Heading into critical midterms, Democrats turn over new leaf on marijuana

Pot legalization has moved from the left-wing fringe to the forefront of the Democratic party. And it now has the support of a significant majority of the American public.

Benjamin Thomas Wolf, an obscure Democrat running for Congress in Illinois, released a campaign ad in which he was pictured smoking marijuana.

He got a bunch of attention. Then he was exposed for inventing some of his biography. Local media wrote stories about the downfall of the “cannabis candidate.”

This year, though, Illinois voters had lots of cannabis candidates to choose from. And most of them were nowhere near the political fringe.

All eight Democrats running to be attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement officer, also endorsed marijuana legalization. So did the three top Democratic candidates for governor. One of them, state Sen. Daniel Biss, had signs that called him “CannaBiss” — the type of branding that would have been done by his opponents, not his own campaign, in decades past.

Heading into the critical midterm elections in November, Democratic congressional candidates around the country are embracing marijuana legalization in unprecedented numbers. The shift hasn’t only occurred in liberal-leaning states like Illinois. The pro-legalization candidates include Beto O’Rourke, a House member mounting a credible Senate challenge to Ted Cruz in conservative Texas.

Three years after Justin Trudeau successfully campaigned on legalization in Canada, top prospective presidential candidates are also jumping on board. When Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed legalization during his 2016 campaign, he was the first prominent candidate for a major U.S. party to do so. This year, he has already been joined by senators and possible candidates Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Even 84-year-old California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a longtime opponent of legalization, reversed her position last week.

The Democrats’ shift comes during a broader leftward leap that has seen mainstream party figures take a variety of positions that would have been considered untouchable as recently as Barack Obama’s first campaign, including support for single-payer health care.