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From The Rotation to the General Election: Why Candidates Are Talking Directly to Florida’s Cannabis Community
Florida candidates are discovering something Suncoast NORML has been saying for years: cannabis consumers are not a fringe constituency. We are voters. And if you want our votes, you should probably come talk to us.
The 2026 Florida primary election gave us an interesting reason to look back at some of the candidates who have recently appeared on The Rotation by Suncoast NORML.
And, well…we noticed something.
Several candidates who took the time to sit down with Florida's cannabis community, answer difficult questions, discuss cannabis reform and explain what they actually want to accomplish in office just won their primaries and are moving forward.
Let's get one thing out of the way before somebody gets carried away.
We are not claiming that appearing on The Rotation wins elections.
The candidates did the work. Their volunteers did the work. Their campaigns raised money, knocked on doors, made phone calls, attended events and convinced voters. Ultimately, Florida voters made the decisions.
But we are willing to say something else:
Candidates who take cannabis voters seriously may understand something about modern Florida politics that other politicians are still missing.
Cannabis voters are a constituency.
And increasingly, candidates are treating us like one.
Angie Nixon Pulls Off One of Florida's Biggest Primary Upsets
Perhaps no example better demonstrates the power of grassroots political engagement in this election than State Rep. Angie Nixon.
Nixon recently joined The Rotation for a wide-ranging conversation about her campaign for the United States Senate, cannabis policy, protest, working families and her confrontational approach to Florida politics.
Then came August 18.
Nixon defeated Alexander Vindman for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, winning approximately 56% of the vote to Vindman's 44%. That would have been noteworthy under almost any circumstances.
The financial disparity made it remarkable.
Vindman raised approximately $16 million while Nixon raised less than $1 million, according to reporting following the election. Nixon nevertheless defeated him by roughly 12 percentage points.
She now advances to face Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody in the general election.
Did The Rotation cause that upset?
Of course not.
But Nixon's victory illustrates something we talk about constantly: money and traditional political advertising aren't the only ways candidates communicate with voters.
Nixon built a campaign heavily around grassroots organizing and social media rather than conventional television advertising.
Long-form conversations like The Rotation fit naturally into that changing political environment.
Instead of a 30-second commercial telling voters what a consultant thinks they want to hear, candidates get an hour or more to tell people who they actually are.
Read our recap of Angie Nixon's appearance on The Rotation.
Robert People Wins the Democratic Nomination in Florida's 15th Congressional District
Then there's Robert People.
The retired U.S. Army veteran joined The Rotation for an extended conversation about his campaign for Congress in Florida's 15th Congressional District.
People didn't just come on a cannabis podcast and talk about cannabis.
That's part of what makes these conversations valuable.
Candidates who Jump in The Rotation have an opportunity to discuss the economy, healthcare, veterans, housing, civil liberties, education, criminal justice and whatever else is affecting the people they hope to represent.
But they also have to answer a question political media too often ignores:
What are you actually going to do about cannabis?
People went on to win the Democratic nomination in FL-15 and will challenge Republican Rep. Laurel Lee in the general election.
Read our full recap: Robert People Wins Democratic Primary for Florida's 15th Congressional District After Jumping in The Rotation.
Fentrice Driskell Is Headed From The Rotation Toward the Florida Senate
Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell also sat down with The Rotation.
Her conversation included cannabis legislation, criminal justice, patient protections, Florida's legislative process and the political realities surrounding reform.
That matters because cannabis policy doesn't exist in a vacuum.
A politician can tell you that they "support medical marijuana" or "support legalization."
Great.
What does that actually mean?
Will you protect medical cannabis patients from employment discrimination?
Should patients lose access to an organ transplant because they use physician-recommended cannabis?
What happens to people carrying cannabis convictions after legalization?
What does legalization look like for small businesses?
How do we protect consumers?
How do we prevent another legal market from becoming controlled by a handful of politically connected corporations?
Those are the kinds of conversations cannabis voters deserve.
Driskell has now advanced in the race for Florida Senate District 16. Axios Tampa Bay reported following the August 18 primary that Driskell is set to succeed term-limited Sen. Darryl Rouson.
You can revisit our article about Fentrice Driskell's appearance and primary victory.
Ben Braver Is Headed to the General Election
Ben Braver also Jumped in The Rotation.
The Tampa science teacher and community organizer joined us to discuss education, housing, accountability, Florida politics and cannabis reform as part of his campaign for Florida House District 65.
The conversation gave voters something campaign mailers rarely provide: context.
