Josh Harkinson

Reporter

Born in Texas and based in San Francisco, Josh covers tech, labor, drug policy, and the environment.

A Hail Mary (Jane) for Legalizing Marijuana

| Mon Nov. 1, 2010 5:38 PM PDT

Backers of California's referendum to legalize recreational marijuana will need to connect on a long hail Mary (Jane) if they're going to score a victory on Tuesday. A Field Poll released on Sunday has the formerly popular Proposition 19 losing 49 to 42 percent.

The stoner world's fog of optimism is starting to burn off. The California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) still expresses high hopes for Prop 19 on its website, but director Dale Gieringer told me on Monday that he personally considers the prospect of victory to be a pipe dream. "I have never thought it was likely to pass," he said, "and it's going exactly like I expected."

The official Yes on 19 campaign still insists that Tuesday could be the day that ganja goes legit. "Proposition 19 is looking history in the eye and not blinking," Democratic strategiest Chris Lehane writes in a memo released by the campaign on Sunday. He concludes that Prop 19 "is in a better position to win on election day than indicated in the mainstream media narrative" because the Field Poll was conducted before the campaign's TV ad began running; undercounts young, cell-phone-wielding, pro-pot voters; and suffers from a "reverse Bradley effect" in which people aren't honest with pollsters for fear of looking like potheads.

But none of those arguments can keep NORML's Gieringer from acting like a total downer. "You have the whole elephant in the room of the feds not cooperating," he told me. And that means Prop 19 faces an uphill fight notwithstanding the reverse Bradley effect, which isn't real, he added. Yet what is real, he went on, is "a well-established effect that undecided voters tend to vote no on risky and controversial propositions if they are not sure of the effect."

Of course, 47 percent of California voters have tried marijuana. So just maybe, this is a state where risky and controversial propositions with uncertain effects still have a chance.

[Editors' note: For a rundown on how the San Francisco Giants could doom Prop 19, read Adam Weinstein's story here]

Last updated on 11/1/10 at 9:52 PM

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Can the GOP Tweet its Way to Victory?

—By Josh Harkinson

| Tue Oct. 26, 2010 3:36 PM PDT

If next week's midterm elections were held on Facebook and Twitter, the GOP would probably sweep both houses of Congress. Republican Senate candidates, for example, now marshal a total 1.4 million Facebook fans and 500,000 Twitter followers—roughly five times more than their Democratic opponents. It would appear that even after Howard Dean's tech-savvy 2004 campaign and Barack Obama's impressive 2008 online organization, the Democrats have gone from being the party of geeks to being the geeks who missed the party.

Anthony Calabrese of PBS' Media Shift has pulled together data and charts suggesting that 2010 "is shaping up to be the election year that's defined by social media." He points out that members of online social networks are about twice as likely as nonmembers to donate to candidates; they're also twice as likely to say they're "occasionally or very active in politics." Does that mean progressives should get on Facebook and try to close the digital enthusiasm gap by immediately friending Nancy Pelosi?

Not necessarily. Delaware's tea party senatorial candidate, Christine O'Donnell, has five times as many Facebook and Twitter fans as her Democratic opponent (left), but seems to be headed for defeat. Champion tweeter Carly Fiorinia counts more Twitter followers (300,000) than all Senate candidates from both parties combined, yet is trailing Sen. Barbara Boxer in the polls. Both of them could learn a lesson from the presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), which in late 2007 counted more Facebook and MySpace supporters than any Republican; more Google searches, YouTube subscribers, and website hits than any presidential candidate; and more Meetup members than the front-runners of both parties combined. In 2008, Paul shattered single-day fundraising records with his online "money bombs." Yet he still failed to win a single state primary.

Social media success may have more to do with a candidate's personality than his or her electability. O'Donnel, Fiorina, and Paul are all interesting, polarizing figures whose tweets and status updates are more unpredictable (and fun to read) than, say, Harry Reid's. Many of their followers don't live in the same state. And there's no guarantee that all their followers will even vote for them any more than all of @SarahPalinUSA's hundreds of thousands of Twitter pals would vote for her. All of which points to the fundamental problem facing this season's Republican challengers: They've generated a lot of online buzz, but "likes" and tweet memes don't necessarily translate into warm bodies in voting booths. Even for winning candidates, the economic climate, the prevailing mood towards incumbents, and the ability to get supporters to the polls may prove more important than how many friends they have.

The Long Strange Prop 19 Campaign

—By Josh Harkinson

| Tue Oct. 26, 2010 4:50 AM PDT

A week out from the midterm elections, California Democrats are bummed out. Nancy Pelosi could lose her job. A Tea Party sympathizer could replace a liberal Senator. Someone could buy the governorship. Bad shit's pretty much guaranteed to happen. And that could be why so many of us on the Left Coast have turned our attention to such a seemingly trivial cause: Proposition 19, the ballot measure that would legalize recreational pot smoking. Because if you're going to be ruled by the Tea Party, you at least deserve tea that's strong enough to make you forget how screwed you are.

