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Prohibition a dry subject? This candidate brings fire, flair
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Sep 28, 2004 05:56am |
| Category | Profile |
| News Date | Sep 28, 2004 12:00am |
| Description | The Prohibition Party candidate for president of the United States of America won't be voting for himself this November.
He won't be on the ballot at his Vashon Island polling place.
Gene Amondson, Methodist minister, artist, woodcarver and enduring supporter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, would have to move to Louisiana - or possibly Tennessee - if he wanted to check his own name. Even in Louisiana, he concedes, he doesn't have a crawfish's chance in gumbo of garnering electoral college votes.
It's not about the votes, he says. It's about the message. He goes after the liquor industry any way he can. He preaches. He reasons. He endorses using the courts, as the anti-tobacco crusaders have done. And now he campaigns.
But it takes more than an unlikely candidacy to get ink in the national media and time on the airwaves.
It helps that Amondson is charming, intelligent, well-educated, well-spoken and, well, funny.
It helps that his painted carving of himself is standing next to Bert and Ernie at the entrance to his driveway some 10 miles from the Vashon Island's Talequah ferry terminal.
It helps that he's boiled down his message to the size of a sound bite: "Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, was America's greatest 13 years. Alcohol consumption and prison populations were down. Cirrhosis of the liver was cut in half. It didn't last, but it did work," he says in a single breath.
Amondson grew up in Washington logging camps and worked his way through Warner Pacific College in Portland, where he earned a degree in science and studied art. He earned his master's of divinity at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky and has been a Methodist preacher for more than 30 years.
He makes his living painting and carving. He has four adult children, all of whom tell him they drink socially. |
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