Will you join me in a :toast: to both candidates?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/prohibition_feudDENVER - In Colorado, where microbreweries are common and the biggest beer magnate is running for the Senate, a battle is brewing among teetotalers over who should be their presidential candidate.
Earl Dodge of Denver, the Prohibition Party's candidate in every presidential election since 1984, is running again in November. But dissident members complain that he is more interested in his political button business than the party, and they say the 71-year-old Dodge needs to hand over power to a younger generation.
Because of the split, Colorado voters will have two anti-alcohol parties to choose from Nov. 2: Dodge and the Rev. Gene Amondson of the newly formed Concerns of People (Prohibition) Party.
The feeble effort demonstrated how far the party has fallen. The Prohibition Party, founded in 1869, once got 2.2 percent of the nation's presidential vote (John Bidwell, 1892), elected a governor in Florida (Sidney Johnston Cates, 1917) and was a powerful influence on public policy. Its high-water mark was in 1920, when the 18th Amendment banning liquor sales took effect.
"I'd rather have 100 Al Capones in every city than alcohol sold in every grocery store," he (Amondson)said. "During the 13 years of Prohibition the budget was balanced, prisons were emptied, mental institutions emptied and cirrhosis of the liver declined."