It's no wonder Papa is so enthusiastic -- Golisano's campaign is offering a critique of the prison-industrial complex that wouldn't be out of place in the pages of Z Magazine. "Pataki has been talking about [Rockefeller reform] for two years and has never done it," says Stone. "Obviously he couldn't swing the right wing of his own party in the state Senate. All of these prisons that Mario Cuomo built upstate are in the districts of Republican state senators who have prison guards as constituents. It's a patronage issue for a lot of senators -- let's keep black and Puerto Rican people locked up because it keeps jobs for our district."

This newfound zeal for drug-law reform isn't just providing the Mothers with more exposure than they'd ever dreamed of; it's giving Golisano a big bounce. Suddenly, he's a long-shot candidate instead of an impossibility. According to an Oct. 17 SurveyUSA poll, Golisano's support was at 22 percent -- his highest ever. That's still much less than Pataki's 46 percent, but it's closing rapidly on McCall's 29 percent. And Stone is quick to point out that his candidate is polling a couple of points higher than Jesse Ventura was a few weeks before he won the Minnesota governorship.

"Pataki's got no forward momentum," Stone says. "There's only one way for him and that's down."

But Golisano seems to be pulling votes away from both Pataki and McCall. "McCall's voters are looser," says Stone. "They're clearly falling off because of his own lack of resources. But to the extent that Pataki was winning any Latin, black or Democratic votes, and he was, we're also starting to pick up some of those." Since Golisano started his anti-Rockefeller campaign two weeks ago, his Hispanic support has shot from 6 percent to 35 percent, according to the SurveyUSA poll. Neither Pataki's nor McCall's campaign returned calls for comment.

Jamin Raskin, an American University law professor who represented both Ross Perot and Ralph Nader in their legal challenges in trying to join the presidential debates, believes Golisano's got a real shot. "It's definitely within the realm of possibility," he says. "Golisano has the money to spend to get his message out. There's a lot of fluidity in public opinion these days. All of the studies show growing receptivity to candidates outside the two-party system."

Raskin believes there's a "coming libertarian upsurge in American politics," something that's reflected in widespread disenchantment with the war on drugs. "For people who step outside the two-party system, there are enormous political gains to be won by challenging drug war orthodoxy," he says.

Even if Golisano loses -- and the likelihood still is that he will -- he'll have done much to prove that taking on the drug laws can be a winning issue. "In a certain sense, it's like Nixon going to China," says Stone. "The most conservative candidate in the race just came out and said these laws are ridiculous, ineffective, unfair and expensive. At this point, even if Tom Golisano does not get elected, [his campaign] will provide the impetus to change these laws. It gives cover to a lot of others."

Raskin points out the parallels with Perot. "Looking back to Perot's '92 race, he pushed the budget deficit as a central issue, and though he lost, reduction of the budget deficit became a central plank of Clinton's first term as he worked to win over independent-minded Perot voters."

"If Golisano loses, if nothing else he has injected the drug issue into public discourse in a very dramatic way," Raskin continues. "It's definitely going to have its impact on public policy. It might take two years or five years, but we are definitely going to see it."

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