Candidates aren't collections of bullet points.
They're people asking us to trust them with political power.
We want to know why they believe what they believe.
Braver is now moving forward toward the general election.
Read more about Ben Braver's appearance on The Rotation and his campaign.
And Those Aren't the Only Candidates Who Jumped in The Rotation
Winning a primary isn't the only reason these conversations matter.
Candidates including Tony Claude and Luis Salazar have also joined The Rotation to talk directly with Florida's cannabis community.
Claude's conversation covered affordability, environmental protection, education, government power and cannabis reform.
Read our recap of Tony Claude on The Rotation.
Salazar discussed representation, working families, Latino voters, affordability and cannabis reform, including patient protections and the continuing consequences of cannabis prohibition.
Read about Luis Salazar's appearance on The Rotation.
The point isn't that every candidate appearing on our program is going to win.
That's politics.
The point is that candidates are increasingly willing to have substantive conversations with cannabis voters — and we believe that is a very good thing.
Brian Nathan Jumped in The Rotation — Then Flipped Florida Senate District 14
There's another candidate we can't leave out of this conversation — Florida State Sen. Brian Nathan.
Nathan's story is a little different from the candidates who appeared on The Rotation ahead of the August primaries.
When Brian sat down with us, he wasn't campaigning in a traditional primary election. He was running in the special election for Florida Senate District 14, the Hillsborough County seat left vacant when former Sen. Jay Collins became Florida's lieutenant governor.
At the time, Nathan was a first-time candidate: a U.S. Navy veteran, electrician and union leader with IBEW Local 915 who decided to run after years of traveling to Tallahassee to advocate for working people.
And his appearance demonstrated exactly why we created The Rotation.
We didn't spend an hour asking him whether marijuana should be legal and then send him home.
Nathan talked about organized labor, workers' rights, Florida's ballot initiative process, property insurance, local control, government accountability, education, campaign finance and the increasingly difficult economic reality facing working Floridians.
But this is The Rotation, so we also put him on the spot about cannabis.
Nathan told us Florida lawmakers needed to respect the will of voters on cannabis reform and discussed shortcomings in Florida's existing medical marijuana system. The conversation went much deeper into issues such as employment discrimination against medical cannabis patients, parental protections, outdated drug testing, home rule and the ability of local governments to pursue cannabis reforms.
Nathan's own experience as a union leader made the employment issue particularly interesting. He explained that some employers and their clients continue to require drug testing even when workers are legal medical marijuana patients, and he argued that Florida needs to address that problem more comprehensively at the state level.
Then voters got their turn.....
On March 24, Nathan faced Republican former State Rep. Josie Tomkow in the special election.
The result couldn't have been much closer.
Nathan received 40,245 votes to Tomkow's 39,836.
He won Florida Senate District 14 by just 409 votes — 50.26% to 49.74%.
Think about that for a second.
More than 80,000 votes were cast, and the difference between winning and losing a seat in the Florida Senate was 409 people.
If anybody still believes individual constituencies don't matter in elections, Senate District 14 provides a pretty good rebuttal.
Nathan's victory was also politically significant. District 14 had been represented by Republican Jay Collins before Collins was appointed lieutenant governor, and the district stretches across portions of Hillsborough County with both Democratic and more conservative areas. Nathan's victory flipped the seat and sent a first-time candidate to Tallahassee.
He was formally recognized as the newly elected Senator from District 14 when the Florida Senate convened on April 28.
And here's what makes Brian especially relevant to this article:
The story isn't over.
Nathan is now the incumbent State Senator for District 14 and has officially qualified for the 2026 general election.
That means the voters of Senate District 14 are getting another opportunity to decide who represents them.
And Nathan's story might be the clearest illustration in this entire article of why engaging communities directly matters.
When an election can be decided by 409 votes, there really isn't such a thing as an insignificant group of voters.
Cannabis patients matter.
Union members matter.
Veterans matter.
Independent voters matter.
People who don't normally feel represented by either political party matter.
And candidates willing to sit down for a long-form conversation and actually explain themselves have an opportunity to reach those voters in a way another 30-second campaign commercial simply can't.
When Brian Nathan first Jumped in The Rotation, he was asking voters to send him to Tallahassee.
They did.
Now he's asking them to send him back.
And once again, Florida's cannabis community will be paying attention.
Cannabis Voters Are Not a Special Interest. We're Voters.
For decades, politicians treated marijuana policy like a political third rail.
Cannabis consumers were stereotyped.
Patients were ignored.
