Welcome to the Five-State Commonwealth
This state isn’t easy to figure out. Steve Schale, a political operator who directed Florida operations for Obama/Biden in 2008, recently described his home as a fractured commonwealth more than a unified state. Most states, he wrote, have a single brand, a commonality of experience. “Florida really doesn’t,” Schale wrote. The state “is a political circle, drawing 20 million people from vast experiences and cultures into one spot. Almost everyone here has come from somewhere else.”
By Schale’s count, there are five states of Florida. North Florida contains the “FloraBama” Southern culture swath from Pensacola to Jacksonville. Orlando and the Interstate 4 Corridor is Florida’s politically roiling battleground region, perennially up for grabs. Tampa and the southern Gulf Coast is older, quieter, leans moderately Republican but is more progressive than North Florida. Southeast Florida (Palm Beach, Broward County) is a Democratic stronghold. And Miami, one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world, once leaned Republican due to the influence of exiled Cubans, but not so much anymore. One of Steve Schale’s key data points: 56 percent of Hispanics in the Miami region identified as Republican in 2000. By 2016, that figure had fallen to 36 percent.
Even with a new diversity entering the state, older and predominantly white retirees can still sway an election—because they register and because they vote.
For Amendment 2 campaign director Pollara, the key to putting his cause over the 60 percent mark is clear. “We need to get 30-second television ads in front of seniors, mostly in the I-4 corridor,” he told me. “Every election in Florida is decided in the I-4. Southern Florida votes Democratic, Northern Florida votes Republican. The battle happens from Tampa to Daytona.”
The battle for the I-4 corridor
Renee Petro’s son is fighting FIRES, a rare childhood epileptic disorder: “It shouldn’t take this long” to obtain medical cannabis, she says.
To get a sense of that battleground and the people involved in the fight, I spent a few days in late summer exploring the I-4 corridor. I met a number of patients caught in a system that delivers close to zero medicine and a heaping dose of fear, confusion, and risk. I also met advocates determined to force change.
Some patients were reluctant to talk publicly for legal reasons, but others stood up and spoke up. Among the most vocal was Renee Petro, Florida’s medical marijuana mama bear.
Petro’s 14-year-old son Branden suffers from a rare condition known as FIRES, febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome. A devastating epilepsy that affects healthy, school-aged children, FIRES hit Branden seven years ago and triggered a never-ending series of seizures. When conventional pharmaceuticals offered little relief, Petro began researching cannabinoid medicine. She and Branden traveled to California, where they worked with Harborside Health Center and Steep Hill Labs to find a CBD-THC dosage and delivery system that calmed Branden’s seizures. The only problem now: They live in Florida, where nearly all medical marijuana remains illegal. (Branden’s father, a military officer, currently serves overseas.)
Currently Petro is working with Jason David, a Modesto, Calif., father whose son has Dravet Syndrome; and Jason Cranford, founder of the Flowering Hope Foundation, who helped pass Georgia’s low-THC “Haleigh’s Hope Act” in 2015. They’re getting Branden a specifically dosed cannabinoid mixture at night and slowly weaning him off a cocktail of three different pharmaceuticals.
“Now Branden is 18 days seizure-free,” Petro told me. We met at a casual dining spot a few blocks from her home. “I can’t be too far away, in case Branden needs me,” she explained.
Branden is now registered in the state’s extremely constricted CBD-only program, but that limits him to a narrow range of treatments, and his family still lives in a legal gray area. State child protective services workers investigated the Petro family and Branden’s treatment last year. A local sheriff’s deputy is aware of her situation. He’s sympathetic, but he’s not always on duty. “Branden is in the state registry, but the deputy told me his department has no access to that registry,” Petro said. “He’s trying to help me, but he’s also warning me. If another officer responds to a call here and doesn’t know what we’re dealing with, we’re likely to be in a situation.”
She’s a fierce defender of her son and an outspoken advocate for other patients. Three years ago Petro and two other caregiving mothers, Moriah Barnhart and Jacel Delgadillo, founded CannaMoms, a resource group for parents with loved ones in need of cannabinoid medicine.
They could move to Colorado, as others have. But they’ve chosen to stay in Florida and fight. “It shouldn’t take this long” to obtain cannabis-based medicine for her son, Petro said. “Cannabis should have been brought into the mix [of his treatment] from the beginning, not after the other pharmaceuticals have done their damage.”
John Morgan “For The People”
Florida attorney John Morgan holds a photo is his late father Ramon, who died from cancer. His father’s suffering spurred him to support medical marijuana legalization. (AP Photo/Alex Menendez)
Interstate 4 slices through Florida like a forward slash, from Tampa on the Gulf Coast, to landlocked Orlando, to Daytona Beach on the Atlantic Coast. If you drive it, you may fall under the impression that personal injury lawsuits are the engine of Florida’s economy. Few of the roadside billboards beam brighter than those featuring the firm of Morgan & Morgan and its motto, “For The People.” John Morgan, scion of the firm, made his fortune one case at a time, and his sunny, smiling mien is well known to any Floridian who rolls down I-4.
Morgan came to the marijuana issue honestly and tragically. Years ago he watched his father suffer through cancer and emphysema. His brother Tim, a former lifeguard, was partially paralyzed when he dove into a concrete pylon while trying to rescue a swimmer. Both, he says, could have benefitted from the relief offered by medical cannabis.
“For some reason, I became the medical marijuana guy in Florida, the most unlikely of people,” Morgan told a gathering of cannabis advocates and industry officials recently. “There is no state in the union that is more ready for this industry than this state,” he said.
For Morgan, the key to victory is clear. “Money is going to be our biggest obstacle,” he told the crowd in Kissimmee. He spent $7 million in 2014, but he doesn’t know how much he’ll invest in 2016. “Sometimes I go to happy hour and I have one drink,” he said. “Sometimes I end up closing the bar and wind up at the Waffle House at 3 a.m.”
That kind of down-home speechifying has turned Morgan into a beloved figure. Floridians know him for his billboards and his “for the people” ads. They love him for defending the little guy and for championing a cause that—so far—he doesn’t seem interested in cashing in on. “He can’t go to the grocery store without people hugging him and crying and asking for selfies,” Ben Pollara told the Tallahassee Democrat. “He’s gone from being a TV lawyer to being a folk hero.”