Sally Duval, a 59-year-old first-time candidate for the Texas House, has just taken what can only be described as a heroic bong rip, vigorously bubbling the water in the glass bong’s bottom chamber and then expertly riding the weed-packed bowl out of its holster as she inhaled deeply. Sitting at her kitchen table, she holds it in her lungs for several seconds while making that clenched, expectant face that pot smokers make—like a cat that’s swallowed a canary—before exhaling a cloud of smoke. It’s a product called Presidential Kush, from the High Hippy Flower Company, purchased at an Austin cannabis store, one of an estimated seven thousand across Texas selling what are essentially legal marijuana products.
“Is this stuff pretty strong?” I ask. Duval is a lifelong daily weed smoker. Presidential Kush, according to the packaging, is a staggering 38.85 percent THCA. Duval coughs and then hoarsely whispers, “It’ll give you a buzz.”
This is my first time, I think, interviewing a high political candidate. But Duval has an unusual campaign. She’s running against Republican Carrie Isaac, who is seeking a second term, in a ruby red district encompassing parts of Comal County (New Braunfels, Canyon Lake) and Hays County (Wimberley, Dripping Springs). Duval, a business consultant, said she decided to run for office as a Democrat after realizing that Texans wouldn’t get a chance to vote on a ballot measure protecting abortion rights because the Republican-led Legislature would never allow it. “And so I got mad,” she said. (Isaac sponsored legislation last year that would make it illegal to create a website on how to get abortion-inducing drugs.) Duval has no campaign manager and no name recognition—she grew up in Texas but spent fifteen years in Europe after marrying a French man in 2006. By her own admission, she has virtually no chance of defeating Isaac.
But in September, Duval cut an attention-grabbing political ad. The video opens with Duval smoking a joint on her back porch, a Hill Country landscape in the background. Duval gestures at her joint and says, “You might already know what’s in this, but do you know who has no idea and no way to test it? Law enforcement. They arrest people every day for marijuana possession, but they don’t have the funding to test if it’s illegal marijuana or a federally legal hemp product. Our laws are confusing and unclear.”
In many social circles, smoking weed is no longer all that transgressive. But there’s still something jarring about a semiretired woman who looks like she’d fit in at a Red Hat Society meetup hitting a bong on camera. And she’s not above playing the thing for giggles. “I’m Sally Duval and I believe it’s high time for change in Texas,” she says, laughing and coughing.
Weed puns are always a hit (haha), but Duval is trying to make a serious point. In recent years, Texas has allowed an unregulated marijuana market to flourish, one that blurs the line between legal hemp and illegal pot. State law prohibits the sale of recreational cannabis with levels of THC exceeding .3 percent. Less than that is considered hemp. But retailers have found workarounds: They sell products with potent amounts of THCA, which turns into regular THC when burned. And as my colleague Russell Gold found recently, many retailers are unwittingly selling cannabis products with extremely high levels of THC, well beyond the legal limit. Testing is virtually nonexistent, and state oversight is minimal.
As if to underscore the Wild West nature of the Texas weed market, on my way to Duval’s house, I passed a Toke Truck parked outside a bar in one of Austin’s entertainment districts. According to the company’s website, the Toke Truck provides 24/7 delivery in central Austin of a variety of products, including prerolled joints and THCA-infused vape pens in sativa and indica varieties. Duval has her own anecdote: She recently purchased weed from a vending machine. Later, upon perusing her campaign finance statement, I found an expenditure of $104.50 at a 24-hour kiosk in San Marcos called Green Box. “Products needed for researching issue addressed in an advertisement,” the report states. Surely this is the first time a political candidate has purchased marijuana with campaign funds.
Texas should instead formally legalize marijuana and create a sensible system of licensing and regulation, Duval says. She worries that the Legislature will instead double down on prohibition. “Many small businesses in the state are selling this stuff to very happy customers. Lots of capitalism going on. People making money on a product people want to buy—why does the state have a problem with that?”
Back in her sunlit kitchen, Duval readily confesses that the video was “a stunt”—and a risky one. “Nobody wants to be known for being associated with something that’s illegal,” she said. “Well, I’m the big exception.” The marijuana she smoked in the video, she confesses, was from her pot stash, not legal store-bought stuff, which she’s only been trying in the last couple months. She made sure to remove any weed from her house just in case law enforcement came around.
The idea came from a political consultant named Cat Kaminsky, who was interested in becoming Duval’s campaign manager. She modeled the video after a viral 2022 campaign ad from U.S. Senate candidate Gary Chambers, of Louisiana, who smoked a blunt on-screen while bringing awareness to racial disparities in marijuana arrests. Provocative political ads are nothing new, but in the internet age, viral videos, memes, and stunts have become a way for underdog candidates to build name recognition, fundraise, and earn media attention. It’s a microcosm of a larger trend—online virality has become a means to accumulate political power. Republicans with a penchant for trolling know this better than anyone. Democrats seem to be catching on, if Jasmine Crockett’s SNL-lampooned “beat back” of Marjorie Taylor Greene is any indication. “It was a stunt to make money and get my name out there,” Duval said. “It worked in getting my name out there. It just didn’t work as a money thing. I probably could have milked it for a lot more.” She says strangers have recognized her in public, including a man at a convenience store in New Braunfels. “He’s like, ‘My wife loves you.’ And we took a selfie.”
It also seems to have been cathartic for Duval. She recalls Brett Kavanaugh defiantly proclaiming that he liked beer during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. “You know what? I like pot,” Duval says. “I do. And you know I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”
At this point, we had been talking for an hour, so I figured it was a good time to ask whether we could try—and my editor said I must emphasize this—her legal cannabis product. I clumsily handled the bong like a freshman college kid at a dorm party. Decision time. I inhaled.
As the weed kicks in, I find myself distracted by the cardinals flocking to the bird feeder outside. My eyes drift to a sign in the kitchen: “Why hello sweet cheeks, have a seat.” I’m laughing a bit too much. Duval offers me a bottle of water. I accept. Soon, she is talking about the difficulties of running a shoestring campaign. She has done zero volunteer coordination. She still needs to buy digital ads, and she doesn’t have a single radio spot or TV ad. Talking to me, she can’t remember the name of a podcast that invited her on, and she’s relying on a yellow legal pad for her talking points. “I took one hit and I’ve got a serious buzz,” she confesses. Perhaps neither one of us was prepared for how strong this unregulated commercial cannabis could be.
I ask her if she worries about being pigeonholed as the “pot lady.” After all, she has plenty of intelligent things to say about abortion rights, Republican attacks on public education (the Legislature, she says, is intentionally starving schools), and water scarcity problems in the Hill Country (she would take steps toward repealing the rule of capture), but her introduction to voters was literally in a cloud of smoke. “Would it be so bad to have someone who is familiar with the product being in the discussion?” She pauses. “What was the question?”
