When I retire from the cannabis journalism game, I picture a state of constant relaxation, joint smoking and Kraken-orange juices drinking with my former Mossad agent wife on a beach in either Tel Aviv or Tangier. It’s peaceful; my fifth New York Times bestseller has just earned my fourth Pulitzer prize and I’ve been living off the royalties from my first three books for a decade now. The only worries I face are whether to have baklava or my imported supply of Blue Bell for dessert and whether to consume Morrocan Kush or Kosher Kush. It’ll be a great life, and one that will certainly be earned after decades of covering cannabis.
I believe that regardless of your field of work, everyone has a fantasy about their retirement. Maybe they’ll spend quality time with their families, possibly travel around the world, gain a new hobby or two such as Dubya has in his remarkable painting skills, or simply pursue an entirely new lifestyle with the increased availability you now have. You’re no longer required to worry about the daily stresses of the employed lifestyle, how your co-workers and managers will feel or a shitty commute.
And yet, politicians across all branches of government refuse to go live out their dutifully earned retirement fantasies. Many with disproven viewpoints or opinions from an era that was undoubtedly an unpleasant one for minorities of all types still hold tremendous amounts of power in the legislative, judicial and executive branches. A Quorum poll in 2018 shows that the average age of a member of the Senate is 61 and the average age of Democratic leadership in the House is 71.
Many longtime politicians who refused to retire eventually lost their re-election to a freshman candidate or were unceremoniously fired from their post due to their recusal in a fruitless federal investigation. Of those examples, two names stick out not only because of their shared surname but also because of their almost violent opposition to cannabis reform.
Pete and Jeff Sessions, the two men who’ve become public enemies 1 and 1.5 due to the former attorney general’s height, were once the biggest names in cannabis opposition. Jeff continued to preach anti-cannabis propaganda, most hilariously saying that “good people don’t smoke marijuana” and scarily once admitting that he was accepting of the Ku Klux Klan until he found out about the hate group’s marijuana usage. At the beginning of 2018, the former Alabama senator and Keebler Elf of attorneys general rescinded the Cole Memorandum, a memo sent by Deputy Attorney General James Cole which protected legal cannabis operating states from federal interference and possible prosecution. Although quite like the many other threats made towards the cannabis industry during his laughably short tenure, this effort resulted in almost nothing substantial for Jeff’s department happening.
And due to his recusal from the Mueller investigation among several other public spats with the reality television star in the White House to the point where President Trump said he “didn’t have an attorney general”, he was hilariously fired the day after the 2018 midterm elections. In usual people who’ve made it to the highest office that the legal profession can hold in this country, they would retire following their resignation.
As for former 8-term Dallas Congressman and House Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions, the longtime crusader against cannabis used his legislative power to block over 40 different cannabis reform-related bills from being discussed in the House, becoming quite the villain in the process. During his tenure, he voted against the Violence Against Women Act, voted in favor of striping many reproductive freedoms away from Americans and continued to evade being addressed by his constituents directly on his horrific stances on cannabis. And yet, the 21-year Congressman wasn’t safe from a re-election loss in the 2018 Midterms, especially when running against a young, progressive civil rights attorney and former NFL player in an increasingly bluer district.
Only slightly over a year ago, both of these men held tremendous power in government, only for both to lose that power within a 24-hour period. At age 63 when Pete lost his re-election and 71 when Jeff was fired, most would naturally decide to retire and come to the self-fulfilling realization that they served honorably, at least to themselves. And yet because term limits don’t exist for most political positions, both of the Sessions will be running for re-election for their former seats in the Legislative branch.
In a similar way to a disgusting movie villain who secretly survived the encounter with the heroes, Pete Sessions announced he’s running for Congress once again albeit in a different district. District 17, stretching from Waco to Bryan-College Station and including certain parts of Austin, could be the battleground that Pete Sessions fights on for the rekindling of his once prosperous political career. Current District 17 Congressman Bill Flores who’s held the office since 2011 announced recently that he won’t be running for re-election, citing his desire to be more available and spend more time with his family.
Wow, it’s refreshing to hear at least one representative say that.
And if winning the primary against the dozen other Republican candidates, Pete might have a better chance of re-election in District 17 as opposed to his primarily Democratic former district. District 17 is widely considered to be a Republican stronghold of a district, with many political reports sharing that conclusion and the district voted strongly in favor of Trump in the 2016 election. But with Congressman Flores comments about how the voters of District 17 would greatly prefer an individual from the district itself instead of an outsider, a term which certainly applies to the former Congressman and prohibition superhero. If voters in the district simply overlook Pete’s lack of residency in District 17 and instead focus solely on experience, the two decade-serving Congressman might have a fighting chance. But if residential preference kicks in, then Pete’s attempted comeback kid status may once again go up in smoke.
As for his much more petite spiritual counterpart, the former Attorney General announced his intent to once again run for the Alabama Senate, the office that he held for almost the same length of time that Pete held his. And the former Alabama senator, a man who sold his soul to a billionaire who eventually fired him with as much regard as he would a reality TV contestant, may rest easy and think that the election of Senate in Alabama is a given success. In every single one of his Senate campaigns since his initial 1996 one, he carried at least a 7 percent lead against his opponent in the results and his 2014 campaign being one where he ran unopposed.
However, as seen in the 2017 election for the vacant Senate seat that Sessions himself is now running for, the racial and political demographics are changing.
And while admittedly a small amount of why former prosecutor Doug Jones won the election was due to the wacky public appearances and unconventional scandals of the pedophilic judge that served as his opponent, minority voters clearly came out in droves to support a candidate that undoubtedly shows more progressive views towards communities that aren’t wealthy, White, heterosexual and Evangelical or Southern Baptist.
As for the Southern leprechaun wonder, he can’t truthfully state that he holds similarly progressive views on race. He’s an ardent supporter of the Harry Anslinger and Joe Arpaio-way of “tough justice”, the Drug War and mandatory minimums, policies which have unproportionately targeted and deeply ruined the lives of certain communities in Alabama. If he were to run for Senate once again, I don’t see very much possibility of gaining the vote of anyone who’s any type of social minority versus someone who prosecuted the disgusting Ku Klux Klan members who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church and killed four innocent African American girls.
Even within his own party, Sessions would face opposition from former judge and current plaintiff in a useless and frivolous lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen, Roy Moore. All jokes about Judge Moore being an unapologetic homophobe yet occasionally dressing like a member of The Village People aside, he had an undying support from a very powerful voting block in Alabama and the only group that he truly cared about, the socially conservative upper class white Evangelicals. In Roy Moore, they see the true embodiment of their fundamentalist and sometimes invasive views in politics.
But unlike Pete Sessions, the level of clout that the severely social conservative Sessions still honorably holds in Alabama politics, his lengthy history in lawmaking and pedophilia allegation-free personal life may project him easily to win the primary. In this scenario, Jeff Sessions would once again be a Senatorial candidate for Alabama. In an election in a state so otherwise deeply red, a Sessions re-election isn’t a situation I would rule out.
So to conclude, both Jeff and Pete Sessions are running for re-election, with Jeff actually holding a chance at re-election given his lifelong Alabamian status and his two decades of experience in the exact Senate seat that he’s running for. With elections within every branch of government in 2020, the coverage and upsets that will surely arise from the endless elections will cause quite a stir in the country, and a Sessions or two may possibly end up back in the national Legislature.