Ray Martinez wins
If the pro-pot crowd, which claims to want to expand freedom and prosperity seems an unlikely bedfellow for the irrational fractivists who want to shut down development, you would be right. Last night, this less-than-dynamic duo was smacked down in the Fort Collins City Council race with the win by Ray Martinez.
Pot shop owners and fractivists united to pick an easy target. After all, Martinez is a conservative and Fort Collins is a liberal college town. Fort Collins isn’t quite as bad as Boulder, but it’s not far off.
Given the big money behind the pro-pot folks and the fractivists, plus the liberal tilt of Fort Collins, it should have been a cake walk for Martinez’s opponent, Nancy Tellez.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box. It was no cake walk, and this unholy alliance lost, and lost big. The fact that voters in a progressive college town that’s a hotbed of environmental extremism chose the pro-energy candidate shows just what losers energy development bans are – no matter your party affiliation.
But, the real loser in this race is the pot legalization crowd, which has been trying to make inroads into the GOP, particularly the younger generation. If Mary Jane boosters become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party and if the edible munchers keep aligning themselves with fringe actors like Food and Water Watch, defeats like the one they were dealt in Fort Collins will become the norm.
Seriously, tokers, pick your friends more wisely. The anti-frack crowd is a derided cast of losers, and those who align with them only brand themselves as losers, too.