[A] Republican senator breaks ranks and votes to legalize marijuana because of an incident 40 years ago.
A Democrat goes against most of her party, almost killing the bill, and says she does so out of integrity.
In both cases, their vote is heavily influenced by an injustice they felt in the past.
Unusual alliances and motives mixed this week in the passage of the pot legalization bill by the Legislature’s upper chamber.
Before the Senate voted Wednesday, Sen. President Pro Tem John Campbell predicted the bill would squeak through 15-14. It would end up being approved 16-13 on that day. (Supporters picked up an additional vote on final passage Thursday.)
One of the 16 voting in favor was Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia/Orange, who said fellow Republicans gave him grief for co-sponsoring the bill, S.241. Recently, a conservative talk show host asked him if favoring pot legalization wasn’t a “strange position” for a Republican to take.
For Benning, however, legalization is not about politics. It’s personal.
In 1975, one week before high school graduation in New Jersey, he was arrested for possession of marijuana. Falsely charged, ultimately cleared but permanently scarred, Benning said he became a lawyer because of the injustice he experienced.
Benning said he was never part of the pot crowd and “never got invited to the good parties. They all assumed I was a narc.”
So when there was a raid at a home where he and his band were practicing, and authorities turned over the house and found two empty hashish pipes, Benning was floored when he was charged with possession.
“Now mind you I had never possessed the substance, much less smoked it. And for all of sudden for me to be charged as a senior in high school, I was the butt of every class joke that you can imagine at that point,” Benning said, “but the worst part of it was my parents thought I had just dropped off the face of the Earth and went to the dark side.”
Benning said his parents believed he was framed only after the local drug dealer vouched that Benning was a straight arrow.
Not only did that bust prompt Benning to pursue law, it fueled his passion to push the pot bill as hard as anyone in the upper chamber.
His bad experience didn’t end when the charges were dropped. Years later, when he was seeking his law license, he was asked on a form if he’d ever been arrested. Benning went back to New Jersey, found his records were still there, and had them expunged from the public record. One of his first actions as a state senator, he said, was to push to have Vermont establish a system to wipe criminal records clean.
During the floor debate on marijuana, Benning invoked Paul Lawrence as a reason he was supporting the bill. Lawrence, a Vermont state trooper, was a rogue cop who framed scores of Vermonters, claiming they possessed drugs.
Benning said he started his Vermont law practice around the time Lawrence was sent to jail, which raised memories of his own experience.
Lawrence “was part and parcel of what I had come to be an attorney for, because I was so against that kind of activity happening that that’s what drove me through law school,” Benning said.
Benning was one of two Republicans to support legalization. The other was Sen. Richard Westman, R-Lamoille.
The Other Side
On the other side of the debate, voting no was Sen. Becca Balint, D-Windham. She wanted to support legalization but said the bill unfairly “cut out” the small homegrowers and leaned too heavily toward larger cultivation operations.
Balint said she knew she might kill the bill with her vote and was warned by the governor she was throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but said she was willing to take that chance. (Because the roll call is done alphabetically, Balint didn’t have the luxury of knowing what effect her vote would have, unlike a senator whose last name starts with W or Z.)
“I needed to lend voice to these people who felt the train had already left the station,” she said.
Balint produced the 17th vote on Thursday after an amendment allowed for smaller-scale commercial production, though not homegrown.
“I’m sure I disappointed some people with my no vote” on Wednesday, Balint said. “I’ve never run as an ideologue. It’s not who I am, it’s not who I’m going to be. I’m going to listen to the merits and sometimes people are going to like me for it and some people aren’t, but they’re going to know who I am.”
It was an emotional, draining week for the freshman senator.
“I’m inexperienced. I’m a rookie, but I’m always going to be in integrity. The more I do it, the more comfortable it will feel for me. That’s how I am outside of this building and I’m just trying to figure out how to do that in the context of this job,” Balint said.
During the floor debate, Balint strongly objected to a comparison made by Sen. David Zuckerman, a co-sponsor, who said the pot legalization bill didn’t have everything, similar to when the Legislature passed civil union legislation but not gay marriage (which was later approved).
Balint said she sent Zuckerman several messages through intermediaries the past few weeks to drop that analogy because to Balint, civil unions “didn’t feel like much of a victory. It felt like a bitter pill.”
She said she and others “felt like second class citizens going to their town clerks that year, (so) it was hard to me to hear it likened to this, well you won’t get home grown, your little guys will be cut out, (but) it’s a step in the right direction. I was trying to get him to see when you are feeling left out, there’s little consolation there.”
Balint said she knew Zuckerman meant well. The Chittenden County senator made the point on the floor that civil unions was an important first step that didn’t satisfy everyone but was forward movement.
For Balint and Benning, their past, the injustice, made all the difference in deciding their vote.
Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morrisville, said Friday he was “generally supportive” of the Senate bill, which he said was “relatively modest,” but the speaker said didn’t believe a majority of his House colleagues were ready to approve it.
“What I have indicated is there is a real mix of positions on this in the House and it hasn’t coalesced. And it’s going to be important to see how things unfold during the hearings. so I’ve committed to giving this bill a fair hearing and seeing whether there’s support within the House to move it forward. What I’ve tried to acknowledge in my public statements is the reality of the people in the House not necessarily supporting it,” Smith said.
“I know a lot of people think I just wave magic wands around here and then votes happen, but it really requires a lot of buildup and building of support and it’s not clear to me that’s been done,” Smith said.
The bill will go through several House committees. Smith said it could be ready for a vote in three or four weeks.
