Pubdate: Thu, 11 Oct 2012
Source: Adirondack Daily Enterprise, The (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The Adirondack Daily Enterprise
Contact:  http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4413
Author: Chris Morris

FORMER INMATE HAS HIGH HOPES FOR 2014

A former editor of High Times, a magazine that advocates marijuana
culture, who once did federal prison time at Ray Brook has planted the
seeds for a run at New York state's highest office.

Richard Stratton has filed initial paperwork with the state Board of
Elections to run for governor in 2014. In a phone interview with the
Enterprise on Monday, he said he "plans to mount a campaign and run"
against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He said he wants to run as a Republican and
will soon begin meeting with GOP county committees around the state.

Stratton, 66, is originally from Massachusetts, but he's lived in New
York since his early 20s. He currently resides at Battery Park City,
Manhattan, in an apartment that overlooks Ground Zero.

Stratton has had two books published, "Altered States of America: 
Outlaws and Icons, Hitmakers and Hitmen," and "Smack Goddess," the 
latter of which he wrote in prison. He co-wrote the 1998 film "Slam," 
which won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival, and he 
produced the Showtime crime drama "Street Time."

The gubernatorial hopeful has also served prison time for marijuana
and hashish smuggling, an experience Stratton said helped shape his
views on prison reform and drug laws.

Hard time in "God's country"

When Stratton says he's not your typical gubernatorial candidate, he's
not kidding.

In 1982, Stratton was sentenced to 25 years and six months in prison
for smuggling marijuana and hash. He ran the international operation
for more than a decade before he was arrested in Los Angeles.

Stratton describes himself as a child of the '60s. He said he first
tried marijuana when he was a student at Arizona State University. He
said he understood that possessing and selling marijuana was criminal,
but felt like the government lied to people about its effects.

"Marijuana, and marijuana use, and the imprisonment of Americans for
the use of marijuana and other drugs, became kind of a symbol of what
we felt was a kind of totalitarianism that was taking over," Stratton
said.

Six years after he was sentenced, while being shuffled from prison to
prison in what he called "Diesel Therapy," Stratton was transferred to
the Federal Correctional Institution in Ray Brook. He wrote about his
year there in a 2007 Adirondack Life magazine piece titled "Banished."

FCI, originally built to house athletes for the 1980 Winter Olympics
in Lake Placid, was "strangely beautiful and peaceful," he wrote. At
the time, the facility didn't have gun towers or high walls, and
Stratton said the warden had a soft spot for flowers.

Stratton called the Adirondacks "God's country."

"I remember getting out of the bus when we arrived, and it was late at
night, and looking up at the sky and seeing this incredible panorama
of stars and it was gorgeous," he said. "The air was so clean and
pure. The prison itself was crowded. It was comfortable, but it was
crowded."

When Stratton arrived at FCI, his sentence had been shortened due to
his successful, self-taught jailhouse lawyering. He was awaiting a new
release date, and said the anxiety made the stretch in Ray Brook the
hardest time he served.

"When you don't know how much longer you're going to be there - a
week, two weeks, two years - you wake up every day thinking, 'How much
more of this do I have to put up with?'"

He had a while longer to wait, during which he was transferred away
from Ray Brook. He ended up learning his release date two weeks before
he was freed, in 1990.

In case anyone wonders whether Stratton was eligible to vote after his
prison sentence, he was; he registered upon his release.

Prison reform ideas

- -

While in prison, Stratton said he met a lot of people who were locked
up for nonviolent drug offenses.

"This was the '80s; this was when the prison boom was in full
blossom," he said. "They were building federal prisons as fast as they
could. When I went in, there was 120,000 people in federal prison.
When I came out, there were hundreds of thousands of people in federal
prison. Now, there's like 2.3 million people in prison in this
country. We have more people in prison in this country than China and
Russia put together."

Since his release, Stratton said he's worked to provide insight into
the "prison industrial complex" and the "crime control
establishment."

"I've been involved ever since in trying to ameliorate these harsh
drug laws, including, in New York state, the Rockefeller drugs laws,
which, thankfully, have now gradually been whittled away on so that
we're not so extraordinarily coercive and draconian," he said.

Stratton said he'd like to bring back Pell grants for prisoners, which
were outlawed by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in
1994. He said most people he met in prison were there because they had
a limited education. Many of them were minorities from inner city areas.

"I found that a lot of these guys were very creative people - smart -
and they get involved with crime because they didn't know what else to
do to try to break out of where they were living and the lack of
opportunities that they had for getting a bigger part of the American
dream," Stratton said.

Stratton said education is the only thing that's proven to cut down on
recidivism.

Political affiliation

- -

A candidate who promotes marijuana legalization and increased
educational opportunities for inmates would, in the eyes of most
voters, fit well with the Libertarian Party, the Green Party or even
the Democratic Party, right?

Stratton begs to differ.

"I think if you really look at Republican values, the traditional
Republican values - Barry Goldwater Republicanism, Abraham Lincoln
Republicanism, if you will, going way back," he said, "it's really
about limiting the massive, expansive growth of big
government."

Stratton said he's a fiscal conservative. He doesn't agree with the
more conservative wing of the Republican Party when it comes to social
issues.

"I'm for getting the government out of our bedrooms, getting the
government out of our wallets, getting the government out of our lives
to a large degree," Stratton said.

Stratton said Cuomo and President Barack Obama have done an OK job
considering the cards they were dealt, but he doesn't think they have
the right answers in the long run.

"I think we need to radically reshape politics, both on the state and
the national level, so that there's so much less money being spent
wastefully with these huge government programs that really aren't
accomplishing anything," Stratton said. "Let the free markets work."

Stratton's message of smaller government and less spending will likely
resonate with a lot of Republican voters, but for some, his background
- - the prison time, the support for marijuana legalization - will be an
immediate turnoff.

Stratton said he knows he has some work to do, but he thinks there's a
generation of younger Republicans in New York state who will agree
with his platform.

Lake Placid booster

- -

Stratton's campaign can't raise or spend money yet because it still
needs to form a political committee. The paperwork filed this week is
the first step in that process.

But the hopeful candidate does have some supporters, including Brian
Barrett, a criminal defense lawyer from Lake Placid whose father, J.
Patrick Barrett, once led the state's Republican committee, although
he served as one of Cuomo's campaign chairs in 2010.

Barrett said his father's ties to Cuomo are a non-issue.

"I'm well aware that Governor Cuomo is currently well liked in this
area and around the state," he said. "(But) the economy is not good in
New York state. We overspend, we are overtaxed, and we have a governor
who can't make up his mind on important issues like hydrofracking. A
friendly personality and good looks may make you popular, but the
governor's lack of leadership and indecisiveness could seriously haunt
his popularity in the second half of his term."

Barrett said once the political committee is in place, the campaign
will start to raise money and hire a formal staff.
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MAP posted-by: Matt