A former professional tuba player,
Jim Hedges, is running for president on the 137-year-old Prohibition ticket and hopes to be on the ballot in six states this November.
Yes, that’s the same Prohibition Party that helped get the production and sale of alcoholic beverages banned in the United States from 1920 to 1933.
“I’ve never so much as drunk a beer in my life. I’ve seen the damage it can cause,” Hedges, 78, tells London’s
Guardian.
“If I’m out socially with people who have a mixed drink I’ll take a spoon and dip in it. And then lick the spoon to see what it tastes like. In that way I may have had an ounce of alcohol.”
Hedges, who played in the U.S. Marine Band and was a longtime tax assessor in Pennsylvania, says the party, founded in 1879 and the third oldest in the U.S., held on after the repeal of prohibition and gained a reputation for promoting conservative causes.
“I’ve been trying to pull it back a little bit the other way. I can’t do it all at once – politics is the art of the possible – but I’ve got some progressive planks in this year’s platform,” he told the newspaper.
Hedges’ vice-presidential running mate is Bill Bayes, a former high school band director who now runs his own manufacturing company.
One of the Prohibition Party’s slogans is: “Let the two headed monster in Washington know that we the people are fed up with their empty promises and dangerous solutions.”
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