Wanted: Alabama Democrats

Ex Cineribus Non Resurgit - Parker Griffith Tries Again in Alabama’s Fifth District

2012-01-17T06:01:00.020-06:00

Friday the 13th has long been noted for scary and unusual happenings. I am not sure how scary they all were, but several eleventh-hour filings (on Friday the 13th) to run in this March’s primaries were certainly surprises. I have already noted some of those in the Sixth Congressional District GOP primary. In this post, I want to gaze north to the Tennessee Valley at the Alabama Fifth District.

Two years ago, party switcher Parker Griffith lost the Republican primary in this district to perennial candidate, then-Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks, by a resounding 50.8%-33.4% margin, with Herman Cain wannabe Les Phillip getting 15.8%. As I have noted frequently happens to party switchers.

With that kind of walloping, one would have presumed Dr. Griffith would have headed off to Florida, or at least to K Street, and stayed there. But on Friday, he caught everyone off guard by filing to run for his former seat in the GOP primary. Against the same incumbent who beat him by 17.4% less than two years ago.

I am not sure what the overall statistics are for defeated members of Congress attempting to regain their seats, but at least one early scholar of the scenario noted that, “One would tend to assume that a candidate, defeated for Congress in a regular election, would under ordinary circumstances be subject to similar results in running against the same opponent two years later,” and found that the data bore out his supposition.

The specific facts on the ground here do not indicate that we should expect Griffith to come any closer in this primary than he did in the 2010 round. Of course, Brooks has had the last year to work the GOP rubber chicken circuit as an incumbent Congressman. At least in Madison County, he has been known as a Republican activist for nearly 30 years, a fact which helped him defeat Griffith in 2010.

Geography also works against Griffith. In the 2011 GOP-run reapportionment, the Fifth District was stripped of both predominantly Democratic Colbert County, and parts of Lawrence, in an effort to protect Brooks from a Democratic challenge this year. In the 2010 primary, Colbert gave Griffith a 1,947-673 margin over Brooks. Griffith’s 66.5% in Colbert was his best showing in any county in the district. The removal of Colbert was compensated by some population gain in Madison County, and by the addition of that part of Morgan County not previously in the district. In the part of Morgan County that was in the Fifth in 2010, Brooks beat Griffith by a 48.2%-36.6% margin. Because the overall geographic pattern was that Brooks did better in the central part of the district, it’s probably safe to presume the newly-added part of Morgan County would have voted in a similar fashion - and will this time.

Griffith is a retired physician, and has substantial business interests. He has the ability to self-finance to a fair extent, if he’s willing to write the large checks. He reported giving his own campaign $180,000.00, and personally guaranteeing loans to his campaign of an additional $250,000.00, in the 2010 primary. He’s going to need to write himself a much larger check than that this time. His current campaign reports the princely sum of $316.00 cash on hand. No, I didn’t mess up the decimal point. In 2010, Griffith’s pre-primary report showed total contributions of $2,856,969.83, and would need to spend a very large fraction of that this time to challenge an incumbent. But that total was raised not only by an incumbent Congressman, but an incumbent who was aided by a major fundraising visit from now-Speaker John Boehner. I am not looking for either that visit, or that total from contributors, to happen again. Brooks, by comparison, reported $339,965.76 cash on hand at the end of the third quarter in 2011, and presumably was dialing for dollars in the fourth quarter, and is even more diligently doing so now.

Unlike the ethically-challenged Spencer Bachus in the Sixth District, Brooks has done nothing in his half-term in the House that would hurt him politically - at least not in a Republican primary. True, he stated that “I will do anything short of shooting” illegal immigrants; until HB-56 passed, that was Alabama’s best-noted echo of Bull Connor in 2011. He also was forced to withdraw from the record, after a point of order was made, his remark referring to “socialist” Democratic members of Congress. Brooks’s political style has always consisted of sloganeering and bomb throwing. While these remarks are embarrassing to Alabama, are definitely counterproductive to business recruitment, and certainly don’t accumulate Huntsville any brownie points for future budget fights over Redstone Arsenal operations, they are the exact sort of thing the dim lights, bigoted souls, and fossilized minds of the Republican primary electorate love to hear. Don’t look for them to create any problems for Brooks in the primary.

A small corrective is needed for the media-anointed “experts” who have tried to talk up Griffith’s chances a notch, on the rationale that he will not be subjected to the imaginary tidal wave of angry Democrats who supposedly crossed over to vote for Brooks in 2010. While someone may have anecdotal evidence of a few incensed individuals who did so, it simply didn’t happen in statistically significant numbers. There was a quite active Democratic primary that day throughout the district for both the gubernatorial nomination, and the Congressional nomination to oppose Brooks. Most counties in the district also had local Democratic primaries for courthouse offices. None of these Democratic primaries were noted for depressed turnout. As a final nail in this idea’s coffin, Griffith actually did his best in the three most Democratic counties in the district in the 2010 primary; Lauderdale (60.9%), Colbert (66.5%) and Jackson (55.9%).

In my previous post on the Sixth District, I noted that the Democratic Party would benefit from the coming knife fight in the GOP primary in that district. This race promises to add to that effect in the northernmost counties of Alabama. These two guys really, really don’t like each other, and both will probably have enough money to go negative. Whatever remote chance Griffith has depends on it. How Griffith can effectively go negative is an interesting question. You can’t outflank Brooks on the right. Griffith’s best strategy will be to argue that you can be firmly conservative without rendering yourself an ineffective member of Congress by keeping your flamethrower on the highest setting all the time. This line of attack will hurt not only Brooks, but also other Tea Party pods in the Huntsville/Decatur and Florence media markets. Griffith, for his part, remains popular with a certain part of Huntsville’s elite Twickenham community, normally a reliable GOP bloc. Attacking him may cost Brooks some support there.

Among other early Christian writers, Saint Isidore of Seville wrote of the mythical Phoenix in his Etymologiarum sive Originum, that “de cineribus suis resurgit.” (L. XII, 22). Many of these writers likened the Phoenix, rising from its own ashes, to the resurrected Christ. While Griffith definitely crashed and burned in 2010, don’t look for him to rise from his own ashes this year. Who knows, maybe the good Doctor’s expectations will be reasonable enough this time, that he can make it to his own election watch party to deliver a concession speech.

The Sixth (District) Sense (UPDATED January 14)

2012-01-13T06:01:00.031-06:00

We are now a fortnight into the new year. LSU football coach Les Miles has demonstrated that he is incapable of adjusting a defense, or of giving an experienced quarterback a series or two when the starter is ineffective - both of which are gratifying to hundreds of thousands of Alabama football fans.

In all the hoopla about the BCS game, most Alabamians have failed to notice that today is the filing deadline for the 2012 primaries. That’s right, if you’re going to run for anything from President to Chief Justice to Constable, Friday the 13th is your filing deadline. This decision deadline was imposed when the Legislature decided that the state didn’t have the funds to hold a Presidential primary during the early period in most states, and a regular primary in June (with July runoffs). So, in their infinite wisdom, they cut short everyone’s water-testing period, and doomed scores of unopposed nominees in both parties to a wait of most of the year between the decision deadline and Election Day.

That early filing deadline brings us to the Republican nominating contest in the Sixth Congressional District. As of Thursday morning, January 12, there is a contested GOP primary between incumbent Spencer Bachus, State Senator Scott Beason of Gardendale, and Blount County Probate Judge David Standridge.

Be still, my Democratic heart.

This is not a Democratic-trending district - more about that in due course - but the impending collision is not only going to be fun to watch; it has the potential to benefit the statewide Democratic Party in the long run.

Of course, Beason is probably best known as the sponsor of Alabama’s notorious apartheid law, HB 56. He has also gained fame as the state legislator who has made enemies in both parties by wearing an FBI wire while talking to fellow legislators about gaming legislation. In the course of that adventure, he managed to refer to the black residents of Greene County as “aborigines,” while knowing he was being recorded. Bright fellow, Beason. The Republican Senate caucus stripped Beason of his leadership position as chair of the Rules Committee as a result of that revelation. Beason has also been noted for single-handedly vetoing a bipartisan deal among Jefferson County legislators to enable the County to avoid massive layoffs and curtailments of vital public services. For the latter accomplishment, he has been soundly criticized by Jefferson Republican Sheriff Mike Hale, who has been forced to drastically reduce patrols by Beason’s acts.

A third candidate jumped into the GOP primary this Thursday in the form of Blount County Probate Judge David Standridge. There had been scattered rumors that Standridge’s name was being polled in the district, but his filing caught most of the media, and other observers, by surprise.

Normally, a fool of Beason’s caliber, and a rural courthouse officeholder, wouldn’t be a big concern for a ten-term incumbent Congressman. But we are not living in normal times. Beason is the darling of all the zero-tax, zero-brown-people, zero-compassion knuckle-dragging Neandertals of the Tea Party movement. How far that tsunami of excrement has receded since 2010 remains to be seen, but its impact was strongly felt in GOP primaries in Alabama that year. Several incumbent Republican legislators lost their seats to even more extreme Teabaggers, and the Tea Party was widely credited with Mo Brooks’s overwhelming defeat of party switching Congressman Parker Griffith in the 5th District. Even on fundamentals, Bachus might have a little room for concern.

Perhaps more significant, Bachus has a recent weakness - he’s been tainted by scandal. Bachus has been one of the more recent victims of the adage that “you know it’s going to be a bad day when you get to your office, and 60 Minutes is there to talk to you.” The news program kicked over an anthill last November when it featured the hapless Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Bachus, it seems, made some profitable stock trades immediately after a confidential briefing to his Committee by officials from the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. This is just the sort of thing that feeds into the general dislike of Congress that every poll with a pulse has been reporting for the last year.

Standridge’s weakness is obvious: he is not known throughout the district, and will not have the name and issue-stance recognition outside Blount County that Beason and Bachus enjoy. On the other hand, as part of the 4th Congressional District in 2008, Blount County cast 23,602 votes in the Congressional race, 19,407 of them for Republican Robert Aderholt. That represents a lot of Republican primary voters who have no history of voting for Bachus, or having been personally treated by his campaigns. (They will have seen his broadcast advertising, to the limited extent he has done it, as Blount is in the Birmingham media market.) That could provide Standridge with a solid base, provided he can build on it with a respectable showing in other parts of the district. Harder to gauge is the impact of the fact that much of Blount County is also in Beason’s Senate district. The addition of the Blount portion of the district replaces large parts of Tuscaloosa and St. Clair Counties, which had previously been part of the district, depriving Bachus of a significant number of voters to whom he is the familiar incumbent.

Against these weaknesses, Bachus is reasonably well financed. In the most recent reporting period, through September 2011, Bachus had $944,401.00 cash on hand and no debts. A key point to watch will be his fourth quarter/year end report, which will reflect his ability to raise money as rumors of a Beason challenge grew. As the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, he should be able to raise additional cash in a big hurry, though it will be awhile before additional reports are due. Bachus also has the obvious advantage of incumbency and name recognition. He has been in the Congress for 20 years now, and represented a large chunk of this district in the Legislature for a decade before that. An Alabama member of Congress of Bachus’s seniority hasn’t been defeated in an election since the 1964 Goldwater sweep. Since 1964, only the 1980 Republican primary defeat of moderate Congressman John H. Buchanan by religious fundamentalist Albert Lee Smith approximates such a loss by a senior member. And the Buchanan loss has to be a troubling precedent for Bachus to contemplate.

So how does the race handicap at this point? That’s hard to say. Country club, party hack, and courthouse Republicans are apt to stand pat with Bachus. The business community is beginning to realize that the economic costs of 1960’s segregation are being resurrected in the form of Beason’s 2010’s anti-immigrant racism, and are apt to oppose him. Beason is obviously the darling of the racist, religious, and no-government right. His state senate district is fully nested within the Congressional district, giving him a treatment history of over 12 years in the Legislature with the voters in his district. Beason will not be able to match Bachus’s money, but he has shown himself to be adept at getting his message to his voters with free media. Standridge, who lacks a natural financial base, may have to hope for the collapse of either Bachus or Beason, and try to find a way to get into a runoff with the other. In those circumstances, Standridge would have a real shot. I will be waiting for polls, but it’s hard to see how this race resolves without a runoff.

As for the Democratic benefits? This is going to be a very dirty, bloody fight. Look for the negative to go up early, and be a big part of both Bachus’s and Beason’s strategies. Standridge’s smartest play would be to let the other two guys do the cutting. The national GOP leadership may make some Super PAC funds available to Bachus for negative on Beason, just to discourage challenges against incumbents. What is even sweeter, this bloodbath will be taking place in the Birmingham media market, which includes nearly half the state’s voters. One of the state’s most prominent representatives in Washington, and one of its most prominent members of the Legislature, are going to get slandered, cussed, tarred and feathered not only in their own GOP stronghold district, but in swing districts we will be targeting for takeback in the 2014 Legislative elections. Beason will have to attack Bachus on ethics, undercutting the GOP message that it is the sole repository of ethical government. Bachus will have to attack Beason on immigration, reminding bankers, Realtors®, insurance agents, and other historically bedrock Republican voters all over Alabama, that the GOP message of hate is bad for business. This all can only do serious damage to the Republican brand, and perhaps leave this district significantly more competitive in November. To borrow one last reminder of the BCS weekend and its Big Easy location, Permettez les bontemps, comme la Marée, roulez!

UPDATE

After I posted yesterday morning, surprises happened in this race, in the form of not one, but three new candidates.

The biggest splash was made when Tuscaloosa businessman Stan Pate got in the race. Pate is known for ... well, for being Stan Pate. Pate’s personality is somewhere on the scale between “iconoclast,” and “bull in the china shop.” His entry even dovetails nicely with my BCS football references. Those who remember Alabama’s last trip to the Championship in January 2010 will recall that there was an airplane banner circling the Rose Bowl, calling for the impeachment of “corrupt Alabama Governor Bob Riley.” We can thank Mr. Pate for financing that flight; he and Riley have long been at odds, and Pate has also paid for billboards alleging that Riley was paid off by Mississippi Choctaw casinos. That Bob Riley hasn’t sued multimillionaire Pate for defamation (which would require Riley to testify under oath as to his Choctaw ties) speaks volumes. Pate also notoriously, in 2009, confronted a hapless manager of a closing Tuscaloosa steakhouse, of which Pate was the landlord, with a shotgun. Pate claimed the restaurant’s bank, which had a lien on the restaurant’s fixtures, was not entitled to repossess them. Not only did the bank get the fixtures; Pate was convicted of menacing in Tuscaloosa Municipal Court. After pleading guilty and receiving probation in the Tuscaloosa Circuit Court, Pate changed his mind and appealed to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, where the case is reportedly pending.

It should be obvious the impact Pate can have on this race - he is a multimillionaire who can self-finance to an unlimited degree. Whichever of the original candidates is his original target can expect to be pummeled with negative. What is not apparent at this point, is who that target will be. For that matter, the volatile Pate could turn his guns on anyone in the race; he notoriously turned on Governor Bentley during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign when he felt Bentley wasn’t hostile enough to the Riley clique.

Two other surprise candidates jumped in at the eleventh hour. One is Al Mickle, who ran as a write-in candidate in 2010; he will presumably be an asterisk in this race. Another is Birmingham lawyer Justin Barkley, a Harvard graduate who represents businesses in labor and employment law disputes. Barkley’s jump into the race raises the question of whether the Birmingham white-shoe business-banking-legal community is hedging its bets on Bachus. Not only is Barkley a rookie candidate, a quick search of FEC donor records indicates he’s never given to a federal candidate before. He is going to need some serious coin to overcome his lack of name recognition in this battle of longtime media stars. Perhaps he hopes to benefit from some confusion with 6th District native Charles Barkley.

Pate’s deep pockets will only serve to boldface what I originally wrote about the Birmingham media market being deluged with negative against prominent Republicans. This donnybrook can only help Democrats at many levels. And unless the GOP goes with a baggage-free nominee like Standridge or Barkley, this district could be the most vulnerable to a Democratic win since Bachus edged Democratic incumbent Ben Erdreich in 1992 by a 52.3%-45.0% margin.

Turning the Paige on the Republican Majority

2011-10-13T06:01:00.069-05:00

If you take any randomly-selected group of 140 adults, who have to be at least 21 years old, a quarter of whom have to be over 25, and most of whom in practice are much older; at some point during any quadrennium, one or two of them are going to pass on to meet their Maker. It doesn’t take an actuary to know that.

In the current Legislature, such has already been the case with the late Rep. Owen Drake, R-Leeds. It is difficult to speak ill of the dead (or at least it will be until “Choctaw Bob” Riley dies), but in the case of Rep. Drake it’s easier to say nice things than it would be in the case of most Republicans. Rep. Drake was a specimen of that very rare creature in the Alabama GOP: an independent-thinking moderate who didn’t trip on his own feet to fall in line when King Pig Speaker blew his toy train whistle. While the cancer that eventually claimed Drake’s life kept him from much of the 2011 session, his was one of the few voices that could be heard in the new Republican majority calling for less draconian attacks on the rights of teachers and other public employees.

Which is one reason he was so darn hard to beat. Drake won the 2010 election by a 61.5%-38.5% margin over Democrat Charlene Cannon, a retired Birmingham Police captain.

House District 45, in Jefferson County and a tiny sliver of St. Clair, is an odd district. It takes in areas as diverse as minority neighborhoods in Huffman, white working class neighborhoods in Leeds, and the designer-label boutiques and cafés of Crestline Village in Mountain Brook.

Tuesday, the Republican runoff for the special election to fill Drake’s vacancy was won by his brother Dickie, who defeated Irondale Mayor Tommy Joe Alexander, by 1,110-965. Those numbers give us a first clue why the Democratic nominee, Leeds businesswoman Paige Parnell, has a good shot at making this a takeaway from the Republican Party. The general election for the seat will be Tuesday, November 29.

To get the best perspective on Parnell’s chances, the best place to start is Owen Drake’s win over Captain Cannon in 2010. Broken down by precinct, and ordered in ascending Democratic percentage, those results are:

Precinct	Location	Cannon (D)	Drake (R)	D%	R%
St Clair	Moody Civic Center	16	116	12.1%	87.9%
4502	Cherokee Bend Elementary	157	1,089	12.6%	87.4%
St Clair	Cedar Grove Baptist Church	87	572	13.2%	86.8%
4509	Leeds First Methodist Church	312	1,885	14.2%	85.8%
4510	Sulpher Springs Baptist Church	23	110	17.3%	82.7%
4501	McElwain Baptist Church	179	783	18.6%	81.4%
4508	Leeds Civic Center	426	614	41.0%	59.0%
4504	Birmigham Fire Station 31	107	150	41.6%	58.4%
4506	Brewster Rd Baptist Church	1,113	894	55.5%	44.5%
4503	Irondale Senior Building	1,208	872	58.1%	41.9%
4505	Huffman Middle School	861	609	58.6%	41.4%
4507	First Methodist Center Point	572	328	63.6%	36.4%
	St. Clair Absentee	0	10	0.0%	100.0%
	Jefferson Absentee	40	127	24.0%	76.0%
	Provisional	2	5	28.6%	71.4%
	Totals:	5,103	8,164	38.5%	61.5%

A handful of things about these numbers jumps right out at the knowledgeable observer. The first thing is, that 57.5% of Owen Drake’s 2010 margin came from the two Leeds precincts. Over sixty years ago, Harvard political scientist V.O. Key noted in his classic Southern Politics in State and Nation that “Friends and Neighbors” voting is particularly strong in the South, and decades of analysis of results have not weakened the consensus supporting that conclusion.

Unlike November 2010, when the Democratic nominee was from a Huffman precinct at the other end of the district, that any Democrat would have taken, our nominee this time is not only a lifelong Leodensian, but she is a local heroine who came within a gnat’s eyelash of putting the town on the map as the Hometown of Miss America. Only one person could rival her as a Leeds hero, and he ain’t running. (Though he is a Democrat!) Dickie Drake will probably get a few sympathy votes for his brother’s death, but anyone who says Parnell isn’t going to rip a huge hole in that irreplaceable 77.2% of the vote Owen Drake got in the two Leeds precincts isn’t being realistic. And if those precincts had split 50-50 in 2010, Owen Drake’s comfortable 2010 win would have become a very respectable 54.9%-45.1% Democratic loss to an incumbent.

Not only is it almost mathematically certain that Parnell will lay waste to the GOP numbers in Leeds, she is doubtless going to greatly reduce the Republican margin in the district’s other Republican stronghold, the Cherokee Bend precinct in Mountain Brook. If for no other reason, there is the ineluctable bogeyman of Alabama politics: race. While Captain Cannon was a distinguished law enforcement officer, whose career indicates she would have been a wonderful Representative, her candidacy ran up against the unavoidable difficulty of getting Mountain Brookers to vote for an African-American candidate. However, if you raise the 2010 Democratic vote at Cherokee Bend to a mere 30% (closer to what most white Democrats got in that precinct; Jim Folsom got 35.8% there), in addition to the Leeds hypothetical shift, the race becomes a 52.8%-47.2% squeaker, considering Owen Drake’s incumbency. Of course, if you apply this white vote shift to the remaining precincts in the district, it becomes a likely Democratic win. The outcome of the GOP runoff reinforces this. Dickie Drake’s win, while giving the Republicans a shot at splitting Leeds, deprives them of the “Friends and Neighbors” vote Alexander would have gotten in Irondale. Finally, all of this number crunching has to be done with due regard for the 2010 electorate. As I have noted elsewhere, there is extremely strong statistical evidence of a surge in white (conservative) turnout in 2010. Owen Drake doubtless was a substantial beneficiary of that. These protest-type voters, though, are going to be low-engagement voters. They had not been voting regularly before 2010, and they are the sort of voters who are exceptionally unlikely to show up in a special.

This is, of course, a special election. As such, it is subject to the old political adage that “anything can happen in a special.” But recent history in Alabama shows that Democrats, not Republicans, have done far better in legislative special elections. Even though both fell victim to the 2010 GOP tsunami, the Rev. James Fields won his seat in the 2009 special in District 12, and Butch Taylor retained the District 22 seat of the late Albert Hall for the Democrats in his 2007 special. The special election environment, with its low turnout, seems to favor Democrats and our benefit from committed turnout by teachers and other key constituencies.

Then you have to account for Paige Parnell. She is nothing less than the Democrats’ answer to the call to Central Casting for the perfect candidate. A moderate, Baptist businesswoman. A candidate who combines the eloquence of a law degree without being subject to the potential negative of being a “trial lawyer.” Finally, there is the Miss America thing. Even if you have never met Paige Parnell, you have to understand that you don’t make it to being the First Runner Up to Miss America without having the kind of poise, charm, and personality that can walk into a room full of strangers and leave everyone there wanting to know what they can do to please and help you. And a stranger to this district, she is not. Parnell is campaigning for this seat like a woman on a mission, and those intangibles are going to be impossible for Dickie Drake to match. So far as I can tell, she is also campaigning intelligently, and the revamped state Party effort to mount an effective field operation has been thrown behind her with a vengeance.

How important is Parnell’s campaign to the Alabama Democratic Party? Right now, the Alabama House has a 64-40 GOP majority. A Parnell win makes that 64-41. That brings Democrats within a couple of seats of being able to block a cloture vote - in other words, to being able to mount an effective filibuster against further Republican efforts to attack both the Democratic Party, and the workers, teachers, police and fire personnel, and other vulnerable constituents we represent. Does anyone doubt the GOP will try more shenanigans in the Legislature in 2012, and that we need this filibuster ability to stop them? An historical perspective: Democratic Houses of Representatives had not invoked cloture to stop a GOP filibuster since 1984. In the 2011 session alone, Republicans invoked cloture 84 times, not to kill Democratic filibusters, but merely to block debate or votes on Democratic amendments. Imagine being able to kill the next HB56.

According to House Democratic Leader Craig Ford, at least two Republicans, in addition to the already-switched Daniel Boman of Sulligent, have indicated that they are willing to switch if Parnell wins, because her win and their switches would bring Democrats within the magic number needed to block cloture votes.

