Festival celebrates hemp, also stirs political pot

By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter

RON WURZER / GETTY IMAGES Jordan LeRoy sports marijuana glasses and a marijuana lei at Hempfest yesterday. The two-day event at Myrtle Edwards Park along Seattle's waterfront is expected to attract 150,000 visitors.

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Regulars who attend the two-day festival to hear the usual cry of "legalize marijuana" also found organizers campaigning to get pot users to vote for Kerry.

About 100 Democratic activists passed out Kerry/Edwards buttons and stickers and tried to register voters yesterday at the 13th annual gathering at Myrtle Edwards Park along Seattle's waterfront.

With an expected 150,000 visitors over two days, Hempfest is billed as one of the world's largest pro-marijuana rallies. As organizers see it, that's a gold mine for Kerry, since the crowd is largely anti-President Bush.

Said Hempfest spokesman Dominic Holden, "Bush has had a disastrous drug policy — criminalizing sick and dying people who need medical marijuana and campaigning against citizen initiatives to implement drug-law reforms."

Organizers set a goal of signing up thousands of new voters. Some Kerry supporters also were recruiting campaign volunteers.

A Kerry campaign spokesman said the efforts were orchestrated by independent groups that are not associated with the official Kerry campaign.

Walter Duncan, a 32-year-old graduate student and a Kerry supporter, decided to pick up a clipboard and sign up voters because "this is going to be a close election ... and this would be a good place to find" Kerry supporters.

Chris Martino, 35, a Kerry volunteer from Seattle, signed up 15 new voters within an hour. "It's not exactly an evangelical Christian group. It's a left-leaning crowd," he said.

Hempfest's milelong stretch of booths features vendors selling anti-Bush T-shirts, bumper stickers and signs reading "Smoke Bush."

The event also drew campaigns for Ralph Nader and the Libertarian ticket.
 
Hempfest organizers said the event's political overtone underscores the clout that pot smokers have, as evidenced by the passage of I-75, the initiative that made marijuana the city's lowest law-enforcement priority.

The initiative was approved by 58 percent of Seattle voters last September.

Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com