Dodge says he has long since stopped collecting a salary as party chairman -- which never topped $175 a week, anyway. The party still pays his medical insurance, which runs about $8,000 annually, but over the past fifteen years, he points out, he and his wife have probably contributed that much each year to the cause.
The party's operations are run on a shoestring, according to Dodge, who estimates annual expenditures at about $40,000 a year. The party no longer files campaign expense reports with the Federal Election Commission, because it spends less than $5,000 per campaign. (In April, an individual known only as "Major Tom" did file a quarterly report with the FEC for a Denver party called the 21st Century Prohibition Party -- Rocky Mountain High. Dodge says it was a prank.) Any monies, including about $5,000 or so sent annually from a Pennsylvania trust established the year Prohibition disappeared, fund routine business expenses, education outreach and official travel, he says.
Mark Poutenis
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Dodge is clearly annoyed at questions about the sale of the party's condominium a few years ago ("I've answered that many times, and they keep asking about it"), explaining that any earnings were used to retire Prohibition Party debts and to bankroll party causes, including the Partisan Prohibition Historical Society. Hedges, one of those who raised concerns about the sale, was ousted from the society two years ago for various offenses, Dodge says, including "interfering" with the society's bank account. (Hedges says he was trying to determine who had the power to write checks.)
All of the infighting hasn't dampened Dodge's Prohibition fervor. After all, multiple bypass surgery weeks before the last convention didn't stop him, and he says he won't step back from plans to hold a convention next year in Denver, where party regulars will gear up for the 2004 election. Dodge is optimistic that the party will be back on the ballot in Tennessee and Florida, states where it's easy for third parties to file, as well as Colorado. And while votes for the party's ticket will undoubtedly fall short of the high-water mark of 1892, they could return to the quadruple-digit count of 1996, when Dodge persuaded 1,300 voters to swallow Prohibition's platform.
"But vote totals aren't the only measure of success," he says, citing his party's role in pushing measures such as teaching alcohol abstinence in Colorado public schools. "I tell people the only way I'll ever get to the White House is in a tour. But sometimes you can be what the Bible says -- the salt of the earth -- and do what you believe in."
And so Dodge is getting ready to saddle up for the sixth time as the camel party's candidate of choice.
"Unless someone else really good comes along," he says, "I guess I'm it."