Do I have your attention yet? Good, because it’s time to do everything we can to help Paige Parnell win this election. Consider this the most likely, and most important, “call to action” you’ll see on this blog before next fall. How can we help? First and foremost, the Parnell campaign needs boots on the ground to knock on doors and do the thousand other things a winning campaign has to do. You can contact the Parnell campaign coordinator, Lori Lindsay, at 334.549.5580. You can email Parnell at paigeparnell@gmail.com. You can sign up to volunteer on her website at this page. You can make a donation of $25, $100, or whatever you can afford on this page. Be sure to Friend Parnell on Facebook here. Whatever you do, don’t sit there and wish on November 30 that you’d just done something. The Republicans know everything I have stated here about how important this race is, and we can’t count on them not to act accordingly.

This is a fight, and we have a fighter to get behind. And I have a message for the Republicans: this ain’t going to be a scholarship program preliminary.

Turn Out the Voters, or Turn Out the Lights

2011-10-07T06:01:00.005-05:00

There are basically two ways to improve the electoral performance of a party - in other words, to win an election. The first of these is to persuade voters to vote for your party. The second is to persuade more of the voters who are already persuaded to vote for your party, but who would not vote without the extra prod of some “turnout” effort, to show up and vote. This much, you don’t have to read this blog to know. For some time, the strategy of the Alabama Democratic Party has been centered on the former. Efforts to do the latter have historically been limited to localized efforts in the African-American community.

The typical Democratic campaign of recent years has consisted of collecting large sums of money from a small handful of groups: AEA, the plaintiff’s bar (i.e., “trial lawyers”), that part of the gaming industry that prefers creating jobs in Alabama to c reating jobs in Mississippi, and to a lesser extent organized labor. This money was then spent - not always effectively - mostly on television ads for individual candidates. While we did do some effective negative campaigning, which has been shown to be effective by both professional experience and academic studies, most of our negative was focused on individual Republican candidates. In the meantime, our better-financed opposition added a generous dose of “party negative” to their mix, painting every Democrat as an abortion-supporting, gay-loving, God-hating, gun-seizing acolyte of the conservative bete noir of the cycle. This was, of course, reinforced by channels other than paid media, such as talk radio and thousands of “apolitical” pulpits and “Christian voter guides.” Whatever its merits (and I have written elsewhere about the need for party-based positive and negative media), this has clearly been a persuasion-oriented strategy.

Beginning in the 1990’s, and culminating in the 2010 loss of the Legislature and every statewide race, this strategy became less and less effective. Not only has the strategy been shown to be ineffective, it is becoming increasingly impossible to maintain. The Legislature has shown that it is determined to frustrate AEA’s constitutional right to collective political action by any means necessary, and we can no longer count on their historical level of financial support. The plaintiff’s bar has been victimized by a decade of Republican Supreme Court control. When the Alabama Supreme Court says it’s OK for a corporation to make a deadly product without paying damages, or for a bank to lie about its loans and investments, those lawyers don’t collect judgments. From those judgments come their fees, and from those fees their historic support. To the extent these lawyers have tried to hedge their bets by contributing to Republicans, they have been rewarded with ... more “tort reform.” As to the gaming industry, we all know what’s happened there.

This is the point at which we have to ask ourselves whether we Alabama Democrats have a turnout problem that has contributed to our electoral reversals. There are several ways to answer this question. “Yes.” “Si.” “Ja.” “Oui.” “Да.”

In my last post, I looked at some of the margins in the 2010 Alabama House races. Here, I want to shift perspective to the total vote turnout in each of the 105 districts, and compared it to the Republican percentage of the vote in each district. The results are reflected in this chart:

This chart shows a compelling correlation between the total number of votes cast, and the percentage of the vote taken by the Republican candidate. The two trendlines representing the figures for the contested races stand, taken together, at almost a perfect-correlation 45º angle.

Keep in mind, this chart is showing total vote, not percentage of registered or eligible voters voting, on the Y axis. Varying rates of voter registration, or shifts in population between the 2000 Census on which the 2010 districts were based, could produce a slightly different result. However, low registration rates are just as indicative of an organizational problem as low turnout rates. As to possible effects of demographic shifts, while final 2010 Census results aren’t out, it seems evident so far that Alabama didn’t experience the intensive growth in white suburban areas, and depopulation of black counties and neighborhoods, that it did in each of the preceding three decades. Total vote, in roughly equal-population districts, is a workable rough metric of turnout. A correlation this strong isn’t going to be significantly altered by accounting for these variables, and the operational consequences of the numbers reflected are still significant.

Clearly, we could have won several close House races by boosting turnout: identifying likely Democratic voters, and giving them whatever encouragement and assistance was necessary to get them to the polls. Focused turnout efforts work. Could we have retained control of the House (and presumably the Senate)? That would have been a tall order in 2010’s atmosphere, but we clearly could have held enough seats to deprive the Republicans of their filibuster-proof present majorities. This alone would have made an upgrade in the turnout game worthwhile.

More troubling is a set of numbers, represented on this chart by the vertical arrays of red and blue dots at the 100% and 0% GOP votes, respectively, on the X axis. These represent the 30 districts in which the Republican nominees were unopposed, and the 29 districts in which Democratic nominees were unopposed. The quickest use of the Mark I Eyeball statistical analyzer will show that there were more votes cast for unopposed Republicans than for unopposed Democrats. A lot more. Specifically, the 30 unopposed Republicans got a total of 389,012 votes, an average of 12,970; while the 29 unopposed Democrats trailed with 263,232, an average of 9,077.

Why should this trouble us? After all, we weren’t going to win many of those House seats anyway, right? The problem is, these numbers, both in the Democratic and Republican districts, probably almost entirely reflect straight party voting. While this would require detailed analysis of precinct-level results in those limited counties whose machines separately report straight ticket votes for verification, common sense tells us this is so. It’s a little difficult (though well worth the trouble) to vote. Almost no one is going to go to that trouble just to vote for their cousin/neighbor/deacon, the Representative, and not bother with the rest of the ballot. This is particularly true in the case where that Representative is unopposed - why bother? For decades, knowledgeable political observers have zeroed in on uncontested races as a rough measure of straight-ticket voting.

Given this, these numbers have significance both above and below the Legislature on the ballot. They reflect a serious shortcoming on the part of the Party in identifying and turning out Democratic voters. How serious? If each of the unopposed Democratic House members had averaged the same 12,970 votes as the unopposed Republicans, unopposed Democrats would have received, in the aggregate, 112,987 more votes, the vast majority of whom would have been straight ticket Democratic votes. For those with short memories, Jim Folsom, Jr., only lost his re-election bid for Lt. Governor by 46,009 votes. I am willing to wager that at least some local races were lost in these underperforming districts.

I also want to make one thing clear: I am not pointing out the Democratic Representatives in whose districts these shortcomings happened. While I do know one or two of them whose contribution to the Party effort leaves something to be desired, by and large voter identification and GOTV is a Party function, not that of an individual candidate. I am merely using House districts as a convenient and useful metric. The shortfalls were also noticeable in those districts with contested races. On a related note, I am not one of those Democrats who try to complain that the reason for our defeat was that “the blacks didn’t get their vote out.” In fact, of the 29 unopposed Democrats, six were white candidates in white-majority districts, and five of those six were in the lower half of the unopposed Democrats, in total votes received.

Fortunately, this is one area where the Alabama Democratic Party is on the ball. Under the leadership of Judge Kennedy, and Executive Director Bradley Davidson, the Party has undertaken a major voter identification project. This effort seeks to reach most voters before the 2012 election, and virtually all voters before 2014, to identify the partisan leanings (or independence) of each voter. The Party will then be in a position to target GOTV efforts on Democratic voters, and improve the dismal turnout statistics reflected in the above table. (We will also be able to target undecided voters with persuasive messaging!) This is something the Alabama Republican Party has been doing for nearly a decade now, in a very intense, well-funded and organized effort, and the past disparity in these efforts goes a long way toward explaining the results in 2012. For those who want to get involved, the Party website has a page devoted to the training sessions being offered. If you never get involved in another Democratic campaign effort, this is the one to join. It is going to change the face of Alabama politics, and for the better.

As long ago as the proto-democratic Athenian constitution of Draco (c. 650 B.C.E.), citizens were fined for failing to appear at the sessions of the Assembly to vote. A number of modern democracies follow the same practice. The United States does not, and should not, follow this practice. But voter apathy is a problem, and it’s particularly a problem when the Republicans are doing more about it than Democrats.

Democratic Legislature in Alabama - 2014?

2011-09-30T06:01:00.047-05:00

If I had posted, using this post’s title, anytime during the first ten months after the 2010 Alabama elections, I would have been deluged with email requests for a swig of whatever it was I had been drinking. I may yet get such emails. Hopefully, though, we are now to the point where rational analysis can take place without the undue influence of the ceaseless crowing of The Birmingham News that Alabama is now, and for all eternity will be, a Republican-dominated state. That media drumbeat had us all a little depressed.

The hill that the Alabama Democratic Party has to climb to regain legislative control is high, and it is steep. But it looks a little less like Mount Everest, and a little more like Sand Mountain. Which, coincidentally, is partially within the 29th District, where Democratic Whip Jack Page was narrowly ousted by Republican Becky Nordgren in 2010, by a tally of 5,845 to 5,406. This is one of several districts which, looked at with a knowledgeable eye, are ripe for a Democratic comeback in 2014.

Currently, the GOP holds a 64-40 majority in the House (with one seat up for special election; GO (former Miss Alabama) PAIGE PARNELL!). In the Senate, it’s a 22-13 Republican split. Neither of these margins requires a large number of seats to change hands to put GOP control of the chamber in jeopardy. And those numbers are doable.

For starters, at least on the House side, four of the 64 GOP seats were won by Democrats, who proceeded to cross the aisle within days of their election. (I am sure they weren’t promised anything to do so; that would be bribery, and I am sure Attorney General Holder would have the malefactors indicted, the same way he fought to keep Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens in pris ... never mind.) Let’s face it; if a Democrat carried a district in 2010, that district is congenitally Democratic. It should, by definition, be competitive in 2014.

Taking a slightly broader look, let’s look at all 105 districts in the House. I’ve ranked all 105 by the Republican margin in each district (whether positive or negative, and including those seats subsequently vacated by death or resignation). Let’s look at what that ranking shows for the two narrowest Democratic wins, and the ten narrowest Democratic losses:

District	D Nominee	R Nominee	R% Margin
81	Graham	Tuggle	11.8%
2	Curtis	Greer	9.5%
12	Fields	Buttram	8.3%
16	Thigpen	Boman	7.8%
24	Ledbetter	Greeson	6.7%
27	McLaughlin	Long	6.3%
29	Page	Nordgren	3.9%
21	Hinshaw	Patterson	3.5%
38	Long	Bridges	2.0%
7	Letson	Johnson	1.3%
1	Burdine	Hanson	-1.5%
73	Hubbard	Grimes	-2.0%

You will frequently hear a rule of thumb that any incumbent who won his or her last election by under 5% is vulnerable in the next election. Like any arbitrary number, this one should be applied with caution, but it’s a starting point. I call it a starting point because 2010 was in so many ways a “perfect storm” for the GOP that they are unlikely to be able to replicate in 2014. There will not be a bingo indictment of Democratic legislators timed for a month before the election. There will not be as intense an anti-Obama sentiment in the atmosphere, as he presumably will have improved his weak and ineffective messaging if he is re-elected. And if Obama is not re-elected, the GOP in Alabama will be deprived of its racist bogeyman; an all too obvious reason for its 2010 wins.

By this measure, we Democrats should be able to threaten Republican incumbents whose 2010 margins were more than 5%, and 10% is not unreasonable. (Several of the 2010 GOP wins were against Democrats who had won by much more than 10% in 2006.) Of course, one of these seats is already in Democratic hands, thanks to Daniel Boman’s refusal to go along with King Pig Speaker’s storm trooper tactics, and Boman’s subsequent switch to the Democratic Party. A more Democratic wind in 2014 would also make it far less likely that Democrats such as Joe Hubbard and Greg Burdine would be reckoned vulnerable solely by their narrow 2010 wins. A Parnell victory in the upcoming special would make the leap to majority even shorter.

While I have been talking about the House, similar numbers and issues face the GOP majority in the Senate. Even Scott “Aborigine” Beason may be vulnerable, as long as the tag lines are in Birmingham. And a birdie has told me that one darling of the 2010 Republican effort, Shadd McGill of Jackson County, is already in a deep hole. In fact, that birdie told me that McGill was recently physically removed from the courthouse office of a Republican official in his district - by McGill’s fellow Republican officeholder!

In addition to the historical precedent that unusual sweep years are usually corrected in the next cycle, the Republicans have to face an additional threat. Political and economic issues are likely to be arrayed in the extreme against the Alabama GOP in 2014. For 136 years, they whined and cried about not being allowed to run state government. (In 2010, as in 1874, their control was dependent on the partisan intervention of the Federal government.) Republican Party, be careful what you wish for; now you own it.

Budget shortfalls are going to be a major problem for the state over the next three years. While the recession continues - thanks in large part to the national GOP’s efforts - state revenues will be depressed, and Federal stimulus funding to fill the gap is going to vanish. This also is thanks to the Know-Nothings of the national Republican Party. This means programs will be cut, and employees will be laid off. Families of senior citizens will be upset that their Medicaid benefits are cut, and lots of drivers will be upset that potholes aren’t being fixed. And there will be no Democratic Legislature on which The Birmingham News can blame it. GOP attacks on education have also clarified the minds of thousands of teachers, many of whom had complacently begun voting Republican, as to where their political interests truly lie.

Speaking of latter-day Know-Nothings, even the GOP’s pride and joy of racist reaction - HB56, better known as America’s most repressive law against those whose color suggests they might be undocumented aliens - isn’t working out as planned. While the senescent crackers whoop, stomp and clap at the Republican luncheon at the Golden Corral (between artery-clogging trips to the buffet), in the rest of the community, the bill is causing one giant train wreck. Senseless requirements for “proving” citizenship for auto tag and drivers’ license renewals have created gigantic lines at every courthouse in the state, and deprived Alabamians of the basic 21st Century convenience of renewing these licenses online.

If the stupidity of the immigration bill reaches all Alabamians once a year, it zeros in on thousands of small Alabama businesses constantly, and takes direct aim at their bottom lines. While many crops such as cotton are mechanically harvested, many fruits and vegetables still require hand picking, and the immigrant labor which makes this possible is fleeing the state. Even many legal immigrants are leaving from fear of arrest, and crops are reported to be rotting in the fields. Many of the GOP gains in 2010 were made in counties, such as DeKalb, Marshall and Cullman, where the state’s billion-dollar poultry industry is centered, and that industry is utterly dependent on immigrant labor. Other service industries, such as food services, nursing homes, and construction, are likewise facing labor shortages as a result of the Hispanic exodus. These constituencies are not marginal for the GOP; they are its bedrock electoral and financial base. And they made their displeasure with HB56 plainly known during the 2011 session. By 2014, Democrats should find both votes and dollars available from small businesses whose interests the GOP has trampled. (Of course, we need to start working on this outreach now, while tempers are still hot!)

To be clear, I am not predicting that we Democrats will retake one or both houses of the Legislature in 2014. I am making it emphatically clear that it is reasonable that we might do so. Even as the GOP laid plans and worked for four years to make Alabamofascism possible, we need to be working now to reverse it. Candidate recruitment, fundraising, and work on the ongoing voter list system are critical. More particularly, our media message needs to step up just a bit. Voters need to be helped to think of those three-hour lines at the car tag office as “Republican lines.” This needs to be a full-court press, including repeated media statements from local Democratic leaders, and letters to the editor. Poultry producers need to be invited to Democratic meetings where they can hear the workforce-killing HB56 condemned. Protests against the moral outrage that is HB56 are good, but it is when we speak to the interests of 2010 GOP voters that we will regain a Democratic Legislature.

Who Is Watching the Watchdogs?

2011-08-23T06:01:00.010-05:00

What a wonderful, hot, lazy August it’s been. It is almost a shame to ruin it by actually writing a post. So as not to give myself a heatstroke, I will serve up something I wrote earlier in the month, and just add a few lines of mis-en-scene so it makes sense.

Thomas Jefferson made a notable observation about the role of the newspaper in a democracy:

The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. -- Letter to Edward Carrington, 1787.

On August 6, The Montgomery Advertiser ran an editorial in which it attacked the Republicans for violating the so-called “ethics reforms” Bob Riley ran through with the new GOP Legislature as his parting gift to Alabama. Fair enough. But they succumbed to the journalistic weakness of being unable to condemn the murderer without heaping equal opprobrium on the jaywalker. In other words, they had to say some bad things about the Democrats. Which is fair enough, if what they said had been accurate. Not only was it inaccurate, but they only had to look to their own front pages of a few months earlier to see it was inaccurate.

Silly me, I thought if I shot a letter to their editor, pointing out this problem, they would print it, with perhaps an editorial note trying to defend the editorial. No chance. I guess the lesson here is that if you want to write the Advertiser, it’s best not to prove them so wrong that their fragile egos won’t let the truth see daylight.

One of the joys of blogging is that you are not dependent on the whim of a mendacious editorial board to have your say. Without further ado, here is the letter the Advertiser could not find a reason to print:

Dear Editor:
Your editorial, “PAC Debate Hypocritical,” of August 6, 2011, is correct to call out the Alabama Republican Party for violating the so-called ethics reforms they enacted in the waning days of the Riley Administration. However, to accuse the Alabama Democratic Party of “hypocrisy” because, in your words, “they killed PAC-to-PAC reform year after year when they controlled the Legislature,” is to make a plain misstatement of fact. It adopts and repeats a Republican lie that was used in several campaigns by that party.

Consider the fate of House Bill 85 in the 2010 (Democratic-controlled) Regular Session. This bill, sponsored by Democratic then-Representative Jeff McLaughlin of Guntersville, would have banned PAC-to-PAC transfers, period. As you reported in a story on January 24, 2010, quoting Democratic then-Senator Zeb Little, “the Democratic caucus supports a ‘true PAC-to-PAC ban,’ but there are always people, including business organizations and the political parties, that want exceptions.”

That is indeed what happened to House Bill 85. The Republican minority in the Senate filibustered, blocking that bill and other ethics reforms passed by the Democratic House, because Senate Democrats refused to carve out exceptions for “religious” and other groups that overwhelmingly support Republicans. The Democratic votes were there to pass it, but it died at the hands of GOP filibusters. The Republicans then ran an election campaign calling Democrats “anti-reform,” largely unchallenged by the fact-checking function of the news media. I ask you, in the future, not only to avoid sacrificing editorial accuracy in the name of balance, but to have the news pages more closely check to see that the Republicans’ deeds match their rhetoric.

I don’t want anyone to walk away from this post with the idea that we shouldn’t write letters to the editor - or even that we shouldn’t write them to the Advertiser. On the contrary, what this shows is that we need to write more of them. The Advertiser did not print a single letter (that I saw) taking issue with its misleading editorial. One reason for that may be that mine was the only one they received. The dynamics of editorial boards are such that it is difficult for them to ignore a large volume of letters calling the paper out on a given issue. Your letter might not be printed, but it might lead to a similar letter from another Democrat making the paper. The Advertiser is not, like some newspapers in this state, a hidebound rubber stamp of the Republican Party. It may be that they just need some encouragement to be more careful in the future. So by all means, make good use of the emailing links on the right of this page, and let your voice be heard!

The Debt Impasse - A Modest Proposal

2011-07-31T15:01:00.030-05:00

I want to apologize, gentle reader, for using the clichéd title originally (and brilliantly) coined by Jonathan Swift for his rational solution to an Irish famine. If only the Republican Party could read it without missing the irony, and lauding it as a damned sensible idea. One which they would no doubt think fine to impose on the millions of Americans unemployed by their laissez-faire approach to Wall Street regulation.

No, I am not making an ironic proposal. I am perfectly serious, and only wish that the current Administration had the political skills to recognize that this concept (1) would, merely by being introduced in Congress, substantially increase the President’s prospects for re-election; (2) would also make it likely that we Democrats would increase our Senate majority and take back the House in 2012, and (3) when and if enacted - even if only by a Democratic Congress in 2013 - go a long way toward ending the carnage inflicted on American families by the Bush II Administration, and by the current President’s asthenia in dealing with Republican opposition.

The current annual deficit is somewhere around $1.6 trillion, which is about 11% of GDP. Unlike Republicans who parrot absolutes, we Democrats know that, in the long run, those numbers need to come down. The question is, how to get there? The GOP’s balanced budget amendment proposals would be so disastrous, that any person seriously proposing it obviously lacks the wrenches in his or her intellectual toolbox to pursue a learned profession.

The win-win solution, for America and for Democrats, is a fairly unsophisticated tweak of the basic individual income tax rates. In Tax Year 2008, the most recent year for which final statistics are currently available, taxpayers in the so-called 35% bracket paid an actual tax rate of only 28.9%. This is because 35% is the “marginal” tax rate - these top taxpayers still pay the same rates as you and I on their income at the same level. In other words, Mr. Billionaire pays the same rate on his first $50,000 of income as the worker who only makes that much in total.

More important for our purposes is how un-progressive (“regressive,” to use the term used by economists and tax lawyers) the Bush II tax cuts have made the system. Those tax cuts were, of course, heavily weighted toward the very wealthiest taxpayers. In 2000, under Clinton, a married couple filing jointly paid at least 36% on everything over $161,450 and 39.6% on everything over $288,350. In 2008, the same couple paid only 33% above $200,000 and 35% on everything over $377,500.

What I propose we do is this - and the numbers aren’t carved in granite; some fine tuning would not ruin the concept - tax the top 6.4% of taxpayers at their marginal rate on all their income, and boost that marginal rate by a mere 3%. Keep in mind, in 2008, that would have been married joint filers with an income of over $200,000 a year. If a couple were making $199,000 a year, I wouldn’t raise their taxes a penny. How big a bite would that take out of your big, ugly, trillion-dollar deficit? Fasten your seat belts.

About $520,000,000,000 - over half a trillion a year. And the current crop of leaders is haggling over a package (I refer to the Obama-GOP “compromise” reported as of 7:00 p.m. CDT on July 31) that reduces the deficit by just $2 trillion - over a decade.

(You could do the same thing with corporate income tax rates, giving some smaller, mom and pop corporations a break, but the individual rates are where the real economic, and political, effects are to be seen. Also, by reducing the huge breaks fat cats get on corporate dividends and capital gains, which are almost exclusively enjoyed by these top tier earners, you could get even more.)

But wait, my modest proposal gets better. In the same bill, I would add a proposal to divert, say, $200 billion of this annual tax equity improvement, not to the deficit - but to a tax cut going exclusively to the 93.6% of Americans making under $200,000 per couple. Of course, I would weight it more heavily toward the lower tax brackets in that group. This would be, in effect, a $200 billion-a-year economic stimulus package. And it would be much more effective than the bank handouts of Bush II and Obama I. When that money is in the hands of people making $500,000 a year or more, they park it in a hedge fund or mutual fund, many of which do not create jobs in the United States. People living from paycheck to paycheck are always deferring necessary purchases, and when they get more cash, they run out and make them. That creates jobs in the United States. The resulting tax equity improvement would still reduce the deficit by more than the current leading prospect, and without cutting any benefit programs, and even without cutting defense spending! To get this done, I would not be averse to some very careful trimming of spending, just so the talking heads on “Meet the Press” didn’t cluck too loudly about no spending cuts - but I bloody sure wouldn’t have made my proposal the Republican fantasy that Democratic “leaders” are currently embracing.

