Can you guess who I'm thinking of? He's a candidate in the Lake County sheriff's race who has a real zeal for politics and campaigning. He can't seem to make up his mind which office he wants to run for, hopping from one to the next.

I'm talking, of course, about Mike "the Waiter" White, who is running for the Republican nomination for sheriff this year.

White admits he has no chance of winning the sheriff's job, but he filed anyway to try to advance his agenda of limited government. And when he says limited, he doesn't mean limited in what has become the GOP sense of the word. He's got more of a Libertarian bent.

If he's elected sheriff -- a big if, he admits -- he would immediately announce the department would no longer enforce laws regarding no-victim crimes, including marijuana laws, he said.

White sees this as a way to bring county spending under control.

I've heard estimates of somewhere around 75 to 80 percent of the county's budget goes toward law enforcement, between the Sheriff's Department and the courts and associated support services.

"That leaves nothing left for the arts, parks and other higher callings," White complained.

Wait a minute, I said to him. Isn't marijuana considered a gateway drug?

"It's a gateway drug because it makes you run in the underground environment," he said.

Sell marijuana in a regulated environment, like liquor stores, and the government could control the cycle of production and sale more easily.

Oh, and the government could tax it, too. White suggests $1 per reefer.

"We could get out in front of this and ride it to prosperity and balanced budgets," he said.

"We could rebuild that Cline Avenue Bridge two times over," he said, without having to rely on state funding.

Well, that's certainly an idea you won't hear from most people in the Republican Party.

White has no shortage of opinions there, either.

"The Republican Party has been taken over by religious lunatics," he said. The Tea Party folks, he said, are "nut cases. The radical fringe."

White's practice is to wait until just before the deadline, then to file for a race in which no Republican has filed. He knows he doesn't stand a chance of winning -- or does he?

"I win just by participating," he said. "The public is a winner because when they go to the polls in November, there won't be just one name on the ballot."

"The failure of Lake County politics can be laid at the door of the uneducated, uninformed voters," he said.

On Tuesday, Republican and Democrats have a chance to pick the candidates they feel will be best able to win the general election in November. Will you vote for someone who hops from one race to another?

Editorial Page Editor Doug Ross can be reached at (219) 548-4360 or (219) 933-3357 or Doug.Ross@nwi.com. The opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not necessarily that of The Times.