People arrested for marijuana were treated like criminals instead of constituents.
And politicians frequently assumed they could support prohibition without suffering political consequences.
That world is disappearing.
Cannabis consumers are teachers.
We're veterans.
We're parents.
We're doctors, attorneys, construction workers, hospitality employees and small-business owners.
We're Democrats.
We're Republicans.
We're independents.
Some of us consume cannabis every day.
Some use it occasionally.
Some don't consume cannabis at all but believe the government has no business arresting adults who do.
There isn't one "cannabis voter."
That's precisely the point.
Cannabis policy intersects with healthcare, criminal justice, employment law, veterans' issues, parental rights, housing, banking, taxation, small business, civil liberties and individual freedom.
When politicians talk to the cannabis community, they're not speaking to some tiny subculture.
They're speaking to Florida voters.
Why The Rotation Can Be Valuable to Political Campaigns
There's another side to this conversation that campaign managers should understand.
Appearing on The Rotation gives candidates something increasingly difficult to obtain in modern politics:
time to actually talk.
A television commercial might give you 30 seconds.
A social media advertisement may get someone's attention for five.
A debate might give you 60 or 90 seconds before somebody rings a bell.
On The Rotation, candidates can explain themselves.
They can disagree with us.
They can ask questions.
They can clarify their positions.
They can talk about subjects completely unrelated to cannabis.
And yes, we're going to ask them about cannabis.
That's kind of our thing.
The program also creates something campaigns desperately need: long-form, searchable, shareable content.
The Rotation has been publishing since 2020 and has accumulated hundreds of episodes featuring candidates, advocates, policymakers, physicians and other voices in cannabis policy.
An appearance doesn't disappear when the livestream ends.
It becomes a podcast episode.
It becomes video.
It becomes social content.
It becomes an article.
It becomes something voters can find when they search a candidate's name months later.
In the age of AI-powered search and recommendation engines, substantive long-form conversations can become even more valuable because they create a public record of what a candidate actually said and believed.
Cannabis Policy Deserves Better Than a Yes-or-No Question
We also believe The Rotation provides something traditional candidate questionnaires frequently don't.
Nuance.
Asking someone:
"Do you support marijuana legalization? Yes or no?"
isn't enough anymore.
Legalization is the beginning of a policy conversation, not the end.
What happens to prior convictions?
What happens to medical patients?
Can employers fire people for legally using cannabis away from work?
Can parents lose custody because they are medical cannabis patients?
Can a landlord prohibit legal cannabis use?
What happens to small businesses?
How should cannabis be taxed?
Who gets licenses?
Can adults grow cannabis at home?
How do we regulate intoxicating hemp products?
How do we prevent impaired driving without criminalizing sober cannabis consumers who may test positive days after consumption?
Those questions have consequences.
We want candidates to answer them.
And voters deserve to hear the answers.
We Don't Care What Letter Is Next to Your Name — Come Talk to Us
This part is important.
The Rotation should not belong to one political party.
Cannabis reform isn't inherently Democratic.
It isn't inherently Republican.
Libertarians have spent decades arguing against prohibition. Progressives have approached cannabis through criminal justice and racial disparities. Conservatives can make powerful arguments about limited government, states' rights and individual liberty.
Independents are welcome.
Minor-party candidates are welcome.
Candidates with whom we disagree are welcome.
In fact, disagreement can make for a much more interesting show.
The goal isn't to create an hour-long political commercial.
The goal is conversation.
If You Want the Cannabis Community's Vote, Jump in The Rotation
So congratulations to Angie Nixon.
Congratulations to Robert People.
Congratulations to Fentrice Driskell.
Congratulations to Ben Braver.
And thank you to Tony Claude, Luis Salazar and the other candidates who have been willing to sit down and speak directly with our community.
We wish everyone advancing to the general election good luck.
But we're also sending an invitation to everyone else running for office in Florida:
Come talk to us.
If you're a Republican, come talk to us.
If you're a Democrat, come talk to us.
If you're an independent, come talk to us.
If you think we're wrong about something, come tell us why.
If you believe cannabis prohibition has failed, tell voters what you're going to do about it.
If you're asking Florida's cannabis community for its vote, don't just buy another Facebook ad telling us that you support "common-sense reform."
Sit down.
Turn on the microphones.
Answer the questions.
Have the conversation.
Because cannabis voters are paying attention.
And if the 2026 primary season has reminded us of anything, it's that grassroots voters should never be underestimated.
If you want the cannabis community's vote, come talk to the cannabis community.
Jump in The Rotation.
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