Now for the politics. (I do enjoy writing about politics more than economics, but the economics was a necessary foundation for what follows.) Imagine this: beginning in the spring of 2012, Democratic TV spots, Democratic canvassers working door to door, and Democratic spokespersons in local news stories, all start reminding that 93.6% of voters that the Democrats were responsible for their tax cut - or, since the GOP in this Congress would have probably killed it, who was responsible for them not getting their tax cut. “MO BROOKS KEPT YOU FROM GETTING A TAX CUT!” “MARTHA ROBY BLOCKED YOUR TAX DECREASE!” Just imagine the possibilities. It’s even possible to correlate Census income data with the Alabama Democratic Party’s new VoteBuilder program (I have seen the future of that, and I like it) to target the vast majority of the households in that 93.6% with individual, specific, concrete persuasion: “YOU, AND EVERYONE ON YOUR BLOCK, WOULD BE PAYING LOWER TAXES IF ROBERT ADERHOLT AND THE REPUBLICANS HADN’T VOTED ‘NO’.” If the Republicans tried to sell this as a “tax hike” (which they would), “WHEN JEFF SESSIONS SAYS THE DEMOCRATIC BILL WOULD HAVE RAISED YOUR TAXES, HE’S LYING. YOU, AND EVERYONE ON YOUR BLOCK, WOULD BE PAYING LESS, NOT MORE!” It has to be carefully explained, but it would work. Imagine the chromatic effect on the current Speaker.

Sadly, most of what I have been writing is a sand table exercise. The opportunity to paint the GOP into a corner with Grover Norquist and the Teabaggers was lost weeks, if not months, ago. For that, I blame the myopic lack of political skills, and political leadership, of the Obama Administration. As Maureen Dowd put it so well in The New York Times today:

Democratic lawmakers worry that the Tea Party freshmen have already “neutered” the president, as one told me. They fret that Obama is an inept negotiator. They worry that he should have been out in the country selling a concrete plan, rather than once more kowtowing to Republicans and, as with the stimulus plan, health care and Libya, leading from behind.

Of course, any single Democratic member of the House could have introduced a bill embodying my proposal, and any Senator could have introduced a substitute doing so. They have to share a little of the blame. It’s hard to do the kind of groundwork we need to win the 2012 and 2014 elections when our leaders aren’t giving us the right talking points. Or worse, letting the GOP define the talking points. Sometimes, the right thing is also the politically smartest thing. These are things worth remembering when voting in primaries in the future.

Meanwhile, as a quasi-Republican debt ceiling bill slouches toward Washington to be born, at least as far as the top of the Party is concerned,

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Maybe we’re eating our children after all.

What’s in a Name?

2011-07-12T06:01:00.013-05:00

One of the favorite games of political pundits is playing with the names of candidates. Candidates are perceived to have a greater, or lesser, appeal because their name sounds sufficiently stentorian when rolling off the tongue. Oddly enough, this is a hobbyhorse that has survived the election of one Barack Hussein Obama to some minor federal offices.

Some serious academic attention has been given to the so-called “ballot order effect,” which supposedly gives some marginal advantage to candidates whose alphabetical priority places them at the top of the ballot (usually in the primary; general election ballots are usually ordered by party). The results are far from certain, but there seems to be some small advantage to being the son of Mr. Aaron or Mr. Adams. The more imprecise efforts of the chattering classes to fathom the depths of a name’s “sound” are sometimes thinly-veiled efforts to favor those of us whose names are more Anglo-Saxon. Or, depending on the locale, more or less Jewish, Irish, or German. One “oops” moment in the 2004 Kerry campaign came when it was learned that presumed Boston Irishman John Forbes Kerry was in fact Jewish. His denials of knowledge that his grandfather had been born as Friedrich Kohn in Moravia gave Bush boosters a twofer: they could flag Kerry to the anti-Semitic vote, while pretending only to question his veracity.

The “American” ring of a (usually) Anglo-Saxon name (or the “un-American” sound of an opponent’s) has had apparent consequences. In one noted instance, the 1988 election for Democratic Party Chairman in Harris County (Houston) Texas, incumbent chairman Larry Veselka, a little known lawyer and activist, lost out to the more melodiously-named Claude Jones in a low profile race. Problem was, Jones was a groupie-supporter of perennial candidate and eternal fruitcake Lyndon LaRouche. (The local Party committee promptly amended the bylaws to strip the chair of all power and authority.) Local Democratic leaders uniformly blamed the name factor for Jones’s otherwise inexplicable win.

All of this contemplation, however, is not what gave birth to this post. What got me thinking about names was this week’s fundraising missive from the Obama for America Committee. Something about that name sounded slightly off-key, and it took a few minutes for me to realize what it was. Where is the Vice President’s name??

In 1984, the official effort to inflict four more years of Bonzo government was named the “Reagan-Bush ‘84 Committee.” In 2004, Americans (may have) voted for a narrow margin in favor of the campaign mounted by “Bush-Cheney ‘04 Inc.” The recognition of a sitting Vice President in the re-election letterhead is a bipartisan tradition. In 1996, we got behind the “Clinton/Gore ‘96 General Committee.” As far back as the halcyon “what’s a computer?” campaign days of 1980, we Democrats rallied around the “Carter/Mondale Presidential Committee, Inc.” (One of my first paid employers.)

So, where is the name, “Biden” in next year’s committee name?

Little happens at the level of a Presidential campaign without thought and planning; the malapropisms, errata, and gaffes of Bachmann and Palin notwithstanding. While I will certainly keep an eye on this post’s comments for other explanations, I can see three possible reasons for the absence of the Vice President’s name. (1) This could be just another manifestation of the narcissistic and borderline messianic tendencies of this President, and of his coterie of Chicago hacks, who have yet to realize he was elected President for the same reason he won the Nobel Peace Prize; his name isn’t “Bush.”

(2) There may be some measured consideration that Vice President Biden, whose open-mike flaps and other memorable moments are Leno-Letterman fodder, may be something of a drag on the ticket, or at least doesn’t give it a boost. This explanation could well coincide with (1). I would argue against it. Biden is a solid Washington presence, knows his way around the Hill, and brings a lot to the table that is lacking in the Oval Office. Voters want to know that the man or woman “a heartbeat away” is up to the promotion if, God forbid ... Remember the Palin drag as her lack of depth became apparent late in the 2008 campaign. Without it, we might have been challenging President McCain next year.

(3) - and I can’t believe this is the case and no one’s leaked it, the omission of Biden’s name might be a signal that has been missed by the entire punditocracy, blogosphere, and even the phone-tapping minions of Rupert Murdoch. Of course, if (2) reflects the perception in the Obama high command, then (3) becomes a more plausible scenario. The Vice President was not yet 30 on the day he was first elected to the Senate in 1972; he attained the Constitutionally-required age before Congress convened in January. Of course, that means he will be 70 at the beginning of the next Presidential term. That is not too old by recent historical precedent. However, the Chicago hacks place an excessive premium on the President’s “youth appeal,” and 70 may be a number that troubles them.

It is possible that I am reading too much into these facts. Trying to interpret signals that may not even be there is as dicey as my (late) Cold War work parsing the photographs atop Lenin’s Tomb in Правда to determine who was in or out in the Kremlin. Whatever the explanation, this is an item that bears close scrutiny in the coming months. Obama need not make a move to replace Biden for some time, but any story of that magnitude will be hard to keep under wraps. If the Vice President is going to remain on the ticket, someone needs to take a crayon to the letterhead, pronto, not only to express the President’s confidence in his running mate, but to prevent the rumor mill from going to work. As I said, I am happy with the Vice President, and think it would be a mistake to replace him on the ticket. That said, speculation about potential replacements at least makes an interesting parlor game.

In a totally unrelated note, emptying my pockets earlier this evening, I discovered that someone, apparently mistaking it for a quarter, had given me a Susan B. Anthony dollar in change. Of course, I am not at all into omens or other irrational forms of superstition. Not at all.

Hail to the Chief ... Justice

2011-07-06T06:01:00.004-05:00

After treating myself to taking June off, I found my email filled last week with inquiries about the sudden, and unexpected, retirement announcement by Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb. Judge Cobb, one of two Democrats currently holding statewide office, and the only one on the appellate courts, will be missed. She has brought leadership to the Supreme Court, not only as a tireless and forward-looking administrator of the state judicial system, but as a courageous voice of moderation and justice on a court dominated by Fortune 500 rubber stamps. Before her tenure on the highest court, she served for 12 years on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, where she frequently took the position that - imagine this - the law had to be upheld, even if that meant a conviction was reversed.

Perhaps nothing calls to mind her judicial courage more than her opinion in the case of Wilson v. State, 830 So.2d 765 (Ala.Crim.App. 2001). Theresa Wilson was the poster child for what can go wrong in the war on drugs. A 28-year-old mother of two small children, Wilson became addicted to narcotic painkillers prescribed to her by her physician for her fibromyalgia. Unable to work, she sold a portion of her painkillers to an undercover officer for money to pay her utility bills. The officer then goaded her into procuring more drugs, which turned out to be prescription morphine a similarly-strapped neighbor provided her to sell, for a share of the cut. That diluted morphine mix turned out to be 41.8 grams - 1.47 ounces - over the threshold for Alabama’s drug trafficking law. Her naïveté in drug sales was manifest; she let the narc leave with the drugs, without full payment. Wilson had no prior criminal record. Because Wilson’s second, police-encouraged sale was 1.47 ounces over the limit, she was sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment without any possibility of parole or early release.

Noting that the trafficking law under which Wilson was charged is legally titled the “Drug Baron’s Enforcement Act of 1986,” and that “Wilson does not fit into that category,” Judge Cobb wrote a detailed opinion, explaining how the precedent of the United States Supreme Court required constitutional review of such sentences, and held that while Wilson’s crime was serious, leaving prison in a pine box was cruel and unusual punishment. (Republican Judge Kelli Wise, now a Supreme Court Justice, agreed with Judge Cobb and wrote a concurring opinion. Republican Judge James Shaw, who defeated Judge Deborah Bell Paseur to join the Supreme Court in 2006, dissented, saying that “the majority’s decision is impermissibly based on a concept of natural justice.”) Contrary to Judge Shaw’s opinion, no convicted trafficker has been released since the Wilson case on a similar basis, but our prisons - as Chief Justice Cobb has recently pointed out - are still overflowing with nonviolent minor drug offenders.

One of the recurring themes of emails and calls I have gotten since Judge Cobb’s announcement has been its impact on the prospects of the Alabama Democratic Party. Does this yet further signal the Party’s demise? Is there any hope for the Judicial System? When will we again be a competitive party? Will Judge Cobb ever return to politics?

All are good questions. As to the first, many will overstate its significance to the Party’s prospects. I understand that the condition of Judge Cobb’s mother - to whom she is especially close - is indeed serious. This retirement may mark one of those rare occasions in politics when a statement regarding “more time with my family” is indeed the truth. Her retirement may also have intended political consequences with respect to her successor. Governor Bentley is likely to appoint someone from his faction of the GOP to the vacancy, rather than someone from the Business Council-Riley wing. This would give such an appointee the advantage of campaigning in 2012 as an incumbent, and Judge Cobb may have intended to thus lessen the Business Council’s voice on the Court.

The history of appointed Supreme Court justices in Alabama is a mixed one. It features one unlikely hero, at least in the mind of the progressive Democrat: Fob James. James shattered the racial barrier on the modern Supreme Court with his 1980 appointment of Oscar W. Adams. When Adams retired, Jim Folsom Jr. appointed Justice Ralph Cook, who is also black, to the vacancy. Don Siegelman appointed a second black Justice, Judge John England, to the Supreme Court during his administration. Both seats were eventually lost to white Republicans in 2000, although Judge Cook did narrowly win one full term in the 1994 elections. Racial animus, however, is not the only reason appointed judges fail to win election after appointment, and the partisan sword is two-edged. Judge Cobb won her seat as Chief Justice in 2006 by defeating Riley appointee, and serious corporate ho, Drayton Nabers. Expect a heated GOP primary for the job in 2012, with current Justice Lyn Stuart the likely Business Council candidate. (Having written elsewhere about the all-white Alabama appellate judiciary, I won’t urge Governor Bentley to show Fob’s courage and appoint someone doomed to lose the Republican primary - but it would be a tremendous gesture.)

As to the personal future of Judge Cobb, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her back someday. Her retirement remarks didn’t foreclose the possibility. The 2014 gubernatorial race is a long way off. It’s a good two years before a 2014 nominee will have to seriously hit the fundraising and rubber chicken circuit. This should provide her with plenty of time to spend with her family and catch her breath after 30 years of nonstop public service. Should she run, there is a good chance she would not have serious primary opposition. The Democratic bench isn’t as deep as it was in the early 90’s; if Lucy Baxley retires from the PSC, we may well have no incumbent statewide Democratic officeholders going into 2014. One or two legislators whose names have come up in recent years as gubernatorial possibilities either lost their seats in 2010, or had close shaves that might reflect on their electability. Ron Sparks would be a strong candidate for another try, but his acceptance of a position in the Bentley administration indicates he’s not looking in that direction. Finally, if Bentley loses the Republican primary to a Business Council ally, Judge Cobb could count on substantial financial support from AEA in the general election.

Whatever the future holds for her, Judge Cobb deserves a “thank you” from each of us in the Democratic Party - and in Alabama.

The Ghost of Elbridge Gerry Haunts Montgomery

2011-05-25T06:01:00.016-05:00

Elbridge Gerry stands out in several respects among the founding fathers. Gerry, who served as vice president under James Madison, was the first vice president not to seek the presidency himself, although that noncandidacy was occasioned by his death. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Gerry was one of the few delegates to the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the finished product. (He objected to its omission of a bill of rights. That Federalist-driven omission led Gerry to leave them for the Jeffersonian Democrats.) But it was for his actions as governor of Massachusetts that his name entered the Anglophonic political lexicon.

Gerry (who pronounced his name with a hard “g,” as in “guess”) is best known today as the namesake of the gerrymander (with a soft “g” pronounced like “j”). In the 1812 Massachusetts elections, Gerry was the proponent of a districting scheme that created one oddly-shaped district that gathered and isolated many Federalist strongholds, leaving several other districts with narrow Democratic majorities. A political cartoonist of the day attached Gerry’s name to the last two syllables of “salamander” to create the fictional gerrymander.

This history comes home to Alabama as we make our regular post-census trip to the reapportionment table. The Legislature used its two-week break from the regular session to conduct a series of hearings around the state, purportedly seeking citizen input. Now, the current Legislature has made quite a name for itself in ramming through the most partisan, extreme legislation possible on a score of issues, from state employees’ voluntary dues deductions, to teacher tenure abolition, to tax relief for out-of-state corporations. Frankly, nothing they could do with respect to reapportionment would surprise me. My first impression was that the “hearings” would be only a sham, designed to give the GOP the appearance of impartiality and fairness in the pro-Republican media.

And I did not seem to be disappointed. In fact, I am so un-disappointed, that this is the third from-scratch version of everything from this point on in the post. I had just written up what the rumor mill had “confirmed” as the GOP plan, when a very public announcement was made of a different plan. Under the different plan, Tuscaloosa would have been moved into Aderholt’s 4th District, and DeKalb and Etowah Counties would have moved from his district to the 3rd. Montgomery County and the Shoals counties, which had feared being chopped up, would have remained intact.

The next day, the reapportionment joint committee held its formal meeting, and promptly ditched its working plan it had publicly trumpeted the day before. So much for all the Montgomery and Shoals folks who stayed away, thinking they’d won. So much, also, for all the GOP blather about a new openness and honesty in Montgomery under their jackbooted regime. Under the NEW New Plan, the Shoals are indeed split; Tuscaloosa remains much as it was, and the heavily Democratic west side of Montgomery is moved to Terri Sewell’s 7th District, making it even more lopsidedly black - and Democratic. Of course, Montgomerians who are voting for Sewell won’t be around to vote against Republican freshman Martha Roby. The other GOP freshman in the litter, Mo Brooks of the 5th District, loses Democratic Colbert to Aderholt, and takes in its stead the Republican-leaning part of Morgan which had been in the 4th for the last decade.

The ghost of Elbridge Gerry is green with envy at this brash display of partisan hacking.

The voters of the New York 26th Congressional District yesterday upped the ante on the whole Congressional apportionment process. That district, created in the 2000 New York reapportionment (when the GOP controlled the New York Senate and was able to dictate safe GOP seats) is a Republican “firewall” district. Yesterday’s win there by Democrat Kathy Hochul was largely based on her assault on the Republican favorite’s “All In” embrace of the GOP’s Ryan Medicare abolition plan. In terms of structured partisanship, I would have to say the New York 26th has at least as much of a built-in GOP tilt as Jo Bonner’s Alabama 1st. That, friends, is a serious Republican tilt; only Spence Bachus’s 6th is more Republican among Alabama districts. (Which it remains under the NEW New Plan, even though Bachus sacrificed the GOP strongholds of Autauga and Elmore, which one rumor had him gaining, to shore up Roby.)

Which leads me to an interesting observation: if such a solidly Republican district as the New York 26th can be flipped, as voters rebel over Wall Street’s desire to privatize Medicare, what about districts with even better Democratic demographics and local voting trends? Like the 3rd, 4th, and 5th in Alabama? The Eight Republican Rubberstamps (the six Representatives, plus Sessions and Shelby) have largely spoken in favor of the Ryan plan. Of the eight, I suspect only Shelby’s well-developed political antennæ and boundless instinct for self-preservation over party loyalty may lead him to bail on the plan. 4th District lemming Robert Aderholt, in response to a request from George W. Bush, cast the deciding vote for CAFTA in the House in 2005 that sent over 5,000 hosiery mill jobs in Fort Payne scurrying off to Central America. It’s hard to picture him standing up to tanning bed freak Boehner on this one. I suspect that, in the coming weeks, we may see one or more Democratic challengers putting out feelers, who might not have looked over the rim of the foxhole after the 2010 debacle. When they do, let’s encourage them.

One point that was made by the ADC and others in the Republican “open hearings,” that is going nowhere - at least not legislatively - is the prospect of adding a second black-majority Congressional district. Certainly, there should be one. Alabama is 26.3% black, and its House delegation is only 14.3% black. That is an inexcusable disparity. Geographically, it’s a challenge, but not insurmountable. If the 7th District were extended south to include the black precincts of Mobile County, black precincts in Jefferson could be linked to those in Montgomery and Macon. Or the latter could be linked with those in Houston and Henry Counties, and the balance added elsewhere. However, a legislative remedy for this is a dead letter. First, it would require the GOP to sacrifice an incumbent Representative, and I don’t see any candidates for political suicide in the current delegation. You can also count on the RCCC to put a quick lid on any effort to protect Martha Roby in the 2nd and Mike Rogers in the 3rd by isolating them from their present black constituents in a new Democratic district. This is an injustice that will have to be remedied, if at all, in the courts. In Alabama, things always seem to come to that.

Perhaps it’s too much to expect the GOP to resist the temptation to carve Alabama into the most Republican slices possible. Gerrymandering seems to be as old as democracy itself. In establishing popular democracy in Athens after the overthrow of the Spartan-supported tyranny in 507 B.C.E., Cleisthenes in effect “redistricted” the Attic population into ten δήμων (“demes” - a cognate of the name “Democratic”). But rather than make their territories discrete and compact, which he feared would foment rivalry, he took care to spread the territory of each δῆμος among the urban, coastal, and inland districts of Attica. Sadly, today’s Republicans have neither the sagacity nor the public-spiritedness of Cleisthenes. We need sharply, and publicly, to resist their redistricting plan. Particular support should be given to Senator Tammy Irons, and Representative Joe Hubbard, who have worked to keep their communities intact in the process. There are points to be made among the voters of the Shoals and Montgomery whose influence it diminishes.

Republicans Are Disasters, and They Can’t Even Manage One

2011-05-09T06:01:00.005-05:00

In my last post, I discussed the inexcusable votes cast by Alabama’s entire Republican Congressional contingent to de-fund a program to replace aging weather satellites. Those satellites played a key role in the advance warnings that, in turn, saved hundreds of Alabamians in the April 27 tornadoes. Those votes were the product of brainless, lockstep GOP party discipline, maintained in the name of preserving Bush tax cuts for multimillionaires; the lives and property of working Alabamians be damned. Today, I want to shift the focus a little, and look at the Republican philosophy of government, as it pertains to a related topic - disaster management.

This is a rich vein for Democrats to mine. It illustrates, in a concrete manner most voters can grasp, the benefits of a competent, professional approach to government, and the folly of the Republican disdain for all things public. When the horror of last month’s storms gives way to a more routine discourse (and given the Republican Legislature’s desire to continue spanking AEA, that will be soon), we need to be in a position to effectively advocate our position.

Return with me to 1992. Under George H.W. Bush, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was directed by Richard Stickney, a New Hampshire GOP hack with no background in emergency management. The agency was roundly criticized for its handling of several national disasters, most notably Hurricane Andrew in South Florida in 1992. A staff report of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee found in the aftermath of Andrew that “FEMA is widely viewed as a political dumping ground, a turkey farm, if you will,” where political cronies could be rewarded.

Among the Arkansans who followed Bill Clinton to Washington was James Lee Witt, who had served under then-Governor Clinton as head of Arkansas’s state emergency management agency. Witt was the first director of FEMA with a professional background in emergency management. Witt changed the entire atmosphere at FEMA. Senior jobs were rewarded not to political patrons, but to emergency management professionals. The agency’s historical emphasis on preparedness - remember all those fallout shelters in the 50’s and 60’s? - was renewed. As a professional, Witt knew that preparedness dollars go a lot further than mitigation dollars.

In 2000, we all remember what happened. ~~Millions of voters~~ five Republican judges decided that America had had enough of peace and prosperity, and put George W. Bush in the White House. After an interlude, FEMA found itself being run by the famous Michael D. Brown. Brown’s emergency management experience consisted of a brief term on the city council of Edmond, Oklahoma, and his tenure as Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Given the scandal that led to his resignation from that job, and the insolvent Association’s takeover by a rival group, perhaps that can be considered “disaster” experience.

Brown, of course, is best known as the head of FEMA during its utter failure to respond in a timely and effective fashion to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Brown’s entry into the political lexicon, to the delight of Jay Leno and David Letterman, came in the form of George W. Bush’s praise of Brown’s ineptitude in - of all places - Alabama. The famous phrase, “Heck of a job, Brownie,” was uttered at the Mobile airport, where Bush had stopped on a tour of stricken areas four days after the hurricane hit.

In 2009, Barack Obama and the Return of Competence led to the appointment of W. Craig Fugate as the administrator of FEMA. Unlike his Republican predecessors, Fugate is a career emergency responder. He began as a volunteer firefighter in his Florida hometown, and in true Horatio Alger fashion, worked his way up to the top post of Florida’s emergency management agency, before being tapped by Obama. Fugate has brought back Witt’s emphasis on preparedness, and infused FEMA with a sense of hustle that Alabamians normally only demand from their college football players.

This emphasis on experience and competence paid dividends for afflicted Alabamians in recent weeks, as FEMA crews were opening aid centers in places like Hamilton, Tuscaloosa and Rainsville almost before the debris had all hit the ground. Compared to the near-week it took Bush to leave his Texas ranch to survey Katrina damage, Obama was on the ground in Tuscaloosa within 40 hours of the tornadoes. This is even more impressive, now that we know he was simultaneously keeping track of the developments that led to the elimination of Osama bin Laden.

We all remember what a key role the American public’s revulsion at Bush’s incompetent response to Katrina played in significant Democratic gains in the 2006 elections. This fact, having strong visceral appeal, and being amenable to as brief a message as a 30-second ad, was recognized as a key to the Democratic wins that year, both at the time, and in subsequent review and analysis of the results.

