Peter SchorschJohn Morgan is a serious person.
He certainly spent serious money trying to pass Amendment 2 in 2014. He sounds serious, sometimes even emphatic. And sometimes sounding serious is all one needs to get their friends and enemies to act the way they want them too. At least that’s what Morgan hopes.
Elected officials pay attention to him because he gives gobs of money and is quotable enough to derail politicians’ dreams. For Democrats, he seems to be a one-man wrecking crew; see the dust-up he had with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who many believe would have run for the U.S. Senate except that she crossed John Morgan on medical marijuana. Republicans worry that he might fund their opponents so they listen to him and tweet out nice things about him from time to time in the hopes of keeping his anger and his money directed within the Democrat party – and not at them.
Then there is Florida’s press corps, which seems to have a crush on Morgan. Reporters rush to hear his every word, printing and reporting it as if he is the pied piper of Florida politics. He always seems to find at least one or two reporters who never question him and continue to report everything he says.
Heck, if I wanted someone to enjoy a beer or a cocktail, Morgan would be at the top of the list. But I wonder how long he can keep telling his tall tales and still be taken serious. When will reporters ask him to show the proof of his claims that he has millions of dollars in commitments to pass another initiative, that he has hundreds of thousands of supporters signing his petitions?
In 2014, Republicans were so scared he would rustle up tens of thousands of young voters with his marijuana initiative they quickly passed a watered-down version known as Charlotte’s Web. Turns out, all those couch potatoes and surfer dudes didn’t show up to the polls in 2014. Now his problem is that youth turnout will already be high in a presidential race so his “turnout” argument doesn’t hold as much water as it did in ’14.
Last year, during the battle against Amendment 2, Morgan was famous for calling reporters and holding press conferences bragging about the amount of money he would raise or spend to pass the initiative. At one point he said he had commitments for over $6 million more dollars and that he would spend whatever it took to win. None of that transpired. Morgan put more of his own money in the campaign and they raised a few hundred thousand, but the millions never showed up.
Maybe his commitments didn’t come through or maybe it was never there to begin with – we may never know. What we do know is that his campaign was grossly underfunded in the final weeks of the campaign and the promises of a fully funded TV push never appeared.
Fast forward to the days after the defeat of Amendment 2. Morgan holds a big press conference in which he says he’s coming back with a new petition that fixes the problems pointed out during the Amendment 2 campaign and that he has talked to folks willing to fund the effort. He doesn’t admit his previous language had so-called loopholes, but he addresses a number of issues and gets new language approved.
He then tells Florida lawmakers that they need to put medical marijuana on the ballot or pass it through the legislative process, or he will put in on the ballot himself. His campaign promises to have 100,000 signatures on its new petition by the start of Florida’s legislative session, but here we are five weeks into session and no verified signatures.
In January Morgan’s talented lieutenant (and my friend) Ben Pollara said, “We have a list of 200,000 supporters who are still committed to this and 12,000 volunteers and 6,000 donors to the campaign, just because we got 58 percent and not 60 percent in the election we’re not going to pack up and go home. There are people banging on our door to fire it (the campaign) back up.” This vaunted financial backing has generated less than $25,000 since Election Day. And they haven’t spent one dime gathering signatures.
In Florida, nobody gets an amendment on the ballot without paid signatures, and Morgan knows this better than anyone. If he had gathered the signatures, he would have submitted them to the supervisors of elections and they would be verifying them as we speak, but so far there are no certified signatures.
The folks trying to put a solar initiative on the ballot have raised a couple hundred thousand dollars and spent nearly $150,000 gathering signatures. And they’ve certified enough signatures to get a Supreme Court review. Morgan’s committee shows zero signatures certified. Zero.
Morgan knows how the signature gathering process works – he’s talked extensively about it at his press conferences. Now I know they will say they are getting them done the old fashioned way, with their army of volunteers. And that very well might be the case, but there is no proof that they have yet because not a single signature has been certified, according the Florida secretary of state. So if Morgan is trying to convince legislators he is serious about funding a petition drive or gathering signatures with his volunteers, he hasn’t produced anything yet that would make them believe he has the stomach for writing million dollar personal checks again.
This doesn’t mean medical marijuana isn’t popular. It doesn’t even mean it couldn’t pass if it was on the ballot in 2016. And finally, it doesn’t mean they won’t gather the signatures necessary for ballot placement. It just means that Morgan isn’t serious when he tells legislators he will be putting it on the ballot in 2016 if they don’t do it for him. Rather, he’s hoping they don’t call his bluff, that they believe his bluster, like this recent tweet “As legislature sits on their ass I’m ready to kick some ass. We’re going to put #MedicalMarijuana back on the ballot.”
Morgan’s hoping the Legislature will do the job of putting it on the ballot or passing an acceptable bill for him. He’s stated before how much money he spent putting it on the ballot in 2014, and based on the meager fundraising his committee has done thus far, he must now know the funding would come from his own pocket and the question is whether he will put his money where his mouth is – so far his answer has been to write pithy emails and tweets, but not big checks.
Peter Schorsch is a new media publisher and political consultant based in St. Petersburg, Fla. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
