A campaign event at a Rhode Island school got weird on Tuesday, when a State Attorney General candidate started yelling at an opponent about racial slurs.
Compassion Party candidate Alan Gordon apparently didn’t like how Democrat Peter Neronha was talking about marijuana. More specifically, he didn’t like that he was saying the word “marijuana” at all, claiming that the word is racially charged. To illustrate point, he compared it to the most notorious of slurs.
“That’s like saying n-i-g-g-e-r,” Gordon yelled, with the North Kingstown High School audience cheering him on. He went on to say it’s “a curse to my people,” and yelled, “You will not say it in this school again, today or in lessons. Knock it off!!” He then stormed off the stage, declaring, “I’m done!”
Apparently this was known to be a touchy subject for Gordon. According to TMZ, Gordon was assured before the event that his opponent wouldn’t use that word, but then Neronha, who is of Portuguese descent, said it anyway.
According to the Providence Journal, Gordon has a reputation of being quite the cannabis enthusiast. He shares a home with Compassion Party gubernatorial candidate Anne Armstrong, and they were both arrested earlier this month for allegedly having 48 pounds of it in their home. According to the newspaper, Gordon and Armstrong run The Healing Church, a Christian group that uses marijuana weed for spiritual purposes. They allegedly had a garden where they grew it themselves.
In an August campaign video, Gordon appeared to be standing in front of marijuana plants, saying he was on “the other side of the border, where the tree of life is lawful.”
[Image via YouTube screengrab]