Unfortunately, the absence of Katrina-scale incompetence is not so easily encapsulated in a television spot. (Though with over a year to work on it, something may come to us.) Generally, the distinction between the parties is a little more fact-intensive, and requires more than 60 seconds. There is, however, one medium in which this would be a killer theme. I am thinking of the manifold speeches given by Democratic nominees and Party officers every election cycle to civic and business groups like Rotary and Kiwanis clubs, Jaycees, and chambers of commerce. It’s tempting, in such a venue, for a nominee to focus on “me, me, me," at the expense of the Party message. But unless a Democratic nominee can persuade these business and professional types that there are reasons to vote for any Democrat, the nominee’s time is wasted giving the speech. The Republican predominance in such audiences - and don’t doubt that predominance for a minute - rests in large part on the GOP’s ur-message that “we are good managers, like you successful businessmen, and the Democrats aren’t.” Nothing could put the lie to that story line like a 20 minute talk that starts out, “Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen why I am a Democrat ...,” and then outlines the above information. Nominees, take note: you have to open their minds to voting for a Democrat before they’ll listen to your pitch to vote for you. And if we start picking up votes in that generally secure, if not affluent, cohort, the GOP is in deep Macaca.

Roby, Aderholt, and Brooks Vote for Kill Alabamians Act of 2011

2011-05-06T06:01:00.015-05:00

I have a friend, a very bright fellow actually, who has a tendency to go through intellectual phases. A couple of years ago, he “discovered” libertarianism, and occasionally got preachy about how we Democrats were as intrusive as the Republicans, with our “nanny state.” It became a recurring meme of our conversations for me to rib him about his opposition to fire stations. (I think he was mainly excised about government prohibition of his preferred method of relaxation, and am happy to note he no longer is that hostile to us. Bush 43 taught him the folly of protest votes.)

Current Republican hostility to government, on the other hand, seems to know no bounds. A more sensible generation of Republicans like Eisenhower, Rockefeller, and even Nixon maintained a healthy skepticism about government programs. That skepticism and vigilance, in our Constitutional structure, forced progressive Democratic programs to be designed and run in a more cost-effective manner. At the end of the day, these Republicans were pragmatists; Nixon sought to fine-tune Johnson’s Great Society, not abolish it.

Then came Reagan. The Party of Slow became the Party of No.

You would think that simple concerns of electoral viability would moderate those impulses. But you would be wrong.

No, there is not in fact a bill entitled the “Kill Alabamians Act of 2011.” It is known as HR1, and is somewhat more innocuously titled as the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011. This is the linchpin of the budget debates, and shutdown threats, about which you have been reading in the news. Among its provisions is one that, had it been in effect a few years earlier, could have turned the horrible-enough tornadic events of Wednesday, April 27, 2011, into something so much worse, it barely bears contemplating.

To appreciate this, you have to look back to the newscasts and weather reports of the 48 to 72 hours before the devastation erupted. Forecasts were calling for strong storms that long before catastrophe hit. Then, hours before the actual onslaught, the National Weather Service issued a rare “high risk” warning that put the entire state of Alabama on a war footing. Schools canceled classes and sent children home, people turned on their radios and televisions, and everyone from the governor to volunteer firemen and Red Cross volunteers began leaning in the right direction to respond more promptly to what eventually transpired. Those preparations saved countless hundreds of lives.

Many things make those life-saving warnings possible. Supercomputers crunch weather data at a rate that makes my head spin to contemplate. Research has greatly improved the mathematical models the computers use. But all the computers and all the formulae are worthless without the proper data to process. And a very large part of that data comes from weather satellites, which can track and measure atmospheric conditions everywhere and continuously, without relying on infrequent updates from discrete reporting stations.

Satellites, unfortunately, are like your car, or your microwave oven. They wear out or break down. In the case of geosynchronous satellites, they run out of the maneuvering fuel necessary to maintain their orbiting station. In other words, they have to be replaced. That replacement, of course, involves the expenditure of government funds.

Which is where Representatives Roby, Brooks and Aderholt (along with the remaining Republican members of Congress from Alabama) come in. To a man and woman, they voted for HR1. You will recall that the GOP House has insisted that the continuing resolution contain deficit-reducing cuts, as the Bush tax breaks for billionaires are considered sacrosanct. One of those cuts is that of a $700,000,000 program to replace the aging and failing weather satellite fleet of the National Weather Service. An expenditure that amounts to a couple of bucks for each person in America. When an EF-4 tornado (which may be upgraded to EF-5) passed within about 4 miles of me last week, killing over 30 people, I was at home, in a central hallway, not on the road as I might have been at that hour. I had put a fresh battery in my NOAA weather radio (and even it succumbed that night to the continuous alarms sounded). Was that “high risk” warning hours earlier worth two bucks to me? Would the average voter think it was worth two bucks to him? To quote a fast-falling star of the GOP, “you betcha!”

Simply put, without the irreplaceable data provided by these satellites, the National Weather Service, within a few short years, will be deprived of the ability to make the sort of predictions that saved countless lives last week. With those warnings, we mourn hundreds, but we could have been mourning a thousand or more. Any member of Congress who voted to subject voters to this risk, and any political party that so advocated, should be made to pay the political price for it. No one can say when, or exactly where, but within a few years, people will lose their lives to tornadoes because Representatives Roby, Aderholt and Brooks thought that tax breaks for their multimillionaire supporters were more important than the safety of their constituents. That is almost a mathematical certainty. I shouldn’t even have to mention that accurate weather forecasts are of extreme value and importance to American troops, sailors and airmen fighting around the world.

There will be voices that will say we must not “exploit” the tragedy of April 27 for political ends. We can be sure that the first mention of these irresponsible votes will garner squeals of “exploitation!” and “politics!” from the other party. To be sure, the issue must be discussed in a manner that respects the feelings of those who have lost homes and loved ones. “Bloody shirt” visuals are not necessary to make the point, and would not be appropriate. But it would be a greater disservice to those who suffered loss not to raise the issue, and raise it forcefully.

As to precedent, there is only one issue a society debates that is more important than quotidian public safety, and that is the decision to go to war. I do not have to remind any reader of the absolute politicization of the War on Terror that Bush, Cheney and Rove deployed in the 2002 and 2004 elections. Any Democrat, regardless of his or her record, was subjected to accusations of cowardice, disloyalty, and incompetence. Georgia Democratic Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from the Vietnam War, was the subject of 2002 ads pairing his picture with those of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein; he was narrowly defeated by Republican Saxby Chambliss. If the Republicans do not hesitate to engage in tasteless lies, we must not hesitate to make forceful, truthful arguments about their records. Perhaps not this week, but throughout the remainder of the spring tornado season, we should all write letters to the editor calling these members of Congress, and their party, to answer for their votes. Come 2012, some negative paid media is in order. We cannot let them get away with hamming it up before TV news cameras and expressing their “concern” for tornado victims, while casting votes that assure there will be hundreds more of them in the future.

Lest anyone think this is a “regional” argument only applicable in North Alabama’s Tornado Alley, we mustn’t forget that accurate weather forecasts are a vital interest of the other end of the state, including the GOP stronghold of Baldwin County.

More on the disaster of Republican disaster philosophy in my next post.

I Say Obama, You Say Osama, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

2011-05-02T06:01:00.006-05:00

Wow. What a difference a few hours makes in politics.

As a wise Democratic street fighter of my close acquaintance noted on Facebook early this morning, “I hate to allude to Ross Perot, but ... the giant sucking sound you hear is the wind exiting 80 GOP freshman Congressmen, who are contemplating an Obama approval rating of 91%.”

Is this wishful thinking, or sound political analysis?

Let’s look at the inexorable downhill slope that was George W. Bush’s Gallup Poll approval rating:

Bush’s approval had dropped near 50% on the day before the 9/11 attacks. In their immediate aftermath, they reached for the sky, topping near 90%. As Bush failed to produce the cooling body of bin Laden, permitted his escape at Tora Bora, and was ridiculed for declaring “Mission Accomplished,” that number began to drop until his invasion of Iraq in 2003. The American instinct to support the volunteer troops of a democratic republic pushed him back up to around 70% at the start of the ill-advised Iraq invasion. After events like Abu Grahib became public knowledge and the American people watched Bush’s understaffed occupation allow an insurgency to blossom, his approval dropped again to around 50% - low for a wartime President.

Following the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003, Bush saw a quick uptick to about 64%, a gain of 14% or so. It would not regain that point for the remainder of his term, and made only transient reversals of the overall downhill trend. So, which of the gains in popularity does Obama’s potential upswing most resemble?

Bush’s 9/11 leap of near 40% was a natural response to a national crisis, and probably can be largely attributed to a rally-around-the-flag sentiment, not unlike that enjoyed by President Carter in the immediate aftermath of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran. The 14% Bush jump in the aftermath of Saddam’s capture was impressive. While Saddam was never been popular in the United States, opposition to the Bush diversion into Iraq tempered that dislike among all groups except die-hard, fact-immune Republicans.

Osama, on the other hand, had a 97% unfavorable rating in an ABC News/Washington Post poll in late 2001 (I want to find the other 3%), and he never enjoyed a similar attenuation of that disgust. Any President could have had a live Osama given the Edward II treatment at Ground Zero without serious public blowback. If Bush got a 14% boost from catching Saddam, it stands to reason that the death of the undisputed culprit of 9/11 will give Obama a substantially larger boost. Given that the 90% Bush rating in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 probably represents an historical ceiling in Presidential “popularity,” and that Obama’s current approval rating, pre-Abbottabad, was about 46%, a figure in the mid-80’s is perfectly reasonable. Remember, while Obama has suffered some recent political wounds (a few, as I have noted, self-inflicted), Bush was toting a lot of political baggage on 9/10, and his numbers were not much better than Obama’s on April 30. If you watch (or watched) the visuals of cheering thousands in Lafayette Park and Times Square at 3:00 a.m. this morning, you will agree the mid-80’s figure is sensible.

This can be a game changer, for the entire arc of his administration, if Obama finds the wit (and the killer instinct so far lacking) to use it. I would dread this week at work, were I a fundraiser for Romney or Pawlenty. Or for the RCCC. While Bush’s meteoric rise in September 2001 was reflexive on the part of voters, Obama’s is going to be substantive, and merit-based. More to the point, it’s going to come at the expense of Karl Rove’s favorite bullet point since 2000: that Democrats in general, and Obama at the moment, are soft, and unwilling to pull the trigger in the name of national security. This morning, that talking point is sharing the same briny grave as Osama. Being substantive, it should be far more durable than Bush’s 9/11 boost - and that popularity spike was still at a healthy 69% on Election Day 2002. Remember, gentle reader, that the GOP scored a gain of two Senate seats and eight House seats that day, as well as ~~gaining~~ stealing the Alabama governorship.

From a policy perspective, the potential parallel to classical Athenian history is hard to resist. In the aftermath of the Athenians’ triumph over the Megarians for possession of Salamis, c. 600 BCE, they were experiencing grievous turmoil between their wealthy oligarchs, and their growing population of disfranchised workers, debt slaves and tenant farmers. Solon had been the hero of the recent Athenian victory over Megara, and like the Americans to Washington in 1788, the Athenians turned to Solon to arbitrate their differences. What Solon accomplished made a true single payer health plan look like small potatoes. Using his military popularity as a springboard, he abolished debt slavery (freeing thousands), reformed citizenship laws to allow immigrants to attain citizenship, redistributed the property of large landowners to small farmers, and gave the poorest workers, the Θήται, voting rights, effectively founding Athenian - and Western - democracy. While worried, I am hopeful that Obama has actually read his Herodotus.

From a practical perspective, we Democrats have opportunities from this morning’s good news. Our talking points in the weeks ahead need to make several facts clear to voters:

Bush and the Republicans pulled the Special Forces and other elite units out of Tora Bora in 2001, allowing Osama to escape. Obama sent the SEALs into Abbottabad.
Competence and smarts - increasingly a Democratic monopoly - are more effective than swagger and bullying bravado in maintaining national security.
While we certainly give due credit to the skills and courage of the military and intelligence personnel, without whom this could not have happened, any reasonable person has to give credit to the resolve, determination, and - try not to use this in your letters to the editor - cojones of the President, who rolled the dice, pulled the trigger, and engaged in any other positive metaphor applicable in the premises.

Should we use this for political advantage? One last time, I quote my acquaintance who was busy last night on Facebook. After some probable Dittohead chastised him for one of the earlier quotes, he responded:

Mr. XXXXXXX, I am touched by your gentle rebuke. I shall refrain from further political comment on this great national occasion - to the full and same extent that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party refrained from politicizing the war on terror in the 2002 elections, and painted everyone who questioned their competence as traitors and cowards. (insufferably smug grin)

Preach on, brother.

Three to Life - The Myths of Teacher Tenure “Reform”

2011-04-17T06:01:00.022-05:00

One of the more closely watched bills at this stage of the 2010 Regular Session of the Alabama Legislature has been SB310, a Republican proposal to “reform” the teacher* tenure law in Alabama. The list of the bill’s sponsors reads like a Who’s Who of the hard-core GOP political apparatus: Senators Pittman, Dial, Waggoner, Marsh, Taylor, Beason, Williams, Blackwell and Whatley. The bill’s main sponsor, Sen. Trip Pittman of Baldwin County, has been quoted as saying the object of his bill is “making it easier for school boards to get rid of the bad ones [teachers].” (Please note how the linked story from The Birmingham News contains a couple of short “balance” quotes from AEA Executive Director Paul Hubbert, and devotes many column-inches to quotes and “horror stories” from the bill’s proponents. Nice balance, Si.) The Mobile Press-Register has fallen in line with the Business Council line on the bill.

Don’t believe that hogwash. This bill, pure and simple, has two objectives: (1) punishing teachers who, through AEA, supported Democratic legislative candidates in 2010, and provided support for Gov. Robert Bentley in the 2010 Republican Primary over Business Council insider Bradley Byrne; and (2) intimidating teachers from such political activity in the future.

Before getting into the specifics of the bill, let’s take a thumbnail view of the tenure rights of a classroom teacher under current Alabama law. (Slightly different standards and procedures apply to principals and other supervisors.) First off, a school board may non-renew a teacher’s contract before the end of their third year on the job for good cause, bad cause, or no cause at all. After that time, a teacher is considered tenured, or in the awkward language drafted by a lawyer, has “attained continuing service status.”

Let’s suppose that a tenured teacher is accused of having shown up at school on a couple of occasions under the influence of alcohol. The teacher denies this. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the teacher was as sauced as Otis Campbell on the days in question. Whether the superintendent and board of education propose to terminate the teacher, or suspend him for more than seven days, the procedures are roughly the same.

First, the board must give written notice to the teacher, setting forth the proposed discipline and the general grounds for it. A tenured teacher may only be fired for “incompetency, insubordination, neglect of duty, immorality, failure to perform duties in a satisfactory manner, justifiable decrease in the number of teaching positions or other good and just cause.” The teacher may then insist on meeting with the board before it votes, and that hearing must be held between 20 and 30 days of the notice. If the board votes to fire or suspend the teacher, the teacher may ask for a hearing before a neutral arbitrator. If the teacher and the board can’t agree on an arbitrator, one is appointed by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a federal labor agency. That arbitrator (called a “hearing officer” in the statute) must hold a hearing between 30 and 60 days after his or her appointment. The arbitrator may uphold the firing, may reverse it and order the teacher reinstated, or may impose a lesser sanction such as a suspension or reprimand. (Such a reprimand could be considered if the teacher ever screws up again, and an attempt is made to fire him.) Either party may ask the Court of Civil Appeals to review the arbitrator’s ruling, which may only be reversed if that Court finds the arbitrator’s ruling “arbitrary and capricious.” Suspensions of less than 7 days, or of transfers to another school in the same system, are subject to a similar procedure, except that the arbitrator’s ruling may not be appealed, and is final. A teacher’s contract is not “canceled,” i.e., he is not fired, until the hearing officer issues his or her opinion, and he must continue to be paid. This safeguards the innocent teacher from being starved into accepting a lesser punishment, transfer, or abandoning a meritorious fight for his job. Except for the substitution of a prompt hearing with an arbitrator for a hearing with the former State Tenure Commission, this is basically the law as it has existed since 1939.

So, if our hypothetical teacher actually did have a pint of Mr. Boston Vodka for breakfast, he will be fired in fairly short order, but not without an adequate opportunity to establish his innocence. He also has the right to prove to the arbitrator that he is in fact the best teacher in the system, the alcohol problem is the result of a recent family problem, that he’s getting help for it, and that both he and his students would be better off if he were given a lighter sanction. I guess the sponsors of the bill would rather replace this unfortunate chap with a rookie. Or someone who wouldn’t dare support a Democrat.

According to the Alabama Association of School Boards, which is pushing SB310, since the arbitrators replaced the Tenure Commission, they have heard 145 termination cases. The school boards have won 83 (57%) of those outright; the teacher was fired. Teachers have been reinstated without sanctions in only 20 cases (13%), and in 42 cases (29%); the arbitrator has imposed a lesser sanction on the teacher. It sounds like there is a real need for the current safeguards for a number of teachers, but that boards of education are well able to get rid of the true bad apples.

SB310 makes some draconian changes to the law that has worked well since 1939. Among these are:

Probably the worst aspect of SB310 is that it radically amends the procedure for a teacher to obtain neutral review of his or her dismissal. Instead of a speedy hearing before a neutral arbitrator, the teacher would be forced to file an action in the local circuit court, where it would go on the docket behind every other earlier case. Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb recently ordered drastic reductions in court operations in response to budget shortfalls. In this environment, those reviews would take months - or more likely, years. Years during which, under SB310, the teacher would not be getting paid. And the circuit judge would not have the discretion an arbitrator has under the current law to impose a lesser sanction. The judge would have to work from a typed transcript of the board’s “hearing,” and could not observe the demeanor of witnesses, as they would in any other case, to assess the credibility of the witnesses. (Under current law, the hearing officer observes both the teacher and the witnesses against him at a live hearing.) Finally, the judge could only reverse the board on “an express finding by the court that the decision was arbitrary and capricious, a manifest abuse of discretion, or the product of a material violation of the procedural rights of the employee.”
In addition to the current limited grounds for firing, SB310 provides that a teacher could be fired for “a consistent or pervasive record of inadequate student achievement or performance under the employee’s supervision.” In other words, a first-rate career educator could be fired if her students perform poorly on tests, even if that’s because she’s teaching in an overcrowded, under-equipped school in a socioeconomic disaster zone, where students have never done well on standardized tests. The board doesn’t have to fire her, mind you, but if she dares support the wrong candidate in the next election, those scores are grounds for termination.
SB310 would eliminate all independent review of a suspension of a teacher for less than 45 days. No arbitrator, no independent hearing, no nothing. In case you don’t grasp the full import of this measure, consider that teachers are usually paid over twelve months for nine or so months’ work. A non-reviewable 44-day suspension would result in the loss of nearly a quarter of the teacher’s annual salary. If I were a superintendent wanting to settle a personal score, a 44-day suspension might work better than a termination that might be reversed on review.
The bill likewise removes all transfers to another school from the current review process. This may not sound like an issue to many non-teachers, but I have at least 15 teachers in my immediate extended family, and you can rest assured transfers have historically been used for retaliatory purposes. Transfers are often not benign. Suppose that I were a teacher at Orange Beach Elementary School in Baldwin County, and I had even bought a home near there after gaining tenure. If I dare support the opponent of an incumbent school board member, she can arrange to have me transferred to Vaughn Elementary School in Stockton which, according to Google Maps, is 63 miles and 1 hour 39 minutes from Orange Beach Elementary. In an era of $4.00 a gallon gas (those are stop-and-go, not freeway, miles), that’s not a hassle, it’s an economic hardship.

As I noted starting out, this is all being done in the name of academic standards. SB310 is even called “The Students First Act of 2011.” This proposal, and others like it, have occasionally garnered support from fuzzy-headed otherwise-progressive Democrats who also insist that charter schools wouldn’t re-segregate Alabama education. A news flash for them: educational employment in Alabama is already knee-deep in Big-P Politics. SB310’s virtual abolition of tenure would give incumbent local board members and elected superintendents a green light to fully politicize the hiring processes in their systems. (Which might have the unintended political effect of entrenching Democratic machine control in places like the Black Belt, where boards are solidly Democratic.) It also greases the rails for those local board members who need to transfer or fire a qualified, experienced teacher to make room for their niece or nephew who just got out of college and needs a teaching job in the home county. There’s nothing “Students First” about that.

One of the weak excuses given for this bill is that it’s “too hard to fire an incompetent teacher in Alabama, and we have to make it easier for the sake of educational standards.” It takes three years for a teacher to attain tenure under current law. Three years. Does anyone think it takes New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick three seasons to decide if a player is good enough for his team? If a teacher is that substandard, three years is plenty of time to figure that out, and get rid of him.

The bill’s prospects are sadly good, in the current machine political atmosphere of Montgomery. A handful of Republicans like Sen. Cam Ward of Shelby County, and Reps. Blaine Galliher of Etowah County, Todd Greeson of DeKalb County, and Owen Drake of Jefferson County, seem to be vacillating on the bill because of its extreme reach. A veto by Gov. Bentley would not be surprising, given his political debts to AEA. Of course, a simple majority overrides a gubernatorial veto in Alabama, and the kleptocratic GOP leadership wants this bill badly. They have rebuffed Dr. Hubbert’s public offer to support any bill, in his words, “to expedite the hearings and have them quicker and more efficiently,” which would remove one of the major complaints of SB310’s sponsors. I, for one, would forgive any Democrat who reached out to these Republicans to encourage them to remain independent of the latter-day Boss Hoggs trying to impose their iron hands on the legislative process. This bill would also be a good opportunity for my readers to try out the site’s newest feature: a page with hyperlinks for e-mailing letters to the editor of most of the newspapers in the state.

Politicians have had it in for teachers since at least 399 B.C.E., when Anytus and Meletus, a couple of extremists in the Athenian Assembly, arranged for the execution of Socrates, whose teaching was not acceptable to the political powers that were. Opposing the contemporary version of this unibrow hatred of education is as good a cause as any to rally around in this session. And I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t acknowledge my glee at the way GOP overreaching is turning teachers into Democratic activists at a pace Dr. Hubbert can only dream of achieving.

*Although I use the word “teacher” throughout this post, the tenure law also applies to a wide range of support personnel such as custodians, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers. I just figure you don’t want to read “and/or support personnel” 60 times.

What We’ve Got He-ah Is ... Failure to Communicate

2011-04-12T06:01:00.004-05:00

No, the post’s title does not refer to the idyllic past to which the Alabama Republican Party wants to return the Department of Corrections, though I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if they would take it several steps in that direction if they could. Instead, I am thinking of another opportunity we Democrats have to move from our B Game to our A Game.

I am thinking rather of communications - and not the general concept of communications, which embraces everything from paid media to shoe-leather canvassing. I am thinking of “communications” in the sense it is usually used in the professional political world. In that sphere, the “communications” function is usually referring to the campaign’s or party’s point person for media relations. Of course, the state Party has for years had a communications director on board during election years, as have gubernatorial campaigns and other major campaigns. In both election and off years, the Party chairman and executive director have also undertaken part of this function, and the state Party has overall done a good job of it for some time.

Unfortunately, the state Party has to focus most of its attention on the major metropolitan dailies, the television news, the Associated Press, and to a lesser extent, the dailies in mid-sized cities like Anniston and Dothan. This leaves a big gap in an area where we Democrats have been getting our clock cleaned the last couple of cycles, and have to do a better job: smaller cities and rural counties outside the Black Belt. Across the Tennessee Valley, down the eastern and western borders of Alabama, and in a few pockets like Walker and Talladega Counties, these counties used to be part of our base. Now they are battlegrounds where we are barely holding our own. The immutable math of Alabama politics for the next decade looks a lot like this: we’re going to win the inner cities and the Black Belt. We’re going to lose in the white flight suburbs like Shelby, Baldwin, and Autauga Counties. If we’re going to regain legislative influence, and win statewide races, we have to regain ground in the mid-size and rural counties in the rest of the state. And a big part of that is going to be influencing the media atmosphere in those counties.

Now, I am not going to name names here. Or preach. But what I want to do is illustrate the sort of effort I have in mind. In trying to figure out how well local Parties have been getting the Democratic message into the news, I spent some time looking, with the help of Google and the search functions of several newspapers’ individual websites. I found a great article in The Demopolis Times, which ran during the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The 2008 Democratic National Convention.

