The Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party is a political third party in the U.S. state of Minnesota created by Oliver Steinberg in 2014 to oppose cannabis prohibition. G—LC Is a democratic socialist party with a background branching from the Grassroots Party established in 1986.
Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party attained major party status in Minnesota in 2018 when their Attorney General candidate, who dropped out of the race to support the Democratic candidate, but whose name nevertheless remained on ballots, received 5.7 percent of the vote.
In 2022, Minnesota G—LC resumed minor party status, when none of their candidates got 5% of votes, which is required for major party ballot access in the state. However their candidate for Minnesota State Auditor received more than 1% of votes, in 2022, maintaining minor party status for G—LC until 2026.
History
In 2014, the Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party was established by Oliver Steinberg because Steinberg and Chris Wright were unwilling to join the rest of the Grassroots Party when they merged with the Minnesota Legal Marijuana Now Party. In the 2014 race for governor, Wright received 31,259 votes. The party also ran a candidate for State Auditor, in 2014, who received 55,132 votes.
The Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party nominated their candidates by petition in 2018 to run for Governor of Minnesota, as well as in the race for Minnesota Attorney General, the results of which earned the group major-party status in Minnesota. A few weeks before the election, the Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis candidate for Attorney General, Noah Johnson, dropped out of the race to support Democratic/Farmer-Labor candidate Keith Ellison who was embroiled in scandal, though Johnson's name remained on the ballot.
Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party founder Oliver Steinberg, who previously ran as a Republican candidate and a Grassroots candidate, had a background of violence discrediting the peace movement in the 1970s. Steinberg was the Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis candidate for United States Senator in 2020.
Perennial Republican candidate Rae Hart Anderson was nominated by Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party voters in the August 11 primary to run for United States Representative in Minnesota's 7th congressional district on November 3, 2020.
Gubernatorial candidates
The Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party nominated their candidates by petition in 2014 to run for Governor of Minnesota. In the race for governor, Chris Wright received 31,259 votes.
In 2018, Wright again was nominated by petition to run for Minnesota Governor, and received 68,664 votes in the November general election. Wright resigned as G—LC chairperson to seek Minnesota Legal Marijuana Now Party’s nomination for Governor in 2022.
Steve Patterson, a Brownsdale, Minnesota, businessman and opponent of Governor Tim Walz' COVID-19 lockdown, who blamed these forced closings for hurting small businesses, including his own Rochester beer taproom startup, was nominated in the August, 2022, G—LC gubernatorial primary, and advanced to the general election, getting 22,598 votes, less than one percent on November 8. In addition to legalizing cannabis for personal use, Patterson supported reducing income taxes for working class people.
Conflict with Democratic Party
Even though Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis candidates have dropped out of running to support Democratic candidates in some tight races and party leaders have withheld the state party's endorsement of some Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis candidates when they thought doing so might hurt the chances of winning for struggling DFLers, several times Democratic Party leaders have accused the Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party of making it hard for Democratic candidates in Minnesota. However, a St. Cloud Times analysis of votes cast in the November 2020 election found that Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis candidates took at least as many, if not more, votes from republicans than they took from DFL candidates.
2021—2023
In 2021, Kevin Shores told a FOX 9 television reporter that he was recruited to run for Congress from Minnesota's 7th district, where Democratic incumbent Collin Peterson lost the race to Republican challenger Michelle Fischbach, in 2020, by a Republican strategist who Shores mistakenly thought was a G—LC representative. Shores, who is blind and suffers from Gulf War syndrome, lost to Hart Anderson in the Grassroots—Legalize Cannabis Party primary.