ANOTHER CANDIDATE FOR US PRESIDENT

SUMMERTOWN, Tenn.--Korean War veteran. Hippie commune founder. Published
author. Drug convict. Stephen Gaskin has accomplished much in his 65 years,
but there's still one more goal: U.S. president.

Like other political renegades, Gaskin knows his chances are slim against
the big party candidates, but the election gives him an opportunity to voice
his message for peace, social consciousness and the legalization of
marijuana.

The self-described "hippie priest and free-lance rabble-rouser" says that as
a Green Party candidate, he offers an alternative to the other guy from
Tennessee -likely Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore -and Gore's
rival Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Gaskin's got competition within the Green Party from consumer advocate Ralph
Nader, the party's perennial candidate, and former Dead Kennedys singer
Jello Biafra. The Greens select their candidates at a nominating convention
June 24/25 in Denver.

If he loses the nomination, Gaskin says he will just take his $400 war chest
and start the Outlaw Party -a group with the same beliefs as the Green Party
but with a focus on legalizing marijuana.

"If you want to throw some seeds in your garden and grow some pot and smoke
it yourself, I don't think it's anybody else's business. And I don't think
that the Constitution thinks that it's anybody else's business," Gaskin
says.

This is not someone who fears the question: Did you inhale?

"I didn't exhale," he says.

Gaskin, with his shoulder-length gray braids and tie-dyed T-shirts,
envisions a country where affluence isn't viewed as a right but a privilege
that is shared with the less fortunate.

Eliminating corporate donations and soft money to political campaigns will
restore integrity to political office, and the government should foot the
bill for the nation's health care and educate its people through junior
college, he says.

Where would the money come from?

"For a couple of B/2 bombers you could pay for all the education in the
United States," he says.

Gaskin was a writing instructor at San Francisco State College -now San
Francisco State University -following a two-year combat stint in Korea that
ended in 1954.

Social consciousness is the reason Gaskin withdrew from society and founded
his own community 58 miles southwest of Nashville in the rolling hills of
Middle Tennessee.

His commune -a 1,000 -acre spot in Summertown called The Farm -prospered at
first but soon fell $800,000 into debt and in 1983 its leaders were forced
to start charging dues. Today, some 250 people live there and pay about $100
monthly.

Gaskin went to prison in 1974 for marijuana possession. He served one year
of a three-year sentence and says he learned that "the difference between
who went to jail and who didn't ... was politics."

He later helped win voting rights for felons convicted in Tennessee before
1981 when he discovered that he had lost his own voting rights and appealed
to the Tennessee Supreme Court. The court struck down a 1981 law that, in
tandem with another law, denied voting rights to all felons rather than
those of specific crimes.

Gaskin has spent $800 traveling to speaking engagements and Green Party
meetings. He already is on the November ballot in a few states, including
New York and New Mexico.

When not on the campaign trail, Gaskin works on his vintage Volvos, teaches
at the commune's school and writes. He already has published 10 books on
politics and spirituality.

Gaskin's wife, Ina May, says she is proud of her husband's campaign, win or
lose.

"He shows that a little guy still can have a voice," she says. "That's one
of the sad things about the country today -so many people don't have a
voice."