Alex Constantine - June 21, 2015
Political "hit man" Roger Stone — Richard Nixon's "dirty trickster," Scott Rothstein's former political czar, and Tricky Dick face tattoo owner — might be looking to throw his hat in the ring for Marco Rubio's vacated U.S. Senate seat.
Stone, a Libertarian, has announced he is forming an exploratory committee to run for Rubio's seat as the senator makes his own run for the White House in 2016.
Stone had previously made a run at the governor's mansion but eventually pulled out of the race, citing that running in an intraparty race would drain resources to the candidate who would eventually with the general election. New Times reported in 2013 that Stone was planning to run for governor on a platform that legalized weed and same-sex marriage.
Adrian Wyllie became the eventual Libertarian candidate and ran on the same platform. Stone backed out and endorsed Wyllie.
But now Stone is looking to get back into the thick of it and believes he has the backers to get it done, and he's looking to get back on the legalizing-marijuana bandwagon.
Stone says he will run on a platform of reclassifying marijuana, and legalizing it, as part of ending "the failed expensive war on drugs."
He also says he will oppose any boots on the ground in the Middle East initiative the government would come up with.
"I am not an isolationist, but I am a noninterventionist." Stone said in a statement Wednesday.
Stone also says that he will back the repeal of the National Defense Authorization Act and Patriot Act.
"I will outline my own odyssey from being a Goldwater Republican and former Young Republican National chairman and aide to two presidents to being a disgruntled Republican to being a proud member of the LP," he said, spelling out a brief résumé of his various political deeds throughout the years.
"I also am proud of my role as a senior adviser to Gov. Gary Johnson in our effort to get on the ballot in 48 states and our legal efforts to get the LP nominee into the presidential debates."
In his announcement, Stone also managed to drop a couple of blurbs for books he's written.
Stone has written a book in which he purports that Lyndon Johnson was behind a conspiracy that had JFK assassinated. In the book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, Stone put forth an Oliver Stone-like theory claiming that "a conspiracy funded by Texas Oil and assisted by elements of the CIA and the Mob" was behind Kennedy's assassination.
In another book, Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall, and Untold Truth About the President, Watergate, and the Pardon, he chronicled his time working under President Nixon.
His latest tomes, he says, will be exposés on the Clintons and the Bushes. The Clinton book is scheduled to be released September 1, Stone says.
In his statement, Stone managed to tangle up possible opponents, Republican Ron Desantis and Democrat Patrick Murphy, as Clinton and Bush-like in their representations of the establishment.
"The Clintons and Bushes and their parties represent the exact same pro-war, pro-debt, pro-spending, pro-spying, big government policies," Stone says. "If the Republican nominee is Ron Desantis and the Democratic nominee is Patrick Murphy, this will also be true of them. I would love to debate them. In truth they are identical."