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Romney To Pot-Smoking Drifters: Get Off My Beach!
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 7, 2012
Modified Jun 7, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 7, 2012
Modified Jun 7, 2012
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Mitt Romney knows what beaches are for: a stiff club soda at sunset, friendly games of Name That Sand (ooh, Arkose!), and occasionally getting your shins wet (don't forget the water shoes!). Romney did not buy his $14 million beachfront La Jolla home so he could smell noxious reefers blowing from some drug-addled drifter. The Times visited his La Jolla neighborhood and found a man who "recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop."
But that wasn't the only time Romney has complained about the evil, legal substance befouling his family's nostrils. Michael Barbaro, who must have valiantly stifled groans of reportorial ecstasy writing these quotes down, reports:
The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that “your neighbors have complained,” Mr. Quint recalled. “He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys.”
Maybe his Sheriff Romney stems from the fact that the candidate used to impersonate law enforcement as a funny prank. The National Memo found a classmate of Romney's at Stanford that he used to show off a Michigan State Trooper's uniform.
Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”
In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada.
Last month we also learned that Romney used a police siren and a similar disguise to pull over his friends (just the gals though—the fellas were in on it! Haha! Girls!) and trick them into thinking they were in trouble. What good, harmless, felonious, fun!
Smoking weed though, that's bad.
Tagged
beaches
felonies
la jolla
marijuana
mitt romney
rich people
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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