is the initiative process. It is broken. It is almost impossible to qualify for the ballot without nearly a million dollars. Petitioning has become a bureaucratic nightmare of rules that do not protect the integrity of the process. It is ridiculous that voter registration and petition signing haven’t entered the modern internet world in a meaningful way. Determining whether a person is registered to vote and whether they have signed a particular petition already should be simple and fast. And are we really better off having people sign petitions on the street in a big rush after having an issue explained to them in a few seconds by a barely trained low paid temp worker than we would be if we find a secure way for people to be informed about issues online and “sign” by demonstrating that they support a vote on that issue?