The fallout from the death of the Legal Marijuana Now candidate Adam Weeks in Minnesota’s Second Congressional District race just got stranger.
It’s not a surprise to anyone but the naive that the GOP pushes 3rd party candidates as stalking horses in order to cut into the vote totals for Democrats. What is surprising is when dramatic evidence shows up proving it.
A voicemail left by Adam Weeks four months before his death was provided to the StarTribune newspaper.
“I swear to God to you, I’m not kidding, this is no joke,” Weeks said in the message, confirmed as his voice by his cousin and through independent comparison to other videos he posted online before his death. “They want me to run as a third-party, liberal candidate, which I’m down. I can play the liberal, you know that.”
The message, left on the answering machine of his friend Joey Hudson, indicated that Weeks planned to meet with some GOP operatives in May, but he did not identify them other than as “CD2 [Second Congressional District] Republicans.”
Weeks voted for Trump in 2016 and had posted dozens of conservative social media posts about the “socialist scum”. He was advised to stop posting by his Republican handlers, who came up with $15,000 for his campaign.
Other news organizations have reported that the Minnesota GOP has a pattern of promoting pot party candidates, some of whom have ties to the GOP. Even the state Senate Majority Leader tried to get someone to run in a swing state Senate district as a marijuana candidate, allegedly promising he would be “rewarded later”.
Weeks’ death had already been causing headlines because of a Minnesota law that called for postponing the election to a special election in February because of the death of a major party candidate. (Due to an easily met Minnesota statutory definition of “major party”, Legal Marijuana Now is a major party in Minnesota.) Incumbent Angie Craig (D) filed a lawsuit challenging that law because it conflicted with Federal law specifying a uniform date for Federal elections. It also would have left that district without a Representative during a crucial period. Since Republicans tend to do better with turnout in special elections, her Republican opponent Tyler Kistner fought her legal challenge all the way to the US Supreme Court. Craig won at all levels (SCOTUS denied Kistner’s appeal yesterday) and the election will proceed on Election Day. The Republican Kistner predictably whined about “disenfranchisement” (whining is not a good look for an ex-Marine like Kistner, but he follows the Orange Leader in that regard).