The Dry Party

By Joel Warner, Boulder Weekly. Posted October 29, 2004.

Earl Dodge, 71, has never tasted alcohol. Not a gulp of beer. Not a sip of wine. Not a swig of whiskey or a sniff of brandy. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know a thing or two about alcohol's vile aftertaste.

"I've never had cancer either, but I know it's something bad," says Dodge.

Growing up in a teetotalling Baptist family in Malden, Mass., Dodge read grisly stories in the paper about drunkards killing their best friends. He'd walk by taverns, and the smell from inside would just about knock him over.

But the truth about alcohol came when a teenage Dodge began helping out at a rescue mission in Boston. He assumed the alcoholics he'd be helping would be the stereotypical bums off the street. Instead, he stared into the rheumy eyes of priests, lawyers and other high-ranking members of society, all laid low by the evils of the demon drink.

Five decades later, Dodge, aka "Mr. Prohibition," is waging practically a one-man crusade against liquid licentiousness, one of the last vestiges of a once-mighty reform movement that (at least officially) dried up the nation's beer taps for 13 years.

Out of his unlikely home base of Lakewood, Colo., a state where microbreweries dot the hills, the capitol's mayor owns seven bars and the golden boy of one of the world's biggest beer companies is running for one of the highest posts in the land, Dodge is stumping for president of the United States – for the sixth time – on the Prohibition Party ticket.

While his campaign might lack the greenbacks and glitzy ads of the two major presidential candidates, Dodge and the 2004 Prohibition Party rank with the big leagues with its share of scandalous internal controversies and colorful characters. And despite the minor roadblock of the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition, Dodge and his supporters say their fight is far from over, and that, sooner or later, Alabama Slammers, Long Island Iced Teas, Manhattans, Irish Car Bombs, Tequila Sunrises, Three Wise Men and all the rest will be a thing of the past.

The Saloon Must Go

Dodge's brown brick home in Lakewood is the official Prohibition Party campaign headquarters, but you wouldn't know it from outside. There are no yard signs out front promoting the party's 2004 ticket (Dodge for president and Howard Lydick for vice president), just a banner telling passersby to support our troops. If he's home, Dodge will most likely show you into the green-carpeted den and offer you tea or coffee – though no G-and-T's, thank you very much.

Once settled in, get ready for a long afternoon. After all, as Dodge says with a characteristic amiability, "My mother told me as a boy that I was vaccinated with a telegraph needle, so I tend to go on."

It's here, among over-stuffed bookshelves, old file cabinets, several computers and a small shrine to Calvin Coolidge, that Dodge runs the Prohibition Party. Forced to drop out of school in 10th grade after his father passed away, Dodge's career has run the gamut from insurance salesman to cemetery-plot hawker. But since 1957, give or take a year or three, his main occupation has been acting as either the national chairman or executive secretary of the Prohibition Party. Since the 1980s, he's voluntarily run the party without salary.

Dodge's charity is possible thanks to his side business – collecting and selling political buttons and other political memorabilia at trade shows and on the Internet.

"Probably we have the largest collection in the country today," says Dodge of his wares, ranging from Socialist Party pins to a Franklin D. Roosevelt thermometer.

Somehow Dodge also finds time to run the 800-member Dodge Family Association, which he operates out of another room down the hall.

The current state of the Prohibition Party is less than imposing. In 2000, Dodge's presidential campaign garnered only 208 votes, down from Dodge's personal high of 14,000 votes during his first campaign and the worst showing by the party in nearly 130 years. The party's convention last year, where Dodge was nominated for president, totaled nine people, two of whom were Dodge's daughters. Colorado is the only state left that lists the Prohibition Party on its ballot.

It's sometimes hard to imagine that the Prohibition Party, the nation's oldest third party, was once a force to be reckoned with. The party was formed in 1869 by those concerned that Democrats and Republicans were ignoring moral issues – most notably alcohol, which churches had been labeling a social ill for decades.

With a two-humped pachyderm as mascot and the ax-wielding temperance zealot Carry A. Nation as its most notable representative, the Prohibitionist Party would go on to win more than 100,000 votes in each election from 1884 to 1920. There were Prohibitionist sheriffs and mayors, congress members and governors. And then came the party's crowning achievement in 1920: the 18th Amendment, which launched Prohibition.

Unfortunately for the Prohibition Party and other temperance folks, the Noble Experiment failed – at least according to most sources today. After 13 years of alleged rum running, bootlegging, drive-by shootings and other cinematic lawlessness, the 21st Amendment killed Prohibition – and with it the Prohibition Party. The last party candidate to be elected to office was in 1959.

Joel Warner is managing editor of Boulder Weekly.

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