I don’t claim to have checked every non-metropolitan paper, and I won’t name the ones I did (as I am not finger pointing), but I was not able to find a story quoting a county Democratic chairperson in any non-metropolitan daily newspaper during the 2010 election cycle. (I spot-checked about 15 or 16 smaller dailies and larger weeklies.) Now, anyone is welcome to post a link in the comments, showing me one I missed - and I hope someone does. I want to recognize those local chairs who are doing a good job. But anything short of 100 links I somehow missed won’t change my conclusion: I should have found such a story in every paper I checked.

We are going to have to do a better job of presenting our case on the front pages of these non-metropolitan newspapers if we are going to overcome the Republican bias of Fox News and the Newhouse papers in Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville. Fortunately, this is something that doesn’t take a significant amount of money, and really doesn’t consume that much time. It doesn’t take a county Democratic chair that long to say “The Republican Legislature has shown its true colors by refusing to take the sales tax off food.” - and that makes a great quote on page one.

Our new state chairman, Judge Mark Kennedy, has begun one thing I like. He has started releasing statements on a more regular basis than any of his predecessors, on a wide range of current issues. Not every one makes the lead story in the news, but some do. Do I expect county chairs to call their local papers daily? No, at least not until fall of 2012. But we can make some hay during the legislative session, and begin to posture ourselves for 2012 and beyond.

There are a few points to keep in mind in raising the local-media profile of your county Democratic Party:

Cultivate a regular contact. You don’t want to avoid anyone on the small staff of a local paper, but, as a local Democratic leader, you probably have a good idea who is the most sympathetic - or at least the least unfair - member of the staff. Your talking point has a much better shot at page one if it goes through such a writer.
Take the initiative. This is probably the most important point of all. Media folks are like the rest of us; they never have enough time for everything. This is even truer as media outlets reduce their staffs in the wake of the Bush Recession. If you wait for them to call you for a quote, the Democratic message will be unread in your county. Call your contact at least once a week during the legislative session, and every day during the general election campaign. Even if you don’t have a point to push (and you should), they may have a political story they’re working on, and that would give you the perfect chance to work the Democratic position into the story. Be ready with something worth saying, and the Democratic message will be read in your county.
Be confident. I know some people, even Party leaders, who don’t feel comfortable in the limelight. First and foremost, I promise you, no local Democratic chair is going to face a lectern like the one in this photo. Raising the Party’s media image is a matter of a phone chat, or talk over coffee, with a local reporter whom you already know well. If you absolutely, positively don’t feel comfortable doing this sort of thing, designate a vice chair or other person as your local communications director. Just keep in mind, at the local level, it is the chair the local media wants to quote.
Coordinate the message for repetition. I am hoping that one of the things Judge Kennedy will be able to do is establish some sort of message tree - based on email or text - out of the Party office in Montgomery. Ideally, this would send out “today’s talking point” on one issue or another. Repetition increases the effect of any message. If a voter hears our Supreme Court nominee say something on WSFA or reads Judge Kennedy’s comment in The Montgomery Advertiser, then reads the same point made by a local chair when turning to The Alexander City Outlook or The Troy Messenger for their local news, it’s a lot more apt to stick.
Tie in to the lead news story. This point is closely related to the previous one; it is likely that any coordinated effort will be closely linked to the lead story in that day’s news. But even in the absence of a lead from the state, a local leader should be alert for local opportunities. A perfect example is the story linked above from The Demopolis Times. If you look at it, you will note that it is essentially an Associated Press story, re-written by a local writer with a few localized quotes from Chairman Coplin. (If you closely read your local paper, you will see that is a common writer’s way of getting a long story with little work.) A story about the Democratic Convention that probably wouldn’t have made the local paper got in, because of what I suspect was good work by the Marengo County Party to make it happen.
Don’t forget local radio. This is a tricky one. A lot of smaller cities now have local news/talk radio outlets, and some of them actually have fair Arbitron ratings. On the other hand, this is a medium that the loony right has claimed as its own, and the demographics of that listener base may make it unworthy of a big investment of time. The important thing to avoid is giving them the chance to say “the Democrats wouldn’t come on the air with us.” On the other hand, if the issue is one where that audience might be receptive - the GOP refusal to rescind the legislative pay raise they ran against comes to mind - it might be worth calling in, or making yourself available in the studio.

In his play The Critic, British poet and Member of Parliament Richard Brinsley Sheridan had one of his characters say, “The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous, licentious, abominable, infernal— Not that I ever read them! No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.” As Democrats, we often feel this way about our local papers. A big part of putting our Party back in its historic position of leadership is doing our part to turn that image of the media around - or, more precisely, turning around our image in that media.

Dance With the One That Brung Ya

2011-02-26T06:01:00.003-06:00

My last post looked at the pitiful emerging story of a President, given a permanent (and prominent) place in the history books by the Democratic Party, who has apparently struck a deal to write off that party in an entire state. (Not that we are going quietly, Barry; just so you’re warned before the 2012 primary.) In this post, I want to talk about betrayal of a more overt and explicit sort, that of the party-switchers. This calls for more than a pained recital of the old country song that gives this post its title.

Since the November election, there has been a minor rash of defections of elected Democratic officials to the GOP. First, four members of the Alabama House of Representatives switched in November, less than a month after the election. Their defection gave the GOP a theoretically filibuster-proof supermajority in the House, that nearly came unraveled in “Bingo Bob” Riley’s “ethics” special session, when AEA leaned on the defectors hard enough that some balked at Riley’s anti-teacher legislation. Circuit judges in Marshall and Limestone Counties switched (though the Marshall County Republican Executive Committee voted a unanimous “not welcome” to the switcher there). The usual Republican media parrots all blared “TEN DEMOCRAT OFFICIALS SWITCH TO GOP” on a slow January news day. Only on reading the story did you learn that one large-county sheriff was the only one of note. I think the others were all constables or something in Covington County.

This phenomenon has been reported in the media without any real degree of historical perspective. Party switching in Alabama has been taking place for several decades, though never at any cataclysmic pace - not even today. Back in the late 1980’s, as Shelby County shifted from a reliably Democratic county (albeit of the George Wallace variety) to a Republican stronghold, Sheriff Buddy Glasgow and a couple of other local officials crossed into the Vale of Evil. Public Service Commission President Jim Sullivan, first appointed as a Democrat in 1983, switched to the GOP after his election to a second full term as a Democrat in 1988. Fob James made the switch to win in the national GOP surge of 1994, after his 1978 election as a Democrat, and 1986 and 1990 runs in the Democratic primary. Secretary of State Jim Bennett made the jump in 1995, after being one of a handful of victorious Democrats on the state ticket that year. Of course, that was after Richard Shelby waited until the day after the 1994 election (presumably to see which party would control the Senate) to announce his switch. Members of the Legislature have also made the switch before this year. The Alcibiades moment of Senator Larry Dixon was so far back in antiquity, he may have actually known Alcibiades. George Wallace, Jr., (who is actually George Wallace III) became a Republican between his unsuccessful run for Lieutenant Governor as a Democrat in 1994, and his successful run for the PSC as a Republican in 1998. And of course, we all remember Dr. Parker ... what was his last name again? The patient-killing guy from Huntsville?

Most of these defections have two things in common. One, they are always made in the name of conservative values which the defector suddenly realizes are a Republican monopoly. “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me ...” Secondly, and substantially eroding the credibility of the first, they come on the heels of some perceived erosion of Democratic electability at the national, state or local level. The point here, and it bears reminding a forgetful media, is that an environment that triggers switches is not likely to remain permanent. A few people switching does not call for the obituary of the Democratic Party.

This switch is frequently not the smartest political move. For one thing, it is often unnecessary, and based on an overreaction to a one-time trend. 1994’s national Democratic meltdown became Alabama’s 1998 Democratic surge, on the coattails of Don Siegelman, and Wallace and Bennett were barely able to scrape by with their wins. But in what is even more important to the unprincipled opportunist, it’s frequently not availing as a career-saving move.

Richard Shelby pulled it off, but he did so from a hard-to-copy position. He was already sitting on a mountain of cash after his 1992 re-election, and had four years to pile on more before facing the Quixotic opposition of Clayton Suddith, who mortgaged his pickup to pay his qualifying fee. Sullivan likewise enjoyed a long post-betrayal career, but PSC presidents have an historic tradition of seriously out-fundraising their opponents.

More typical is the experience of Sheriff Glasgow. Running in the Republican Primary in 1990, he was soundly beaten by his former chief deputy. And you don’t have to have the political memory of a Publius to remember what happened to the former Congressman Griffith in the 2010 Republican Primary. He was trounced so badly that he failed, for unspecified speculative reasons that can only bring a chuckle here, to even make it to the podium on primary night to make a concession speech.

So what are we to do about this phenomenon? There is no shortage of Democrats who say “good riddance,” and who wish that even more moderate or conservative officeholders would defect. Many of those are the same people who claim to be happy when imperfect Democrats like Congressman Bobby Bright go down to defeat in general elections. I understand and appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t necessarily share it. It’s still embarrassing to have officeholders defect. It gives the GOP media something to whoop about, and you have to spend a lot of time and money going after them in the next election. And however annoyingly conservative these switchers were, those in legislatures did formerly vote to organize their legislative bodies as Democrats. Our caucus in the U.S. House may be more pure and holy than it was in 2009, but it’s also in the minority. (As I have made clear elsewhere, I blame a White House that utterly failed at selling its anemic health care, economic, and financial reform policies, for failing to give these Blue Dogs necessary political cover.)

It’s incumbent on the Party leadership at every level, both in the Party proper, and among the caucus leadership in legislative bodies, to help remind the entire office-holding Party of the likely futility of switching. This is not something you want to do with a high degree of visibility, and even a private, but overt “conversation” might be over the top. But the occasional joke at a banquet about “One-Term Griffith” will not only bring a laugh, it will serve as a reminder. Post-switch retaliation, such as letters to the editor (and the occasional lawsuit!) demanding refunds of contributions are less effective, though a few switchers have been shamed into refunding Democratic contributions.

What may be more fun, and more effective in the long run, is to dig around on your hard drives (or, if you are Old School, your boxes of photo prints) for photographs of your favorite former Democrat, before his switch, smiling alongside some group that is bound to be anathema to his new Republican friends. I show here, a modest example.

For those who must rant to the editor, and I certainly see the therapeutic benefit, I leave you with one suggestion. There is a party-switcher about whom we should brag on such occasions, however futile his inflexible conservatism reveals an S.E.C. diploma to be. Former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm of Texas was elected to the U.S. House as a Democrat in 1978, and re-elected in 1980 and 1982. Shortly after his 1982 re-election, he chose to switch. However, he didn’t just change the animal decorating his House office. He resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives, stating that the voters of his district had voted him back in a few weeks earlier as a Democrat, and they deserved the opportunity to vote him out if they disapproved of his switch - without having to wait two years. A rare moment of GOP integrity. Of course, those who do write the editor should recount Gramm’s example, and call on the latest Benedict Arnold to emulate it.

None Dare Call It Treason

2011-02-05T06:01:00.014-06:00

No, I have not gone over to the cause of one of the all-time loopiest books ever written, which includes claims that Eisenhower was a Communist sympathizer, not to mention Kennedy and Johnson.

But the title of John Stormer’s book naturally leapt to mind when someone shared a bit of news this week that emerged from the always-interesting pen of Bob Martin at The Montgomery Independent. The lead item in Martin’s column was itself conspicuously absent from the pages of the state’s “mainstream media,” and will probably remain so until they can’t ignore it any longer. Martin cites a source who told him that outgoing Governor “Bingo Bob” Riley offered incoming Attorney General Luther Strange $2,000,000 in campaign financing for a 2014 GOP gubernatorial primary challenge against Governor Robert Bentley. Strange’s end of the quid pro quo would be to “protect” Riley’s two children (and from what would they need protection from the state’s lead prosecutor, pray tell?), and to divert state legal work to them when possible.

Unfortunately, that story wasn’t the shocker. Anyone with two brain cells and access to a media outlet not controlled by Si Newhouse knows what a crook Bob Riley is. The real alarm bells sounded as I read the second half of Martin’s column. In that, he revealed a plausible explanation for certain conduct of the Obama administration.

In other posts, I have taken the Obama administration to task for what I, perhaps with too much naïveté, presumed was inattention on Obama’s part to the continuing partisan reign of terror of Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in the Northern District of Alabama. Martin cites a source who provides a far more troubling explanation. According to Martin’s source, Obama cut a deal with Senator Jeff Sessions, under which Sessions would not actively oppose Obama’s nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, in exchange for which Obama would not remove Canary from her perch - a position from which she has masterminded the ethically-riddled persecution of Democrats from Don Siegelman to the bingo defendants.

(Blink.)

Yes, if Martin’s source is right, Obama wasn’t asleep at the switch. He and his politically inept White House actually knowingly cut a deal with one of the most rancid members of the United States Senate, and Obama’s part of the deal was to throw the Alabama Democratic Party under the bus. Obama cut this deal at a time when the Democratic Party had a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate; Sessions should have been an ignorable, if odious, afterthought. This deal is just more proof of the political ineptitude of Obama and his Camelot-manqué staff.

Let’s put Obama’s action in perspective. Momentarily leaving aside the burning question of justice for Don Siegelman, leaving Canary at her post had the near-certain effect of further GOP politically motivated prosecutions in Alabama. Prosecutions that directly resulted in Republican political gains last November. Sessions knew that, and so did Obama. As a proximate and foreseeable result of Obama’s action, we not only have a Republican governor, we have a Republican legislature. As a proximate and foreseeable result of Obama’s action, African-American chairs of the House Ways and Means General Fund Committee and the Senate Education Finance Committee lost their positions to white Republicans. As a proximate and foreseeable result of Obama’s action, the national Party lost seats in the Second and Fifth House Districts that were won by Democrats in 2008.

If Obama, who seems to know no fight from which he will not run, was determined to make a deal with Sessions, there were better ways to do it. Build the Air Force tanker in Mobile (oh, wait, the competitor for that is Boeing, based in Obama’s Chicago). Find some policy issue on which to throw him a bone, just don’t sell out the Democratic Party in an entire state.

John Stormer borrowed his book title from a line by Sir John Harington, one of the more interesting figures of the infinitely interesting Elizabethan era. A soldier, courtier, poet, and essayist, he also gained fame by being the inventor of the modern flush toilet (hence the term, “john”). Harington’s epigram has the ring of truth:

“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

Perhaps. Even in the case of George W. Bush, many supposedly progressive Democratic voices in Washington flinched from the use of words like “idiot;” a word I would require considerable self-restraint not to use in Obama’s presence after Martin’s revelation. Obama’s infantile political crew settled on Charlotte as the site for the 2012 Democratic Convention - the only contender with no unionized hotel staffs in the city - and organized labor is described as “fuming.” He appears more likely than ever to have some opposition in the 2012 primaries. He doesn’t need any embarrassing headlines, and we have something in Alabama called the “Radney Rule.” I’m just sayin’, Mr. President.

Postlude: For those of you who live in the Scottsboros, Andalusias, and Tuscumbias of the state, write the editor or publisher of your local paper, and suggest they contact The Montgomery Independent and start carrying Bob Martin’s column and other items. Yes, they frequently bust Democratic chops, when deserved. But when the deserving always get a chop-busting, Democrats win in the long run.

Reports of the Alabama Democratic Party’s Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2011-01-30T06:01:00.005-06:00

After a few weeks off to catch my breath, and to deal with everything from the real world that could be put off until after the election (including an unforeseen family health problem; thanks again, all, for the calls and emails), it’s time to take a look at what happened, and why, in last November’s elections.

What, we know. For the first time since the votes were counted by funny-talking guys in blue uniforms, Alabama will have a Republican legislature, and the Tennessee Valley will be represented by an elected Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrats suffered our first shutout ever in statewide offices. A number of elected local Democrats went down, but the casualty count there wasn’t as bad as it was upballot. Just to pull out some examples, Democratic Sheriffs Jerry Studdard in Talladega County and Jimmy Harris in DeKalb County, as well as Democratic Sheriff nominee Chuck Phillips in Jackson County, handily beat their GOP opponents, even while the statewide ticket was taking a thumping in their counties. So let’s start our analysis with the fact that, despite what you heard a “political scientist” proclaiming on television on election night, Alabamians, even white Alabamians, will vote for at least some Democrats.

Many pundits took the opportunity of this election to call it an ideological refudiation (to borrow a word from an execrable source) of progressive, Democratic ideology. Under this paradigm, moderate and independent voters were reacting to the “liberal” or “leftist” tilt of the Democratic Party. While the message mismanagement (and in some cases, nonmanagement) of the Obama Administration made this a plausible hypothesis, a closer look at the numbers doesn’t bear it out.

The biggest problem suffered by Alabama Democrats in 2010 was nothing less - or more - than a significant upsurge in the white voter turnout. To see clearly how much the white vote increased this year, compare the Democratic and Republican vote totals in two overwhelmingly white counties, and three black-majority Democratic strongholds, in the 2010 and 2006 gubernatorial races:

	Democratic 2006	Democratic 2010	Republican 2006	Republican 2010
Shelby	10,696	13,577	37,161	49,118
Cullman	9,537	8,801	15,081	21,083
Macon	4,541	6,632	1,274	919
Green	3,260	3,666	973	665
Perry	3,025	3,277	1,237	1,138

Note that the Democratic vote in Cullman did not drop off that much, and the Democratic vote in Shelby actually made a small uptick. This was not a matter of traditional white Democratic voters switching parties in significant numbers. This was, purely and simply, a case of a lot of white folks, who had not been voting in recent cycles, coming out of the woodwork last November. (Don’t let anyone tell you that the significant increase in Shelby County is attributable to population growth in the last quadrennium. In the wake of the Bush Recession, housing starts there shrank to a trickle in the runup to the 2010 election.) Neither were the increases in Macon and Greene Counties indicative of a statewide (and offsetting) increase in black turnout; local bingo shutdowns by Bob Riley were almost certainly responsible for those numbers.

Of course, the increased white vote was seriously polarized. Heavily white, but historically Democratic strongholds like Cherokee, Franklin, Marion, and Jackson Counties, went for Bentley. The correlation between race and party choice in this election is obvious:

You may have noticed that the correlation is not so strong in those counties where the black population is under 10%. This is a long-standing historical phenomenon, and many of those counties have been part of the Democratic base. The correlation strengthens significantly as the black population approaches and passes 30%. While this is in part the mathematical result of an overwhelmingly Democratic black vote becoming a larger portion of the electorate, historical precinct-level studies have confirmed that the phenomenon has been manifest within those counties, at the precinct level. This failure of these Democratic base counties to polarize as extremely as other counties provides significant statistical support for a conclusion that it was “new” voters, not switching voters (as in the media narrative), that caused the Republican surge.

What is harder to say is, what caused this increase in white turnout, and its polarization. In part, this is because there is not the depth of exit polling data available that typically follows a presidential election. But it doesn’t take a very seasoned political hand to guess what it was. In 2006, only a handful of political junkies in Alabama knew who Barack Obama was. In 2010, he was President, and the constant focus of the Republican campaign at every level. His what-me-worry messaging style only allowed the GOP to paint him as a scarier, more liberal, and less American figure. Yes, Alabama once again ran the race flag up the pole, and saluted it.

I can see one objection to this analysis, and it bears answering. If race was the determining factor in this year’s white turnout, why did the same thing not happen in 2008, when Obama was actually on the ballot? Why were Lucy Baxley, Bobby Bright, and then-Democrat Parker Griffith (does anyone still remember him??) not swamped in the same racist riptide that caught Jim Folsom, Jr., Susan Parker, and a raft of veteran legislators? It is my rejoinder to this objection that gives me hope for the Democratic Party’s future in Alabama.

To understand what made 2006 and 2008 different from 2010, we have to reset our mental worldviews to the earlier years. We have to avoid the historical amnesia that is more characteristic of Republican voters. In each of the earlier election years, potential voters were treated to a steady diet of Republican incompetence. Katrina, an un-caught bin Laden, two wars dragging on without results, and a growing stream of Bush scandals were part of the national zeitgeist in both election years. By the time of the 2008 election, Lehman Brothers (which was founded in Montgomery) had failed, and the economy had gone into free-fall, on Bush’s watch. Even Bubba, watching Fox News, couldn’t avoid his daily dose of this bad news. Anyone who doubts that this sort of steady diet of bad news can overcome the deepest prejudices or sympathies, needs only look around to see how many Auburn or Alabama sweatshirts (as the case may be) vanish from public view when one of those football teams is going 5-7. In that respect, racists (to their horror) are just like everyone else. Fair weather fans. They simply were de-energized by a tidal wave (no continuation of the football pun intended) of bad news, and stayed home in the 2006 and 2008 cycles.

Since the day of Hippocrates, diagnosis has been the better part of prescription. We cannot replicate the national disasters of the Bush years. (Neither, like the GOP House, should we seek to for political gain.) We cannot, apparently, tutor the President on effective progressive advocacy. But we, as Alabama Democrats, can do a more effective job of sharpening the differences between us and the Alabama Republican Party. We can do a much better job of bringing to voters’ attention the sordid figure of the Wall Street Wizard behind the “Christian” curtain. We can, with skill, create a large measure of both paid and earned media to trim the edges of racist enthusiasm (and, thus, turnout). We can, at long last, and despite sputtering efforts to claim we were doing so, finally have a cycle where the Democratic Party rings the doorbell of every regular Alabama voter, greets him or her by name, and asks for his or her support. I am optimistic about the prospects of this from the comments of newly-elected SDEC Chairman, Judge Mark Kennedy. In his acceptance speech, he promised that “We are going to eat their elephant one sound bite at a time.” This (along with my years of knowing Judge Kennedy, and having helped in his judicial campaigns) tells me that he at least sees where the problem is. I suggest we all do what we can to help Judge Kennedy keep this focus, and resist the “wisdom” of the cliques who would tell him to keep doing things the old way.

Take heart in this. Whatever you read in the pro-Republican “media” in many parts of Alabama, do not become too discouraged. It may well be that the reports of the Alabama Democratic Party’s demise have been, like those of the Sage of Hannibal, greatly exaggerated.

When Is Ethics Reform Not Ethics Reform?

2010-12-20T06:01:00.006-06:00

I had hoped to have a brief sabbatical before resuming this space, but, alas, Choctaw Bob decided to call a special session of the new Republican Legislature, so at least one entry will be fueled by fruitcake and eggnog.

All you have to do in Alabama this week is pick up a major daily newspaper, (note the Publian throat-clearing on that page) or turn on the TV news, to hear how the Wonder of Ethics Reform has been ushered in by the new Republican monopoly on political power in Alabama. You would think no one ever testified under oath to Congress that Bob Riley pocketed millions in Choctaw casino money. Why, it probably all really went to those ethics-reform-killing Democrats who got voted out last month!

The Republican-Newhouse chorus of praise for restrictions on “lobbyist” expenditures depends, for its political effect, on the public’s failure to understand how lobbying really works. The rather simplistic public view - strongly supported by the editorial slant of the largest news outlets - shows most votes in the Legislature being determined over the tenderloin filet with Béarnaise butter at Sinclair’s or the chopped lobster over angel hair at SaZa’s. I won’t discount the impact this gustatory largess has on legislators (although both of the foregoing delicacies are within the per-meal limits of the new law), and its restriction will improve the moral atmosphere. But the real work of the lobbyist lies elsewhere.

