Matt Flynn has been part of Democratic politics in Wisconsin for 40 years. He's been a party insider. An adviser. A contender.

But in his four runs for public office, Flynn has never won.

It's left Flynn — a Navy veteran, a former state Democratic Party chair, and a longtime attorney for a major Milwaukee firm — introducing himself to many voters for the first time.

One way he's done it is by becoming the unlikely face of the marijuana legalization movement in the 2018 governor's race.

Flynn came out early in favor of legalizing marijuana, and months later he took it a step further, promising to pardon anyone in Wisconsin's prisons serving time for nonviolent marijuana offenses.

The positions made him a welcome guest recently at Herb RX, a new store in Sun Prairie that sells products from the hemp-derived substance cannabidiol, or CBD.

"I'm delighted you're doing this," Flynn told Herb RX owner Jacob Coates during a recent tour. "Maybe you'll be our first seller of marijuana — legally."

"That would be the best," Coates responded. "Awesome."

Flynn said he's convinced bringing a criminal substance out into the open will make people safer and let police focus on more serious crimes.

"My goal would be a very large reduction in the prison population and the jail population," Flynn said.

Flynn said pushing legalization wouldn't have been possible when he got his start in politics, and with other Democrats now calling for legalization, the issue alone may not put him over the top in a 10-candidate primary.

Flynn's most outspoken critics want people to get to know him by looking at his work defending the Milwaukee Archdiocese against victims of priest sexual abuse, saying it disqualifies him for governor.

Flynn disputes that. He's been through all of this before. And he says this could be his year.