Paul Grant: Difference between revisions

He next moved to Colorado where he ran as an LP candidate for office several times in the early 1980s, twice for Congress and once for Governor of Colorado.  All of his campaigns were very active campaigns where he took every opportunity to speak for libertarian principles.  He ran radio ads, bought billboard ads, interviewed all over his district and the state, and accepted every invitation to speak as a candidate.

Also in the early 1980s, Paul and [[Brian Erickson]] formed a free market organization, [[Coloradans for Free Enterprise]] (CFE), to bring creative speakers to Colorado to meet with those interested in discussing and learning how to apply free market improvements to government-impeded economic activities. In addition to bringing interesting speakers to Denver-area audiences, CFE in 1984 organized a statewide citizen initiative campaign to free Colorado's transportation industry from control by the Public Utility Commission. Although they were unsuccessful in placing their initiative on the ballot, they were successful in challenging Colorado's law which made it a felony to pay petition circulators.  They took their challenge all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where they won a unanimous (9-0) decision [Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414 (1988)], in which the Supreme Court held that petition advocacy was core political speech protected by the First Amendment and that the law prohibiting paid petitioning penalized political speech and, therefore, violated the First Amendment.  This ruling has helped inspire and empower the citizen initiative movement in those states which allow the initiative process, and led to such paid petition citizen initiative successes as legalized marijuana in Washington and Colorado, legalized gambling in Colorado, and many others.