The disproportionate influence of lobbyists in the Alabama Legislature stems from a number of factors. Perhaps the most underrated comes from their access to information not otherwise available to legislators. While legislators in many states have access to research staffs and personal staffs that are comparable to those in Congress, Alabama lags behind. The understaffed and underfunded Legislative Reference Service and Legislative Fiscal Office simply cannot provide anyone, including legislators, with much of the information needed to evaluate legislative proposals. Enter the lobbyist, or the interest group they represent. No one has performed this function as notably as the Alabama Education Association. No small part of the influence of Paul Hubbert and his employer comes from their mastery of the complicated budgetary and economic data necessary to balance a budget. In the coming GOP quadrennium, there will be new fights over how to deal with shortfalls in the education budget, but one thing will remain constant. If Governor Bentley’s staff says the Education Trust Fund will be X dollars in the black next year, and Dr. Hubbert’s staff says it will be Y dollars in the red, legislative leaders will be working from the latter presumption, even if they dare not admit it.

As much as lobbyists influence legislation by direct pressure, they earn their keep by simply tracking it, and counting the noses of supporters and opponents. Smaller groups, which don’t have a full time executive or staff in Montgomery, count on retained lobbyists to notify them if a bill impacting their members has been introduced, and then let them know where it is in the legislative process. Even the larger groups on Goat Hill - the AEA’s and the ALFA’s - largely use their lobbying staffs to send blast faxes or emails to members from Boaz to Brewton, to tell them it’s time to call their legislators about House Bill B. That sort of pressure, more than any martini, moves votes in the State House. Even, perhaps especially, in the case of big-ticket legislation, it’s the heavy-hitting principal, not the lobbyist, who makes the trek for deal-closing face time with a swing voter. John Archibald of The Birmingham News figured this out, when he noted (in attacking GOP Senator Scott Beason’s hypocrisy on “ethics reform”), that Beason didn’t wear a wire to talk to some briefcase-toting lobbyist lackey. He (allegedly) wore it to talk to Milton McGregor.

Of course, if you really want to move votes in the legislative process, donate. Fund those re-election bids. And while the “ethics reform” session put a few speed bumps in the path of redirected money, it came far short of erecting any roadblocks. Even the slight additional disclosure required under the PAC-transfer ban is likely to be of limited effect. Remember again AEA’s cannonade against Bradley Byrne during the GOP primary and runoff campaigns.

Even if Bill Maher got the source of the ads wrong, everyone in Alabama knew their origin. AEA’s sponsorship was the worst-kept secret in the history of Alabama politics. As with any step taken to dissuade future attackers, that bankrolling had to be an open secret to be effective. While the transfers to the “True Republican PAC” gave Tim James and Bentley a fig leaf behind which to hide, media buys of such an effective size can only come from a handful of places, and the old cui bono rule makes it easy to short-list the suspects. More to the point, despite the fact that everyone with a pulse knew the ads originated from AEA, they worked. Byrne went down in flames. In the meanwhile, the GOP “ethics” bills won’t particularly impede business interests funneling cash to “religious” groups, some 527 language in the bills notwithstanding. Those “religious” groups, in turn will continue to lobby for Christian stances, like corporate tax breaks, and will identify GOP nominees to their voter-members as “more aligned” with “Christian” positions.

The so-called “ethics reforms” may give the GOP some talking points, and may leave those unfamiliar with the daily grind on Goat Hill with the idea that things are now fine, but they really will not make any material change in how the people’s business is conducted at 11 South Union Street.

What we are left with is the inescapable conclusion that this session had nothing to do with ethics. It had everything to do with passing anti-AEA bills, banning teachers from running for the Legislature, and banning public entities from deducting AEA and ASEA political contributions from paychecks. (I am still waiting for the explanation of why it’s more unethical for a Democratic teacher to vote on an education budget, than it is for a Republican insurance agent to vote on a bill impacting the insurance industry.) Those bills would have been at serious risk of a Bentley veto come January, as well as being maneuvered behind budgets in a regular session. The 52-49 final House vote passing the payroll deduction bill shows that there was insufficient support to pass the bill in a regular session, with a governor more sensitive to employee rights.

Of course, as this blaring headline from The Birmingham News shows, the GOP and its media apologists have not wasted the opportunity to trumpet the “historic” accomplishments of Ethical Bob and his newly-empowered GOP Legislature. With few exceptions, the news coverage has repeated the Republican lie that Democratic Legislatures had “refused” to reform ethics, when in fact, Democratic proposals stronger than those on offer last week were passed by Democratic Houses, and filibustered or blocked by GOP minority blocs in successive Democratic Senates.

Perhaps - and it is our task as Democrats to help them do so - what the Republicans have done is to overreach in their giddy victory dance, and wakened a sleeping giant. In the early 1970’s, George Wallace, looking for some cash to spend as he chose, proposed a raid on the Education Trust Fund. Before this time, AEA had largely been a group of starving, underpaid professionals who gathered in Birmingham during spring break every year to get out of Scottsboro or Eufaula. Under the leadership of the recently-installed Dr. Hubbert, AEA rose with a unified voice, and hundreds of teachers jammed the halls of the Capitol, buttonholing every member of the Legislature. Not only was Wallace’s raid dead on arrival, before running for re-election in 1974, Wallace was careful to pre-empt AEA opposition by giving teachers a $1,000.00 a month across-the-board raise. (This would be close to $4,500.00 in 2010 dollars.) In recent years, while AEA has wielded unsurpassed clout by virtue of its focused financial support and lobbying effort, it has faded somewhat as a voting bloc. Some teachers look at their currently-comfortable paychecks, confuse themselves with members of the Mittelbourgeoisie, and vote Republican in response. Others heed the call of business-shill “clergy,” and vote Republican because Democrats aren’t trying hard enough to execute women trying to obtain abortions. Where the Republican attack on public education will be launched - reduced tenure rights to intimidate teachers, or diversion of scarce dollars to lower-paying charter schools - is not certain. That it will be launched is certain. Sooner, rather than later, any person with the wit to attain the baccalaureate which is a vocational prerequisite for teachers will realize these Republicans mean to do their wallets harm. The impact of 50,000 truly-ticked-off, college-educated-articulate men and women, with starting salaries of $36,000.00 from which to contribute, and all summer off work, can never be underestimated.

An Open Letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

2010-11-03T06:01:00.007-05:00

Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton

15 Old House Lane
Chappaqua, NY 10514

Dear Secretary Clinton:

Please resign your position as Secretary of State.

I ask you to do this not because of any dissatisfaction with your work in that position. Indeed, among the members of the current Cabinet, you stand almost alone as one who has performed her duties in an efficient and effective manner, carrying out the progressive ideals the Democratic Party promised the American people in 2008. If Secretary of the Treasury Geithner and Attorney General Holder had performed their duties as competently as you have yours, tanning-bed freak John Boehner would not be the presumptive Speaker-elect of the House of Representatives today.

No, I am asking you to resign because a decent respect for the duties of a Cabinet member to the office of the President, demand that you no longer serve in the Cabinet of a President whom you intend to oppose for the 2012 Democratic Presidential nomination.

And I beg you to seek that nomination.

Fortune provided the Democratic Party in 2008 with the sort of opportunity that comes along once a generation. Eight years of know-nothing ideological Republican mismanagement had tarnished that party’s image to the point that voters handed Democrats not only the Presidency, but the largest Congressional majorities we had enjoyed in 40 years. We had the opportunity to effect the sort of generational realignment that Roosevelt accomplished in 1932. Progressive reforms, accompanied by the modern version of Roosevelt’s explanatory Fireside Chats, would have effected a change for the better in America as profound, and as permanent, as the New Deal. Health care reform that provided a single payer or public option, meaningful financial regulatory reform, and a stimulus smart and bold enough to truly dent the Bush recession, would have left American a much better place. More to the point, properly and unapologetically sold to the American people, they would have left the 2008 Democratic mandate largely intact, and long-enduring, as FDR’s majority lasted for decades. (By way of comparison, FDR gained 9 seats in the House, and 10 in the Senate, at his first midterms - despite undertaking a far, far more radical system of reforms than Obama timidly embraced. That is political acumen.)

Instead, we are faced this morning with the results of a pummeling. Why? DC pundits, wanting to sound sage and impartial (and wanting to be invited to the cocktail parties of a resurgent GOP) will tell us it is because Obama and the Congress tacked too far to the left in 2009 and 2010. That is, however, not the case.

The unvarnished and painful truth is that Barack Obama lacks the intellectual depth, the political savvy and skill, and the will to fight, to lead the fight against the Republican Party, and that is why I am asking you to challenge him for renomination.

I will use his incompetent management of health care reform to illustrate that point. As you doubtless hated to watch, his “campaign” for reform consisted of remaining aloof from the fight, and allowing Democrats in Congress - many of whom lost their seats yesterday - to carry the workload. Several competing plans bounced around the Hill for a year. When Obama finally weighed in, he unilaterally took single payer off the table, and meekly proposed a public option. This in itself showed that, while he may have “learned about diverse cultures” following his mother around Indonesia and the Pacific, he doesn’t understand the American legislative and political processes. As when trading cars, you don’t make your first offer what you really want to pay. You’ll only pay more, and get less, in the end.

Worse yet, rather than get behind one proposal early and use the “Bully Pulpit” to get its most appealing points across to the public, he vacillated between competing proposals, and allowed Republican obstructionists to define what “health care reform” meant in the public mind. As a result, when polled throughout 2010, most Americans said they were against “Obama’s proposal” or the “Democratic proposal,” and those beliefs were a principal cause of yesterday’s results. They were opposed to it because of what they had heard Republicans say about “death panels,” the loss of physician choice, and other horrors - none of which were, of course, in any Democratic proposal. But it’s only the Bully Pulpit, repeatedly used, that can rebut such lies. Your stance on health care during your 2008 campaign showed that you learned this lesson from your 1993-94 experience in the field.

That “Democrats went too far left” is further belied by polls conducted by Pew and other groups that described the Democratic proposal rather than labeling it. When respondents were asked about “a plan” that would, in essence, “require everyone to buy some kind of insurance, provide help to the poor to do so, require insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and prevent them from dropping those who get seriously ill,” - in other words, the final Democratic plan - the approval percentages were around 60%, with several percent disapproving because it didn’t go far enough. Yet Obama preferred getting some guys on the basketball court to show off his fadeaway shot to the cameras, to doing the heavy lifting of closing the information gap.

Obama and his inner political circle spent the first year and a half of his term believing the press reports of their own brilliance. This was an exercise in narcissistic folly. The tarnished Republican brand meant that any Democrat was going to win in 2008 (although Obama, trailing in September, came too close to losing). The structure of the primaries virtually guaranteed that whoever won the Iowa caucus would once again be the Democratic nominee. In the runup to that caucus, you were subjected to brutal and unrelenting media scrutiny, as you should have been. President Obama, pointedly, was not. You made some mistakes, from which your later campaigning showed you learned. Meanwhile, future President Obama’s aloof leadership style and shallow grasp of American democracy went unchallenged, and unrevealed. Unfortunately, the voters did a fine job of revealing them yesterday.

I will be the first to admit I am asking you to take a gamble. It is possible that the President has learned his lessons. Much too late, he adopted a more strident tone in his public rhetoric. But if he were as bright as his media reputation suggests, his obsession for bipartisan accommodation on major reforms would not have outlived Summer 2009. Yesterday would have been no more than a minor seasonal midterm adjustment. Perhaps you have a month or two to decide, but an effective challenge to a sitting President means that you need to be on the rubber chicken circuit soon. It is not as long a shot as you may think. Even before yesterday’s debacle, an Associated Press poll showed that 47% of Democratic voters think Obama should be challenged for the nomination.

Like so many Democrats, I so wanted this President to succeed. I have given him every chance I can. It is going to take someone of your stature and abilities to keep him from using the muscle of incumbency to secure renomination and further damage the Party and nation. I am willing to do my part, and I cannot be alone.

I will meet you in Des Moines.

Your friend and supporter,
PubliusIX

Focusing on a Local Sheriff’s Race, or, I Thought “Bray” Was What a Mule Does

2010-10-31T06:01:00.003-05:00

It’s a small thing, in many ways, a local race for sheriff.

But in others, it can show you the soul of a party - what sort of stuff its rank and file are made of, unvarnished and unglossed by consultants flown in from Los Angeles and paid for by Wall Street money.

These are my thoughts as I contemplate a handful of photographs sent to me by a Democrat in DeKalb County. The first of these shows Lamar Bray, the police chief at Mentone (what does he do, arrest summer camp kids who aren’t in their cabins by curfew?), and the GOP nominee for sheriff, looking at a campaign sign he claims was vandalized in Crossville.

Bray, after making statements to the media that the sign was “vandalized,” said on his website only that it was “significantly damaged” on the night of October 24-25. But the item on the “significant damage” also refers to signs being “removed,” making the obvious implication that nefarious supporters of Democratic Sheriff Jimmy Harris were responsible.

Before joining Sherlock Bray on his search for these vandals, let’s review DeKalb County geography. Crossville is merely a couple of miles down the road from Geraldine. It is also close to the Boaz-Albertville area. Was anything in particular going on in that neighborhood the night Bray claims his sign was “damaged”? Well, according to the National Weather Service:

0417 AM TSTM WND DMG ALBERTVILLE 34.26N 86.21W
10/25/2010 MARSHALL AL EMERGENCY MNGR

DAMAGE NEAR THE INTERSECTION OF 431 AND HWY 75...AND
ALONG HWY 75 TO THE INTERSECTION OF HUSTLEVILLE RD. THE
KMART AT 431 AND HWY 75 SUSTAINED ROOF DAMAGE. POSSIBLE
TORNADO DAMAGE.

The storm damaged the Albertville K-Mart that night, just a few miles from Crossville, and The Sand Mountain Reporter said it was still closed for most purposes at the end of the week. My informant also sent me a photo from nearby Geraldine, from the Fort Payne Times-Journal.

Now, if a storm can do that to a house, it can sure do it to an eight-foot, wind-catching campaign sign. You think, Barney Bray? Or is there a bigger issue here about that “honest sheriff” claim in your sign?

Just remember in these closing days, and stay alert for misinformation. Have a rapid response capability ready to go at a moment’s notice!

And Happy Hallowe’en!

Republican Mac Buttram: The Case of the Lying Parson in the 12th House District

2010-10-29T06:01:00.015-05:00

I am astonished that the BBC has not reported a major earthquake being felt in London, in the vicinity of Old Street Station, along City Road. There, in the garden of City Road Chapel, lies buried John Wesley, founder with his brother Charles of the Methodist movement. The Rev. Wesley is doubtless spinning in his grave with sufficient velocity to register on the seismograph at nearby King’s College.

Wesley’s eternal rest has certainly been disturbed by the actions of one of his ministers in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. This comes about because the contest for the seat in House District 12 features not one, but two ordained Methodist ministers. The Democratic incumbent, the Rev. Rep. James Fields, made national news, being noted in The New York Times. This spotlight came because Fields, an African American, won the seat in a 2008 special election in a district that is 98% white. Fields is a retired state employment service staffer who is active as a Methodist minister.

His GOP opponent is the allegedly Rev. Mac Buttram, who is not only also a retired United Methodist minister; Buttram performed the wedding of Fields to his current wife, whom he married after Fields’s previous wife died. Buttram had officiated at the funeral of the earlier Mrs. Fields. Rep. Fields was also surprised to learn that Buttram planned to run for the seat, when Buttram (in the center, holding hands in prayer with Fields in the photo below) had been, for several years, a member of his weekly prayer-breakfast group meeting at the Cracker Barrel in Cullman.

John Wesley was no stranger to the toil and strife of life in a fallen world. Charged with slander in Georgia, and abandoned by his wife late in life in England, he endured his share of bruises. But even he would probably, at this point, be pointing a finger at the uncharitable candidacy of the allegedly Rev. Buttram.

Then there is The Ad.

Beginning last week, the Alabama Republican Party began running an ad on TV in this race, in which the Rev. Fields is accused of “trying to let murderers out of prison.” I will let the ad speak for itself:

I will leave for another day for the allegedly Rev. Buttram to explain why he should be opposed to a legislative act, sponsored by the Rev. Fields (HB 532, 2010 Regular Session), that embraces the sort of forgiveness and reconciliation that are supposedly part of the core of Christian belief. For now, I will suggest to the allegedly Rev. Buttram that he take a day off after the election to listen to a message from the Rev. Billy Neal Moore, a black Pentecostal minister from Rome, Georgia (whom I have heard speak, to my considerable benefit). The Rev. Moore was as close as having his head shaved to Georgia’s electric chair, when a series of events led the family of his murder victim to seek his eventual pardon, parole and release.

What I will not allow the allegedly Rev. Buttram to escape this morning is being asked, how dare he don the robe of a minister, and mount the pulpit and preach in God’s name, when he has not admitted and denounced the lies told by him, and on his behalf, including those in the above ad, and asked the Rev. Fields for forgiveness?

Columnist John Archibald of The Birmingham News, who tends to tack a bit Republican (or at least conservative), charitably referred to the ad as “dubious.” I will go further. The ad is a patchwork of lies and misrepresentations unworthy of a minister - or any Christian, for that matter. For starters, the bill sponsored by Rep. Fields (which died in committee) did not make all murderers eligible for release. It did not impact murderers on death row at all; they still would have awaited execution. It only impacted those who have been, or would be in the future, sentenced to life without parole for their murder. It did not direct their release. It set up an elaborate series of hoops through which they would have had to jump. First, the murder for which they were convicted would have had to have been the first felony conviction they suffered; this is a bill for “crime of passion” murderers, not career criminals. They would have had to have served a minimum of 20 years of their prison term. Then, they would have had to petition the judge who sentenced them (or one from his circuit) to reduce their sentence from “life without parole” to “life, but eligible for parole.” Then, and only then, could they have asked the Board of Pardons and Paroles for a hearing. Anyone familiar with that Board will tell you, it doesn’t take much of an objection from victims or prosecutors to block a parole request.

But the ad is even more misleading. Not just every murderer serving life without parole could have applied for the bill’s relief. In order to even apply to the sentencing judge, the offender (besides having to have served 20 years), would have had to have had:

No disciplinary action for assault on other inmates or Department of Corrections employees during the 10 consecutive years immediately preceding the date of the petition for consideration;
No disciplinary action for escape or attempted escape during the 10 consecutive years immediately preceding the date of the petition for reduction;
No disciplinary action for sexual assault during 10 consecutive years immediately preceding the date of the petition; and
No disciplinary action for illegal drug or alcohol use as determined by testing positive for these substances on a urine test during the five consecutive years immediately preceding the date of the petition.

In short, no one would have even been considered for parole under this bill who hadn’t lived at the foot of the Cross for a very long time. I’d be surprised if a half dozen inmates are even eligible.

But the lies of the allegedly Rev. Buttram do not stop there.

According to a report in The Cullman Times, the killer of the son of the couple appearing in the ad would not even be eligible for consideration for relief under the bill in question. (Am I the only one who thinks they look a little old to have had a kid as young as those in the photos, even as far back as the supposed murder date in 1992?) Also, that Times report relates that the allegedly Rev. Buttram continues to refer to a local murderer in Cullman County as one eligible for release under the Fields bill, even though Rep. Fields has publicly pointed out to Buttram that the person in question is an habitual offender, and thus would not have been eligible.

I have heard it said of several figures whom I admire that they are “too Christian to be in politics.” Jimmy Carter and the Rev. Fr. Robert Drinan come to mind. The Rev. Fields may be in that company. I keep hearing that he is reluctant to do more than defend his own character, and is hesitant to shine a light on the character of the allegedly Rev. Buttram, which is darker by two shades than the Rev. Fields’s skin. He has steadfastly refused to bring up the divorce of the allegedly Rev. Buttram (DR-1980-138 in Lauderdale County, while I understand he was pastoring a church there, for the curious). We can only hope the voters of the 12th House District realize what a Christian gentleman they have, and will vote accordingly. For my own less forgiving part, I conclude with three messages:

To the allegedly Rev. Buttram: You, sir, are a disgrace to the proud heritage of Methodist leaders like John Wesley, Francis Asbury, and John Emory. I beg you to abstain from the pulpit until you have renounced your violations of the Ninth Commandment and the Second Greatest Commandment, and asked for the forgiveness of the voters of the 12th District - the Rev. James Fields in particular.

To the Rev. Fields: I wish I had your ability to look past the sins of others. But I want you to consider this. The Rev. Dr. King, painful though he must have found it, had the kind of heart and spirit that could love and forgive even George Wallace and Bull Connor, and I am sure he did. That did not mean that he felt constrained to remain silent in the face of evil. Remember this, as you continue what I hope will be a long career of service in elective office.

To the Rt. Rev. Dr. William Willimon, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church: What kind of [earthy Episcopalian expletive] ecclesiastic discipline are you running over there, that this backstabbing, lying Mac Buttram hasn’t had his collar jerked off so hard he developed petechiæ? (Readers may share this sentiment with Bishop Willimon by clicking on the link in his name. Those who would like to share their opinions of the two candidates with the Editor of The Cullman Times may click on the link here.)

Kerry Rich - Another Problem with GOP Family Values

2010-10-27T19:01:00.000-05:00

For a candidate who makes such a deal of his “faith,” Kerry Rich has some serious skeletons in the closet. After my post regarding his checkered past the other day, I got a suggestion to follow up on another lead. I did, and was saddened at what I found in the files of case number DR-2000-399 in the Circuit Court of Marshall County, Rich’s 2000 divorce from former wife Teresa Rich.

Kerry Rich 2000 Divorce

We all have our shortcomings, but we do not all have records of domestic violence. And while Rich may have repented and reformed, this disturbing part of his record at least gives the voters of his district another compelling reason not to vote for him. It is, after all, the Legislature which makes the laws under which perpetrators of domestic violence are punished, and prevented from doing further harm. Rich cast several votes against toughening child support laws, after being hauled back to court by his first ex-wife for nonpayment of child support. It is perfectly legitimate to worry that he would likewise vote against the victims of domestic violence, out of his apparent sense of identity with its perpetrators. Rich and this former wife eventually settled their disputes, and a consent divorce decree was entered in the case.

And it does make you wonder about the staff screening process at WJIA, the “Christian” radio station where Rich works today.

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Sparks Ascendant

2010-10-26T06:01:00.023-05:00

“Déjà vu all over again.”

Of all of Yogi Berra’s assaults on the English language, none has entered common usage more than this one. Not only does it amuse with its classic Yogi structure, it captures a certain sensation better than many more erudite expressions.

The phrase generates over a quarter of a million Google hits. It has inspired television scripts, countless quotations, and even an album and song by John Fogerty:

It only seems appropriate to use it to describe the phenomenon we are witnessing in this final week of the gubernatorial contest. At this point before the May primary, anyone who was keeping up with events knew some sure bets. Bradley Byrne would lead the Republican ticket (he did), but would not have enough votes to win without a runoff (which he didn’t), so he would have to campaign another six weeks before being crowned as the GOP nominee and presumed governor-elect (the part of the Republican narrative which went terribly awry).

On the Democratic side, the safe bet was even safer. Smooth, debonair, educated, erudite Artur Davis would ride a tsunami of Obama-style black excitement, combined with a respectable portion of the white vote, to the Democratic nomination - whereupon he would probably be edged out after a respectable, “reform vs. reform” campaign, by Byrne. Rustic Ron Sparks, shackled with a community college education and running from the unglamorous base of the Department of Agriculture and Industries, was no match for a D.C. product who had shone at the 2008 Democratic Convention, giving Obama’s seconding speech.

As the internet meme puts it, “epic fail.”

Polls were repeatedly published in Davis-friendly media outlets such as The Birmingham News and the Mobile Press-Register, showing Davis with leads of 10% or more within a week or ten days of the primary. Despite that, when the smoke cleared election night, Sparks had trounced Davis by a 62.4%-37.6% margin. Basically, Sparks had done 20% or more better than the most recent pre-primary polls touted by the “mainstream media.”

I have spoken before about the unreliability of those polls. What is interesting is that, in publishing the recent polls showing Sparks rapidly closing the gap, the media have been close-lipped about the crosstabs on their polls. This is telling. My best educated guess is that the Bentley lead, such as it is, is based on an artificial polling result among black voters that gives him several percentage points among blacks that simply won’t be there on Election Day. For better or worse, black voters continue to rely much more heavily on party identification as a voting cue than do white voters. (I would, of course, say it’s better.) The result of this is that a Republican will benefit in polling results from random black respondents naming the Republican, when (if properly polled) would give responses betraying their Democratic intentions. To an extent, this explains the “surprise” showing by Siegelman in 2002, when media polls had essentially written him off.