Close followers of Prop 19 can't decide how worried they should be about it losing. Polls on the measure have been clouded by all the marijuana (medical, of course) that everyone's already smoking. Just look at the schizophrenic numbers from last week: On Thursday, a major human-conducted poll showed Prop 19 trailing 49 to 44 percent; the next day, Yes on 19's internal robo poll had it winning 56 to 41 percent. The only logical explanation is that 7 percent of Californians are paranoid that the pollster on the line is a DEA agent or a friend of their mom but trust pollster robots (which aren't programmed to suss out potheads). This stoner Bradley Effect has also been noted by Nate Silver, who calls it the "Broadus Effect" after the given name of Prop 19 champion Snoop Dogg.

Perhaps all of this is why the Prop 19 campaign has been reduced to stating the obvious. "Moms say controlling and taxing marijuana is good for families," reads a Yes on 19 press release from last Tuesday. And here I thought that Nancy Botwin was just a character on Showtime. But on Thursday I learned that Dena Price, a 46-year-old mom in Ukiah, was busted for keeping her 15-year-old son home from school so that he could help harvest the 7-foot-tall cannabis plants in their backyard. Given the nature of the economy in Ukiah, I'm surprised that they don't teach bud trimming in high school.

Probably more influential in the Prop 19 debate are cops, who as a group tend to oppose legalization as a capitulation to the bad guys and maybe a threat to their job security. (A notable exception is San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara, who just cut a TV ad in which he proclaims that Prop 19 "will put drug cartels out of business.") On Saturday, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that a man had called the police to report that he'd been sold bad marijuana. "It was nasty," he said. (But probably not as nasty as the revelation that he was being charged with a crime). This dude's cluelessness could translate into brilliance in California. If the cops are worried about losing their jobs eradicating marijuana, why not just change the job description and have them eradicate criminally awful schwag? Now that would really put the Mexican cartels out of business.

Rand on the Run

Mr. "Aqua Buddha" Paul won't talk to reporters. So I went to Kentucky to track him down.

—By Josh Harkinson

| November/December 2010 Issue

On a crowded Saturday in August at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville, between vendors selling funnel cakes and Christian T-shirts, three volunteers manned a booth for Rand Paul's Senate campaign. They smiled, waved, and seemed to be having a good time—until I stopped by and announced that I planned to hang out. "We can't let you do that," said one, who declined to give her name. So I talked to the only person who would give me the time of day—a woman in a wheelchair who had stopped by to grab a Paul bumper sticker. I asked her if she agreed with Paul's stance that the Americans with Disabilities Act is an unfair burden to business owners. She looked to the volunteer for clarification, but now she, too, encountered the Paul campaign's code of silence. "I can't talk to you, ma'am," the volunteer apologized. "I don't want to mis-say something."

Stalking jittery campaign workers certainly wasn't how I'd hoped to cover Paul, who is seen as one of the tea-party-type Republicans most likely to capture a statewide seat this fall. But then, I didn't have much choice: Paul, the son of libertarian stalwart Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), has gone to near-comic lengths to avoid what Sarah Palin calls the "lamestream media." Everyone, from Paul and his top staffers to the lowliest door-knockers, has virtually stopped talking to reporters. The campaign did not return any of my phone calls requesting interviews over the course of three months. Even after I flew across the country and drove two hours to Paul's busy campaign HQ in Bowling Green, I was politely turned away. "I'm sorry that I can't be more helpful," said a volunteer who avoided eye contact, seemingly shaken by the appearance of a live journalist. After myriad phone calls, I finally got one of Paul's county-level campaign coordinators on the line, but he demurred: "It's nothing to do with you; I just don't do interviews, period."

[Read the full article]

And the Winner of the Final Brown/Whitman Debate Is. . .

—By Josh Harkinson

| Wed Oct. 13, 2010 5:01 AM PDT

Tom Brokaw. Man, why can't this guy run for governor? Taking a break for his documentary gig to moderate the final Brown/Whitman debate, Brokaw outdid both candidates in cutting to the heart of the state's problems. He asked what Californians can do for California, if anything, and what they thought of polls showing that the state's voters were "utterly unrealistic" about what can be cut from government spending without affecting services. He asked whether Proposition 13 was a "sacred cow" or a "boulder in the road" to reform. And he wrapped up by wondering if the candidates supported any structural reforms such as major changes to California's dysfunctional constitution. He didn't get many straight answers. But he did straighten out Republican Meg Whitman at one point by fact-checking her claim that Brown had caused job losses while governing California in the '70s. (The national recession was to blame, Brokaw noted; Western states run by Republicans at the time had also lost jobs). It's nice to find somebody with enough perspective to see that the real story behind this race is the death of the California Dream. Too bad the state's electoral politics aren't really set up to discuss how to revive it.