Which is where we come to “déjà vu all over again.” Sparks is now as close to Bentley in those “media polls” as he was to Davis in late May, if not closer. More to the point, Bentley is finally beginning to show the strains of media scrutiny. Even the Newhouse outlets, which have endorsed him, have been reporting on his inability to produce a consistent and credible story about the extent of his ties with AEA in his runoff campaign against Byrne. The Republicans in Alabama have almost forsaken Pelosi-bashing as a campaign theme in favor of promises of “honest” government. This is in no small part due to the availability of Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney Leura Canary and her politically timed indictments of Democrats. The problem is, when you are trying to sell yourself as the non-political honest alternative, “credibility” is not the toe of your own on which you want to be stepping.

While Sparks has not had the advantage of the corporate money dump that Bentley is using, he has done a fairly brilliant job of playing the hand he has been dealt. He has done well in the Wiregrass with the bingo issue, and should run well ahead of the last few Democratic nominees in that area. As it is part of the GOP base, that is important. Sparks is also benefiting from one of the strongest African-American turnout efforts in recent gubernatorial history. Black totals may not equal those of the Obama campaign, but GOTV efforts are substantially more intense this round than they have been for any Democratic gubernatorial nominee in the last 20 years. I have been talking to astute observers across Alabama, and have not gotten any indication that any significant part of the black political community isn’t on board and full-speed-ahead at this point. The one place I would have liked to have seen Sparks doing better would have been with the BP issue in Mobile and Baldwin Counties. That, however, has been a tough issue to exploit. Sparks doesn’t have the corporate cash for a targeted local paid media push, and the Press-Register isn’t going to give him much of a free-media break on the issue by pointing the finger at Bush-era deregulation.

This is critical, because - and I do not mean to point fingers here, only accurately describe what happened - two razor-thin Democratic gubernatorial losses of recent years, 1994 and 2002, took place when certain key black political organizations or individuals weren’t fully exerting themselves. If you know what to look for on a spreadsheet, their inactivity sticks out like a sore thumb. And in both instances, the resulting lower black turnout was fatal to the Democratic nominee. Had those problems not arisen, we would likely have a current political narrative about “Democrats have won the last five governor’s races.”

Do you need further proof that there is no structural preference for Republicans in Alabama gubernatorial elections? Look at the aggregate votes from the last four gubernatorial general elections:

	Democratic	Republican
2006	519,827	718,327
2002	669,105	672,225
1998	760,155	554,746
1994	594,169	604,926
Total	2,543,256	2,550,224
%	49.93%	50.07%

Remember, when looking at that, the GOP vote in 2006 was artificially boosted by Baxley’s unwillingness (and financial inability) to go negative on Riley, and Riley’s financial leveraging of his incumbency. (Which, being translated, means “Choctaw casinos.”) The Democratic landslide in the table, 1998, was against the power of incumbency. Correct for those factors, and this is a seriously Democratic number. I do not care if you are a political scientist whose reputation is based on the historic success of the football team up the street, saying there is a presumption of a Republican governor in any given year is bad political science.

All in all, it should be an interesting night a week from tonight. I think a lot of people, who have been getting their news from the Usual Suspects, are going to be as surprised as they were on the night of June 1. There is no need for Democrats to relent at this point, and, in fact, we’re close enough that the last little effort can put us first past the post. Look inside, and find it, people.

Or, once again to quote The Yogi, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Two Write[-in]s Make One Wrong

2010-10-24T15:00:00.006-05:00

They’re skeered.

The Republicans are skeered. They think Sparks is winning.

How, pray tell, do I know this?

If you want to know how someone (or some group of someones) feels, pay attention to what is coming out of his, her, or their mouth(s).

In the case of the Alabama Republican Party, the mouth would be the Mobile Press-Register, or one of the other Newhouse publications.

On page one of today’s edition, they have a story about a poll showing Bentley’s (alleged) poll lead over Sparks collapsing. But more indicative of GOP worry is another story, about a “grass roots” movement to get voters to write in some other candidate, rather than Sparks or Bentley. As the article states:

Calls for write-ins have come from across the political spectrum and throughout the state in recent days. Websites, including Face book [sic] and Twitter, have sprouted Alabama write-in pages, while [Birmingham talk radio persona Leland] Whaley and Jennifer Foster, a columnist for the Opelika-Auburn News, have suggested the write-in option to their listeners and readers, respectively.

Not content with the news story, the Press-Register has pushed the idea on its editorial page, as evidenced by today’s Sunday editorial cartoon, seen to the left.

And as if the print emphasis wasn’t enough, the Altman article is (as of 2:30 p.m. Sunday) the top-billed story on al.com’s state news home page. A screen cap of this posting is seen below. This, perhaps more than anything, shows the priority the Newhouse organization has given this story line. The story is at the top of the queue, despite having a timestamp in its dateline of 9:01 a.m. Normally, news stories on this page are time-sorted, with the most recent story appearing first. Advance Internet (the Newhouse online presence) maintains the option of “promoting” a story so that it remains in “first” place, so as to have more visibility. Normally, this is only done with stories of major breaking news import, such as an alien spacecraft landing in Selma, or an Alabama or Auburn third-string lineman spraining an ankle in practice. Or a story that Newhouse wants to push for political reasons. It takes a conscious editorial decision, presumably at an upper-level editorial or managerial desk, to do this. The write-in “story” didn’t land there by mistake. (I am thankful now for the practice I got in university, learning to read between the lines like this from deconstructing Правда.)

The Birmingham News has gotten into the promotion in a smaller way. Today’s column by John Archibald mentions write-ins, but in an allegedly humorous vein - offering up Cam Newton and others. But the News has pitched in by printing “grassroots” letters to the editor urging a write-in, such as this one.

What is the purpose of this push? For that, I turn to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman orator and statesman, who made one phrase the centerpiece of his forensics in murder trials: cui bono? (Who benefits?) Looking at the push, and its internal emphases, this isn’t hard to figure out. The two names most often mentioned as “acceptable” write-ins are those in the Press-Register cartoon: Bradley Byrne and Artur Davis. Byrne has disavowed the entire scheme. (Davis is presumably still too busy pouting over his canceled anointment to do so.) The real operative fact here is that Byrne’s base was among Republican apparatchiks. However disappointed they may be that the chosen insider didn’t get the nomination, they are not going to desert their party. (Not to mention, they are betting the BCA money pumped into Bentley will keep him on the GOP reservation should he prevail.)

Sparks has solid support from the Party base, in basically every region of Alabama, and those voters are not susceptible to the write-in concept. On the other hand, there continue to be those who cannot believe St. Artur ascended into Heaven without being nominated. Others, not quite so blinded, got enough Davis Kool-Aid during the primary campaign to be worrisome. (Notice whose photo is included above the fold in the al.com screencap.) In those quarters, there might be a few hundred votes statewide who could be led into burnishing their self-images as “enlightened reformers” by writing in Davis. Simply put, any real benefit of this trend, while small, is going to Bentley.

Another ironic aspect that reveals the motive of this effort is its content, and the proffered excuse for not voting for Bentley. It’s because Bentley is claimed to be the hand-picked candidate of Dr. Paul Hubbert and AEA. And, as any good Christian reader of The Birmingham News knows, Dr. Hubbert is the Antichrist, for proposing “liberal” ideas like the proper funding of public education. Of course, any honest halfwit knows that Dr. Hubbert’s only love for Bentley arose from the fact his name isn’t “Bradley Byrne.” Never mind reality, the Hubbert-Bentley shtick allows the GOP to repeat its theme of “AEA BAD, GOP GOOD” where it will (they hope) do them some real good - in legislative races. You notice they don’t point to any of the real reasons for voting against Bentley: That he seems a little dense for someone who supposedly passed the USMLE. That he seems to have a problem coming up with plausible deniability on a number of issues. That he has gone on the payroll of the Business Council of Alabama, and is thus controlled by out-of-state corporate interests. That he criticizes Sparks’s lottery plan, while offering no ideas on his own to improve education and economic development. That he looks like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.

So, how do we counter it? For starters, I am not sure the game is worth the candle. There are a couple of hundred scattered wine-and-cheese types who will fall for it, but I am not sure all of them planned to vote for Sparks in the first place. We may do better by merely using the obvious bias inherent in this coverage to shame those media outlets that are pushing the line. Even the most biased media feel compelled to quote a campaign or party spokesperson’s comment in such a story, so if that quote begins “Your paper’s bias is apparent because _____,” the story may well be stillborn. Or we can ju-jitsu this by pointing out the truth - they’re doing it because they’re skeered. They are losing ground fast, and they know it.

On the other hand, if we want to raise a little write-in mischief on our own, there are avenues to pursue. Voting blocs that will peel off Bentley. I’m just sayin’.

BREAKING DEVELOPMENT

At about 6:00 p.m. tonight, when I checked back, the al.com story had been “demoted” to its place in the chronological queue. Can we say “busted”?

Kerry Rich - A Poor Choice for the 26th House District

2010-10-21T06:01:00.005-05:00

One of the more humorous aspects of Alabama politics is the inability of the Republican Party to come up with a ticket whose names promise any degree of gravitas in Alabama government. Young Boozer? Really? And how about Twinkle? Then there’s the one who changed his first name to “Dr.” so he could have the title on the ballot. Of course, if he has to admit any more lies about his primary campaign finances, he might have to change his name to “Pinocchio.”

Sometimes, the silliness of the Republican candidates comes not from the name, but the person who has the name. Think of Christine O’Donnell.

Here in Alabama, the GOP has its share of comic relief on the ballot. One such instance is in Marshall County, the home of State House District 26. When longtime Democratic Representative Frank McDaniel announced his retirement, the Republicans immediately put this seat at the top of their list of “Safe Republican” takeaway seats, and used it as a talking point with the media as one of the prime examples of why a GOP takeover of the Legislature was inevitable.

Then, reality intruded, in the form of Republican nominee Kerry Rich.

Rich emerged from a contentious four-way Republican primary with the GOP nomination. The manager of a small “nonprofit” FM radio station in Albertville, Rich is trying to make some Alabama political history. He is trying to become, so far as anyone knows, the first person to represent three different districts in the Alabama House of Representatives. In the late 1970’s, Rich represented (as a Democrat) a district in Etowah County. From 1990 until 1994, he represented the 27th District, the other district in Marshall County (currently held by Democrat Jeff McLaughlin). On both occasions, he apparently found Alabama such a distasteful state, that upon concluding a term in the Legislature, he moved out of state.

It looks like Rich - who has made a career of owning and operating small-market “Christian” radio stations - still likes the sound of the Mormon classic “Come, Come Ye Saints.” While registered to vote in Marshall County, he also remains actively on the voter rolls back in Utah:

Utah

Maybe Mr. Rich needs to explain to the good folks of Marshall County why he’s keeping one toe in the Utah pool. Or whether he has legally relinquished his Utah residency, so as to be legally eligible to vote and run for office in Alabama. Then again, I can understand why he might not want to go back to Utah:

Kerry Rich Utah Tax Lien Record

Of course, maybe Rich wants to head back out to his old haunts in Colorado. In July 2009, he bought a vacant lot in the resort town of Crested Butte, Colorado, valued at $100,000.00. (I need to get into “nonprofit” radio!) In a more serious vein, the voters of the 26th District have a right to ask whether Rich can be trusted to keep his roots planted in Alabama this time, and build the kind of seniority that Frank McDaniel put to such good use for their benefit.

Like any Republican candidate today, Rich cannot use the words “conservative” or “Christian” often enough in his campaign pitch. However, one has to wonder if Rich didn’t fall in with some of the “Big Love” polygamist crowd while out in Utah. He seems to have indulged his support of marriage on at least two occasions, missing one ex-wife so often, he saw to it she had to take him back to court on five occasions after the original divorce:

Kerry Rich AlaCourt Divorce Docket

Now, it’s the 21st Century, and a divorce doesn’t, and shouldn’t, be a disqualification for public office. But when a candidate makes such a big deal of being a strictly conservative Christian, we have a right to look at how he has lived up to the strict standards he wants to legislate for everyone else. Not to mention that, in Rich’s case, his continuing child support and custody issues appear to have influenced his voting in the Legislature. In the 1991 Regular Session, then-Representative Rich voted against passage of SB 466, which was introduced to require state authorities to investigate deadbeat dads. Rich was one of only 7 Representatives voting against the bill. (Roll call 3422, 30th Legislative Day). Rich had earlier tried to water down the bill with an amendment, which was defeated. Real peach of a guy.

But it’s not just his personal life that gives cause for giggles. Rich has proven himself the Keystone Kop of the campaign trail, too. Rich, who boasts of being a professional career broadcaster, seems not to know as much about FCC regulations as he should. Anyone old enough to remember the Reagan years probably knows enough to not vote Republican. They also probably remember that you never saw the former movie star’s cinematic masterworks on TV during his presidency - because of FCC regulations that banned such airing if not balanced by free time for his opponents. Rich, blissfully ignorant of the rule, kept gabbing away on the air after announcing his candidacy. After a primary opponent filed a complaint with the FCC, Rich was forced to make an embarrassing $250.00 contribution to his own opponent, in lieu of free air time on his station. (Which air time she said she didn’t want, as apparently the station’s ratings stink.)

The horserace angle on this seat is that, since McDaniel’s retirement announcement, King Pig Mike Hubbard and other Republican quotables have been rattling this seat off as a sure takeaway from Democrats, as part of their strategy of trying to make the takeover happen by continuously referring to it as inevitable. In this case, the Democrats answered with the nomination of Randall White, a recently-retired adult education supervisor. White is so conservative he wears a belt and suspenders, and (unlike Rich) he is a lifelong resident of the district. Local people know White, and Rich only loses credibility when he plays the GOP one-note kazoo of shouting “liberal!!”

Something is not working for Rich. Or it is working for White. Or both. I saw a couple of polls early in this year that didn’t look good for the Democrats here. Within the last week or ten days, I have been shown two polls by some folks in Montgomery, both by some of the most reputable pollsters in the state, that paint a different picture. One showed a dead heat, but is by now a couple of weeks old. The same poll had shown a GOP lead a few months earlier. The other poll shows White with a lead, almost more than the poll’s margin of error.

A couple of things are at work here. One is that the GOP has simply stuck itself with a schmuck candidate, and he is inevitably losing ground. With him falling in the polls, and behind, this close to Election Day, Rich is fast looking like a goner. (And if this is one of their “safe” seats, what is happening in their “reach” seats?) The other thing is something I have long predicted. Democrats are going to do better generally than the CONVENTIONAL WISDOM says we will. As general angst about Obama or Pelosi drove down Democratic poll numbers in March and June, when voters were unfocused, a closer look by most voters - who don’t think about elections before October - is beginning to move poll numbers in a Democratic direction.

The Rich nomination highlights another phenomenon of the 2010 Alabama Republican effort. Despite all their blabber about promoting clean, ethical, Christian candidates to “reform” the Democratic “corruption” in Alabama, a closer look reveals the feet of clay. We have the spotted record of Rich, or the outright commercial fraud of GOP Senate nominee Shadrack McGill. Or their “reform” gubernatorial nominee, Robert Bentley, whose daily revisions of how much money he knew he was getting in the Republican Primary from AEA, and how much he was cooperating with them, have left him without any credibility. (Some polls suggest voters are noticing this, too. Stay tuned.) We Democrats need to take every opportunity in these closing days to keep the heat and light on the hypocrites of the GOP.

While Rich was away in Utah, that state hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 1992, while he was still in Alabama, Albertville, the largest town in this House district, “hosted” its own spoof of the Winter Olympics during the real Olympics in Albertville, France. Who knows? If Rich doesn’t like the way the voters treat him in November - or even if he gets elected - he may be living in Sochi, Russia, by the time the Winter Games are played there in 2014. We can only hope.

Obama’s Unkept Promise to Alabama’s Blacks

2010-10-18T06:01:00.000-05:00

Ah, race.

What would we do for a political leitmotif in Alabama without it?

The election of Barack Obama was guaranteed to have far reaching, and long lasting implications for Alabama politics. The first election of an African-American President could not be anything other than a paradigm-shifting event. On the one hand, Obama’s presence on the ballot seems to have brought out the worst in white Alabama. Exit polls indicated that Obama got 10% of the white vote in Alabama. This polling data is strongly corroborated by a near-perfect correlation between black population percentage and Obama’s county-level vote totals:

Of course, Obama’s election has had some beneficial effects, many of which will not be felt for generations. Irreversible damage has been done to the belief of black children that there are stations in life off-limits to them because of their race. That will have an impact in the law schools, medical schools, and corporate boardrooms more quickly than it will in the Governor’s Mansion. There is also no denial of the impact on black voter registration and turnout. In the 2008 Alabama Presidential Primary, 83.9% black Macon County outvoted 98.0% white DeKalb County - despite the fact that Macon only has 31.9% of DeKalb’s population.

What follows I write with some trepidation, mindful that the blood that courses through my veins is pure Anglo-Saxon, save for distaff branches of Scots and German. But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that, whatever the election of Barack Obama means to black Alabamians in terms of pride, symbolism, and civic engagement, from a policy and administrative perspective his administration has been a large disappointment.

Obama has taken his share of grief from the national black community over national policy issues such as the failure to attain a public option or single payer health care component in the “reform” legislation. Others have complained of his progress in advancing outstanding civil rights issues, and some even criticized Michelle Obama for not working a black designer into her dress selection on Inauguration Day. The complaint of Velma Hart, who told Obama she was “exhausted of defending you,” has become something of a symbol for such black discontent. While this criticism is noteworthy, and not without merit, and it has been noted that his shortfalls are disproportionately borne by African-Americans, I am more concerned here with Obama’s impact on areas unique to Alabama. Of necessity, those pertain more to matters of patronage and appointment than to policy. On these matters, Obama’s record varies from questionable to terrible.

Obama’s first appointment to the Federal bench is a little troubling. The retirement of longtime U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon in Birmingham, the first black judge in the Northern District of Alabama, brought an end to a pioneering phase of civil rights here. Clemon was noted for refusing to kowtow to the Government, and he single-handedly brought the first political persecution of Don Siegelman to a halt by tossing out the charges as frivolous. Since the Federal bench in Alabama is now dominated by appointees from the Reagan-Bush-Bush years, there was widespread hope that Clemon would be replaced by someone who would bring clear balance to the Court. Instead, following the suggestion of then-confidante Artur Davis, the President appointed Abdul Kallon. Like Obama, Kallon has a colorful biography. A native of Sierra Leone, Kallon attended Dartmouth (by an exponential factor, the most conservative and Republican Ivy League school), and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He clerked for Clemon, who appeared with him before the Senate urging his confirmation.

My concern with Kallon comes from his career choice. Kallon worked in business-side employment law at the firm today known as Bradley, Arant, Boult and Cummings. In short, he defended corporations against attempts by victims of discrimination to obtain compensation allowed by law. While I understand Kallon was not personally involved in that case, it was the employment law department at Bradley, Arant that defended Goodyear in the famous Lilly Ledbetter case. This is not where we should be looking for judges to be appointed by Democrats. While I don’t begrudge any person of color working where they choose, and holding what opinions they pick; it’s one thing to be a corporate lawyer, and another to serve as a representative of progressive and minority interests. Our Federal legal system tacitly rests on a presumption that Democratic presidents will appoint judges who tack progressively, Republicans will appoint conservative judges, the confirmation process will weed out the extremes; and if we’re lucky, the law winds up somewhere in the middle. If a Democrat makes center-right appointments to lifetime positions, we’re in for a long century. Not since Eisenhower appointed Frank Johnson has a Republican president put a moderately progressive judge on the Alabama bench. No pun intended, I do not want to prematurely judge Kallon. Perhaps, like Johnson, or Chief Justice Earl Warren, he will emerge as more progressive than his record suggests. But it remains troubling that Obama, with a safely Democratic Senate, did not make a more certain progressive black choice to fill Clemon’s shoes. It’s not like there aren’t clearly progressive black lawyers in North Alabama; I could have named a dozen within a minute whose qualifications were up to the standards of the Federal bench.

Obama moved with alacrity to replace GOP political puppet Alice Martin in the post of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District. However, as I have noted elsewhere, his inexplicable, and inexcusable failure to replace Republihack Leura Canary in the Middle District remains an open wound on the soul of Alabama, exuding a purulent Niagara. Allowing Canary to remain in office while she shamelessly uses that office to launch political attacks on the President’s own party, suggests nothing less than an Administration that doesn’t know the basic mechanics of government and politics. At a purely political level, this attack on the Alabama Democratic Party, sanctioned by this President and his Attorney General through their inaction, threatens decades of progress in placing black hands on the levers of power in this state. For all its faults, and they are legion, the Alabama Democratic Party has given a real seat at the table to Alabama blacks, in the form of some of the most powerful committee chairmanships in the Legislature. These include, but are not limited to, Sen. Hank Sanders of the Senate Education F&T, and Rep. John Knight of the House Government Appropriations Committee. If Canary’s political cooperation with the GOP costs the Democrats our tenuous hold on the Legislature, these black leadership positions will be a thing of the past - and of a distant future.

If the cries of Montgomery politicians under indictment don’t generate sympathy, certainly the lamentation of unemployed workers in the Black Belt does. One effect of the bribe-induced Riley-Canary war on bingo in Alabama is the closure of bingo operations in Greene, Macon and Houston Counties, that employed literally thousands of workers, and brought millions of dollars annually to local government treasuries. We all wish that overwhelmingly black Greene and Macon Counties had bulldozers clearing land for new automotive and electronics plants, or for high-powered biology labs or computer engineering firms, but that’s the progress of the next generation. Right now, those counties are absolutely dependent on the entertainment and gaming business for their economic survival, and Obama’s what-me-worry attitude about Canary has placed that survival in jeopardy. Even in the white-majority Wiregrass, it’s probably safe to assume that Country Crossing employed a fair number of African-Americans in its service sector jobs. Had Bob Riley needed to worry about a U.S. Attorney with integrity in Montgomery, he would likely not have earned his Mississippi Choctaw bribes by shutting down the bingo halls, and the Legislature would probably have put a bingo referendum on this November’s ballot. As it is, there is no way to know when, or if, these businesses will reopen. At some point, even the President’s biggest supporters have to ask if he’s paying attention.

If he is not paying attention, he should. The simple mathematics are this: but for the votes of black voters in Southern primaries in 2008, Hillary Clinton, and not Barack Obama, would have been the Democratic nominee, and probably President. The black vote he received in South Carolina’s primary allowed his campaign to regain traction after his New Hampshire loss to Clinton. Politics being what it is, unless Democratic losses (most of which are the fault of Obama’s inept messaging and political strategy) next month exceed our worst nightmares to date, Obama is unlikely to have serious opposition for renomination in 2012. But if he does, he will again depend on Southern black primary voters - including those unemployed persons in Eutaw and Tuskegee - to bring him through. And if he presumes they will vote for him because he is black, despite a record inimical to their interests, maybe he should ask his former friend, Artur Davis, how that worked for him.

Alabama’s “Little Ohio”?

2010-10-14T06:01:00.008-05:00

In every Presidential election year, one thing is predictable. We might not know who will win, or by how much, or even (until the Holy Sacred Oracles of Iowa dictate to us), who will be the nominees of the parties. But we do know that the national media will obsess over the Buckeye State. Every poll, development, candidate visit (and they will be daily), or other jot of news out of Ohio will be mentioned on every national newscast.

There is a good argument for this focus on Ohio. Despite losing ground in the last several decades, it’s still a fairly large state, with 20 electoral votes. And, after inexplicably preferring Nixon over Kennedy in 1960, it has since sided with the winner of every Presidential election. Its block of electoral votes would have elected Gore in 2000, or Kerry in 2004, had those Democrats carried the state.

Which leads me to ask - do we have a similar bellwether county or region of Alabama? After playing with the numbers awhile, it seems that we do. Looking at the county-level gubernatorial and downballot statewide returns in the partisan-competitive era (1986 onward), there is a band of coterminous counties in North Alabama that seem to be key to the electoral fortunes of both parties. This region includes the counties of Limestone, Morgan, Cullman, Marshall, and DeKalb. These are not small, insignificant counties. Taken together, they accounted for 8.6% of the statewide vote Siegelman received in 2002.

To see this at its clearest, let’s look at the two gubernatorial elections in which Don Siegelman was the Democratic nominee. These are his landslide win in 1998, and the After-Midnight-Recount “loss” of 2002. (If you never follow another link from this blog, read Dr. Gundlach’s compelling statistical evidence that the 2002 election was stolen from Siegelman by Baldwin County election officials, which is the link in the previous sentence.) In the Siegelman win, all five of these counties went Democratic. In 2002, Riley took all five. In these five counties, Siegelman pulled 8,395 fewer votes in 2002 than he did in 1998; this loss alone was greater than his statewide loss. At the same time, Riley’s 2002 total in these counties was 12,055 larger than James’s 1998 tally. Either of these swings made a larger difference than Riley’s 3,120 statewide “win.” Together, the Associated Press’s aborted call of Siegelman as the winner would have withstood Republican larceny in Baldwin County. Also, although Siegelman lost other counties between these two cycles, most of the losses (Mobile being the main exception) were in lesser-populated counties in the Wiregrass, and in East Central Alabama, in the district Riley had represented in Congress.

One salient point bears note. As Gundlach notes, there was a strong correlation between Siegelman’s votes at the county level between the 1998 and 2002 elections. That is, Siegelman tended to get about 85% of the votes in a given county in 2002 that he got in the same county in 1998. (The lone sore-thumb exception was hapless, corrupt Baldwin, where Siegelman’s total dropped to 69.7% of his 1998 vote; this is one of the statistical “smoking guns” of stolen votes.) In our five counties, Siegelman secured 87.2% of his 1998 total. This shows some mathematical evidence that these counties have the potential for Democratic overperformance. In any event, if a Democratic statewide nominee carries these five counties, as a matter of raw arithmetic, there are not that many other places a Republican nominee can go to make up the deficit.

What are the practical implications of all this, as we wind down the 2010 general election campaign? First and foremost, these counties provide a great opportunity for statewide candidates to focus various forms of campaigning in the closing weeks. As they are coterminous, a candidate can make numerous media or public appearances in several of them in one day. For the Democratic candidate who’s smart enough to tap the manpower resources of unions and students in Birmingham, Gadsden and Huntsville, and put street sheets into their hands, all are close enough for some serious canvassing. The tendency of these counties to swing in the direction of a statewide winner means they are a much better use of this manpower than more urban counties like Madison and Jefferson, where individual neighborhoods tend to have set voting patterns, and are resistant to persuasion efforts. For example, as a Democrat, a candidate is going to carry Ensley, and community-based efforts are likely to be more useful than canvassers for GOTV efforts such neighborhoods need. On the other side, a Democrat can canvass Vestavia until volunteers are dropping from starvation; the vote ceiling is still pretty low.

You can also make a strong argument for considering the swing nature of these five counties in allocating media buys in a statewide campaign. Except for that portion of Cullman County from the City of Cullman southward, that part of DeKalb nearest Chattanooga, and part of the southern extreme of Marshall, this region is all in the Huntsville television market. If you spend your TV dollars in Montgomery (as many campaigns do to excess, so that staffers and Goat Hill insiders will see them), your dollar is being spent to reach West Montgomery and Macon County (congenitally Democratic), and Elmore and Autauga Counties (doomed by cretin genetics to be Republican). You aren’t changing a lot of R’s to D’s, even with a million GRP’s. It’s just a bonus that Madison County has some areas, mostly in Randy Hinshaw’s and Butch Taylor’s House districts, that tend to swing between the parties, much more so than outlying areas of metro Birmingham or the Montgomery region. Unless a campaign has a strategic reason to focus its buy on a particular TV market with a locally targeted ad - say, like the Oil-Spill-Is-Republican-Deregulation’s-Fault spot I am still waiting on the ADP to unleash in Mobile - a shift of GRP’s to the Huntsville market makes sense.

Each of these counties (except Marshall, which has three bi-weeklies) has a daily newspaper. Several have news/talk radio stations. These opportunities make candidate facetime a worthwhile investment in the closing days of the campaign. Just remember, to have something quotable to say when you’re calling. “Lazy” and “crook” get quoted; “honored” doesn’t even generate a story.

Downballot candidates should pay this region mind for one final important reason: this year, our gubernatorial nominee is from there. DeKalb County should be having a much higher turnout because of the Sparks candidacy, and his presence on the ticket will be breaking up straight GOP ballots. Once those folks are loose, their votes elsewhere on the ticket may be up for grabs. There may be a similar effect of broken GOP straight tickets in neighboring Marshall County. Friends and neighbors voting is alive and well in Alabama.

So, Mr. or Ms. Candidate or Campaign Manager - head on up to the home of the broilerhouse and beat your Republican opponent in these closing weeks. Or if you’re just a volunteer looking for something to do, offer to take a vanload of canvassers from Birmingham up to Cullman or Albertville. (Don’t forget your street sheet so you’re not wasting time ringing doorbells of nonvoters!) Alabama’s “Little Ohio” will welcome you.

Shadrack McGill - The Republican Ethical Standard (Or, How to Win After the Indictment)

2010-10-12T06:01:00.007-05:00

We all remember the Exilic tale of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. (Though, being well-educated Democrats, we spell the first name correctly, unlike the subject of this post.) These three loyal servants of God refused to obey the edict of Nebuchadnezzar to worship the golden image he had set up. Cast into the fiery furnace, they were not only saved by divine intervention, upon their emergence Nebuchadnezzar repented and promoted them to even higher offices than those they had previously held; a truly Sunday School happy ending.

The devout today are hearing from a thousand pulpits across Alabama, that not only do Democrats favor such sinful activity as gambling, they are taking all sorts of bribes to do so. (I still don’t grasp why we have to be bribed, if we are so wicked and depraved in the first place.) One Republican nominee in particular, Shadrack McGill of Woodville, has interjected himself into the gambling indictment story by claiming to have testified to the grand jury that he was offered $15,000.00 not to run against Democratic Senator Lowell Barron in the 8th District. The claim is patently absurd. McGill is enough of a nonentity that no sensible political boss would spend more than $5,000.00 to keep him out of the race.

More to the point, we would do well to consider the source. McGill’s orthography is not the only indicium of his Biblical unfamiliarity. He seems to be even less conversant with the Mosaic edicts so well defended by former Chief Justice Roy Moore. Especially the one about “Thou shalt not steal.” (Ex. 20:15). Meet Ronnie and Shelia Johnson of Jackson County. According to their court filings, Ronnie and Shelia wanted to live the American dream, and own their own business. Mr. McGill happened to own one, a restaurant in rural Jackson County. The Johnsons agreed to buy McGill’s restaurant from him, for payments of $1,330.26 for 60 months at 20.2% interest. (McGill apparently thinks Lev. 25:36, “Take thou no usury of him, or increase,” doesn’t apply to him, either. Republicans are good at overlooking inconvenient Bible verses.) This January, the Johnsons claim, they tendered the final payment and were ready to take delivery of the deed to their restaurant. Only there was no deed forthcoming. On looking into matters with a lawyer, the Johnsons found out that, contrary to what he had told them, his restaurant had either a mortgage or his own land-sale contract obligation encumbering it, which he apparently hadn’t been paying. (McGill, being a fine Christian, did decline to accept the final payment.) Even if he had given the Johnsons their deed, the property would apparently be of little net value to the Johnsons because of the encumbrance. Meanwhile, McGill can probably buy a lot of yard signs for his campaign with the Johnsons’s $78,485.34. For those who want more detail, this is the complaint as filed in Jackson County Circuit Court:

McGill Complaint

Now, if McGill had been the Republican nominee against Barack Obama, The One would probably still be munching lotus, wondering why McGill didn’t simply succumb to his charm and drop out of the race. Unfortunately for McGill, he’s not running against Obama; he’s running against Lowell Barron, who has been fighting Republicans successfully since The One was a scholarshipped basketball player at Honolulu’s elite Punahou School. (Alabamians, think of Altamont and Indian Springs.) Unlike Obama and his “genius” political staff, Lowell Barron knows what to do when handed a perfectly good baseball bat, and there’s a Republican within arm’s reach:

If Barack Obama’s political skills were as good as Lowell Barron’s, we Democrats would be looking at losing 10 House seats and two Senate seats, tops. And if Obama had Barron’s willingness to answer Republican lies with hard-hitting, yet truthful, counterpunches, we would probably have, at least, public option health insurance, and maybe even a single payer plan. Who knows, if Obama had the wit to quit trying to be a philosopher-president and fight, he might have gotten a big enough stimulus bill, that the unemployment numbers wouldn’t be wreaking their current havoc on Democratic poll numbers.

While Obama is apparently too busy pandering to Republicans by throwing Shirley Sherrod under the bus to tell his Attorney General to fire the last remaining Rove hack in a U.S. Attorney pos t, there are things we can do to fight back against the GOP sham indictment. We must miss no opportunity to talk about Bob Riley, and his un-investigated $13,000,000.00 from Mississippi Choctaw casino owners. Individual Republicans have their own Achilles’ heels; Kay Ivey drove PACT into the ditch, and Luther “Big Oil” Strange paid for much of his Mountain Brook mansion with oil lobbying money. (In case the ADP missed the memo, oil companies aren’t popular along the Alabama coast this year.) There can be no stop to exposing the seamy underside of the Shadrack McGills (and Mike Hubbards) the GOP is offering the voters to bring “ethics” to Goat Hill. We have to get some paid media up on these issues, and we have to reinforce that message in canvassing, letters to the editor, and just Hardee’s coffee table talk. If I sound like a broken record, or worse yet, a scold, it’s because I haven’t seen the focus and intensity on this point I need to see from a winning Party campaign. I keep hearing “we did a press release on that last week.” Good. Glad you did. But have you or your candidate or Party been quoted on it today?? As a hapless Crimson Tide learnt on the south side of Columbia this weekend, when you lose your focus, you lose. Don’t let it happen to us.

And yo, Shad. Welcome to the furnace, dude.

Fair and Balanced? I’ll Take My Odds in the Bingo Hall Anytime.

2010-10-09T06:01:00.011-05:00

Since its inception, the Fox News Network has promoted itself with the Orwellian phrase, “Fair and Balanced,” while being so far from either as to defy credulity. However bad Faux News is, it is at least kept in check by any number of other voices in the media. In Alabama, we are less fortunate, as media ownership is far more concentrated, especially in the print realm. The three newspapers owned by the Newhouse family - The Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register, and The Huntsville Times - are not only the three largest newspapers in Alabama; their combined circulation exceeds that of the other twenty-one daily newspapers in Alabama combined. When a media group with that much market power all gets on the same page of the editorial hymnbook, there’s not only temptation for questionable journalistic calls; there is a real danger of the political process becoming skewered in the direction of the dominant media source.

Once upon a time, if The Birmingham News got out of line, the Birmingham Post-Herald was there to offer a contrary perspective. Likewise with The Huntsville News, and the historically Democratic Decatur Daily used to circulate more widely in Huntsville. (Things were less helpful in Mobile, where the Mobile Press and Mobile Register were co-owned by Newhouse even before their 1997 consolidation.) Even in the absence of alternate news sources from the Internet, these correctives kept a significant number of voters aware of alternate perspectives and narratives. But we now live in the age of the one-newspaper town.

This dominant position by one news source has had a serious impact on the events of the last week, and on Alabama politics of the last decade in particular. The coverage of the current indictment of legislators and gaming-industry lobbyists and executives has overlooked one critical point. If not for the efforts of Republican Governor Bob Riley, and those of the GOP Legislative leadership in his hip pocket, there would have been no need for the gaming industry to go all-out in an effort to secure something as simple as the people’s right to vote on the issue. There is certainly reason to believe that Riley has been the beneficiary of millions of dollars of bribes, er, contributions, from out of state gambling interests, most notably the operators of Mississippi Choctaw casinos. This, of course, would give Riley all the incentive he needs to repay his political (and maybe financial) debts to the Choctaw casinos. The first leak of links between Riley and out-of-state gambling interests came in Congressional hearings in 2005, in which sworn testimony was given before a Congressional committee that the Choctaw had pumped $13,000,000 into Alabama to buy Bob Riley a house on South Perry Street.

This year, as Bush-appointed, and Obama-not-yet-fired U.S. Attorney Leura Canary continued her partisan witch hunt of Democrats, Bill Johnson, a former Riley cabinet member who was running for governor, asked to testify to the same grand jury that eventually produced last week’s indictment. He wanted to testify about the other side of the coin: Riley’s receipt of that Choctaw money. Johnson’s letter to Canary was specific enough to make any non-corrupt prosecutor drool:

Bill Johnson Canary Letter

Canary - whose husband managed Riley’s campaigns - refused to allow the grand jury to hear Johnson.

In a normal world - say, New York or Minnesota or California - such an accusation about a sitting governor would set off a media feeding frenzy. (And did in Alabama, when that governor’s name was “Siegelman” and he had a “D” before his name.) But Alabama eschews normalcy. In order to determine how one-sided the coverage of gambling influence has been among the three Newhouse newspapers, I did a quantitative analysis. Beginning on the date of this post, I went back two years, in each of the three Newhouse outlets. I did a count of the number of stories that contained the words “Riley” and “Choctaw” in the same paragraph; and of those that contained the words “Democrat,” “Democrats,” or “Democratic” within the same paragraph as any of the words “investigate,” “investigation,” “indict,” “indicted,” or “indictment.” I performed the search on a library LEXIS account, as LEXIS allows root-expansion and proximity-restriction search parameters that are not available on Google, or the Newhouse internal search engine. The results pretty much speak for themselves:

Newspaper	“Riley” in same paragraph as “Choctaw”*	“Democrat/s/ic” in same paragraph as “indict/ed/ment” or “investigat-/e/ion”
	12	135
	7	719
	4	174

I may have to apologize to Fox News. Even they aren’t that one-sided in their coverage. I should point out that many of the handful of Riley-Choctaw hits were in letters to the editor or online comment hits - not on more widely-read front page stories, as most of the Democratic hits were. The Mobile Press-Register has not mentioned the Riley-Choctaw connection since April 10, 2010, even in any published letter to the editor. From the perspective of a political professional, this sort of coverage is nonexistent. A thorough reader of The Birmingham News is going to see one Riley-Choctaw reference every other month. That kind of repetition is not going to move voters away from Riley and the Republicans.

The implications for this kind of lopsided, biased emphasis are obvious. It’s not surprising that many Alabamians - who don’t have the time to dig for the truth - think the Democratic Party is corrupt, and the Republicans, including Bob Riley, are reformers riding white horses up Dexter Avenue to clean the State House of wickedness. Take the modest example of the front page of last Tuesday’s Press-Register, shown on the left. You will note it even has a story showing Bob Riley trumpeting his moral disgust at the evils of gambling. He should know.

As Democrats, we don’t have the Choctaw money, and when we try to exercise our First Amendment rights to receive contributions from the other side of that fight, it’s a “bribe” and everyone gets indicted. All I can counsel for now is to stay mad, and do what we can to get even. One way to vent some steam this weekend would be to write letters to the editors of Alabama newspapers (even the Newhouse ones!) demanding to know why there isn’t more investigation - and coverage - of the Riley-Choctaw connection. The IT folks at the Alabama Democratic Party have put up a useful page here, which allows you to email your letters to the editor. Just remember to take an extra moment, to email each paper its own copy of a letter. Editors will deep-six a letter with a string of addresses of other papers. Knock on doors, and talk about Riley and Choctaws at every opportunity - canvassing, in the coffee shop, over the church lunch, wherever. A little paid TV about Johnson’s spurned testimony might not hurt, either. The TV newscasts might be embarrassed enough to cover it if ads during their programs keep mentioning it. In the long run, there is always the free market. I have always wondered why, if The Cullman Times can at least break even with 10,363 weekday readers, a daily in Birmingham couldn’t. It can’t cost that much to cover the Courthouse, City Hall, wrecks and murders, and keep one good reporter in Montgomery. And if a Birmingham paper (with a semi-decent web presence) scooped the News on a Riley corruption story, or something similar, the circulation gap would close quickly. If that doesn’t work, there are other solutions to market dominance available.

Before anyone posts a comment, yes, I know that we live in an online age, and a thousand journalistic flowers bloom online. But the fact remains, most Alabamians get their news from print or broadcast. And even those who do venture online tend to get their state and local news from al.com, the online presence of the Newhouse newspapers. The better “inside baseball” sources like Doc’s Political Parlor and Home of Lawn Mower Repair, and the tenacious Democratic/progressive sites like Legal Schnauzer and the Locust Fork News, just don’t have the page views that the mass media sites do. (Not that this blog does, either, but I’m not writing for a mass audience.)

* I do want to note that the numbers for “Riley”-“Choctaw” are less than the raw number of hits. However, I omitted those stories (about half the raw hits) that made the list by containing a reference to Choctaw County, Alabama, not the Indian tribe peddling influence in Alabama.

An Open Letter to Attorney General Holder

2010-10-07T06:01:00.008-05:00

Hon. Eric Holder

Office of the Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

I know that you are a very busy man. There are lots of terrorists to prosecute, lots of briefs to sign supporting “state secrets,” DADT, and other policies put in place by your excellent predecessors over the last ten years, and all those “impromptu” pickup hoops games the President is so fond of having the newsies B-roll at the White House. (And to think all those critics say he only picked you for AG because you played at Columbia.)

I know that you are so busy, that when you came to Alabama last month to speak about To Kill a Mockingbird (the author of which is in the photo to the left), you didn’t even have time to take any questions from the independent journalists who were there. They probably wouldn’t have been as nice to you as that Law School dean was, anyway. They probably would have asked rude questions about why Ted Stevens died a free and wealthy man because of a minor technicality, while Don Siegelman still has to beg friends for money to pay lawyers to undo the egregiously more unethical conduct of your prosecutors in his case. Reporters are just like that.

Anyhow, I know that the main reason you have not gotten around to replacing the most political U.S. Attorney appointed by George W. Bush, and one of those unethical prosecutors - Leura Canary of the Middle District of Alabama - has been because of all these other important things you have had to do. It’s hard, coming up with a new reason every month to keep Gitmo open. So I thought, being a good citizen, I would pitch in and help. I have drafted you a letter that contains absolutely everything you have to do and say to remove Ms. Canary. All you have to do is have your assistant copy and paste it, and voila! Instantly done! Here it is:

Hon. Leura Garrett Canary
U. S. Attorney’s Office
Middle District of Alabama
131 Clayton Street
Montgomery, AL 36104-3429

HAND DELIVERED BY U.S. MARSHAL

Dear Ms. Canary:

Acting pursuant to the authority vested in the President of the United States by 28 U.S.C. § 541(c), and delegated to me by 28 C.F.R. § 0.5(a) and 28 C.F.R. § 0.22(a)(1), I hereby relieve you of your position as United States Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, effective immediately. See generally, U.S. v. Young, 541 F.Supp.2d 1226 (D. N.M. 2008).

Please remove yourself, and all your personal effects and property from the Office of the United States Attorney at the above address within one (1) hour of your receipt of this letter. You are not to operate or touch any computer or peripheral equipment that is the property of the United States; or any documents, file or container of documents that are the property of the United States, effective immediately upon your receipt of this letter. A Deputy United States Marshal will remain with you until your departure to confirm your compliance with these instructions.

Our records reflect that your residence is at 2400 Rosemont Place, Montgomery, AL 36106-2214. Your final paycheck will be mailed to that address. If you move from that address, please advise the Hon. Glenn Fine, Department of Justice Inspector General, of your new address. He may need to speak to you soon.

Thank you for your compliance with these instructions.

Sincerely,

Eric Holder
Attorney General

There, wasn’t that easy to sign, Mr. Attorney General? It took what, ten seconds, including time for the ink to dry? And to think people were complaining because Canary was still pushing a Republican agenda from her office nearly halfway through your and Obama’s terms. Don’t thank me; I am just a patriotic citizen glad to do my part to help a busy public servant. Please give my regards to the President. And don’t tell him I told you, but if you can head-fake him in the direction of a mirror or other reflective surface - easy layup!

Your friend,
Publius IX

P.S.: In case you lose this letter, maybe my friends can email you copies at your email address at askdoj@usdoj.gov so you can still send Ms. Canary her letter.

P. IX

October Surprise - A Presidential Failure Comes Home to Roost in Alabama

2010-10-05T03:01:00.029-05:00

This is not the first time I have had occasion to bring to task the titular leader of the national Democratic Party. Nor, watching the breaking news stories today, will it apparently be the last.

What I can no longer hold back is the painful realization that Barack Obama is in over his head. He lacks the basic decisiveness and willingness to inflict discomfort on the political opposition that are necessary for effective political leadership, particularly in the age of McConnell-Boehner hyperpartisan Republican politics. As I have noted before, the Madisonian theory of balancing conflict underpinning our Constitution presumes that both sides will aggressively pursue their interests, and when one side fails to do so, the other side attains a near-tyrannical predominance.

The source of this tirade is, of course, Monday morning’s arrest of two Democratic state legislators, along with several lobbyists, and one token Republican legislator, Senator Jim Preuitt of Talladega. Beside Preuitt, the arrested legislators were Senator Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery, Sen. Larry Means, D-Attalla, and Sen. Harri Anne Smith, I-Slocomb. Smith had been widely rumored to be ready to caucus with the Democrats, after the GOP leadership refused to permit her to qualify for re-election in the Republican primary.

Since 1980, when Republicans tried to undercut President Jimmy Carter’s efforts to free the Iranian hostages in the months before the election, the phrase “October Surprise” has had currency in politics. Normally, it has served as a source of anxiety or chuckles. Sometimes, as against Carter, it has been deployed to create an insinuation that the incumbent is shifty or unscrupulous enough to use the power of office to manipulate good or bad news right before an election, for maximum political benefit. Even when, as with Carter, such an allegation is absurd; Carter could have been re-elected by turning the Air Force loose on Iran in October, but was too moral and competent to do so. We Democrats made good use of talk that Osama bin Laden would be “captured” in October 2004, and again in 2008. Almost no political operative has had the gall to spring an obviously-timed October Surprise - until now.

Leura Canary, the Bush-Rove appointed prosecutor of Democrats in Alabama, continues to hold her position as United States Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, one year, eight months, and sixteen days after Barack Obama took the oath of office as President. Given her track record of politically motivated prosecution of Don Siegelman and other Democrats, and her proven record of professional misconduct in those earlier prosecutions, it is inexcusable that she is still in her post, even before Monday’s October Surprise. Despite testimony before Congress about Mississippi Choctaw casino money being paid to Bob Riley, the Republican payola goes uninvestigated and unprosecuted by Ms. Canary. To Barack Obama, I ask one simple question: Why? As noted by the nonpartisan, Justice Department news blog mainjustice.com, “The White House ... thus far has been loath to mix it up with Republicans over U.S. Attorney nominations ...” Talk about a gift for understatement! Obama did not even have to have a confirmable nominee ready to replace Canary. All he had to do was fax her a letter of termination on the day he was inaugurated, and send some career DoJ attorney in from D.C. to serve as Interim U.S. Attorney while the GOP partisan mess was cleaned up. The whole muddle involving Canary’s continuance in office has just been another aspect of the recurring theme of Obama’s dithering and vacillating while Republicans score points in the PR game and erode Democratic poll numbers up and down the ticket. The man makes Hamlet look like General George S. Patton.

Someone unwilling to stand up for his supporters and the interests of the people in general, has been given the keys not only to the country, but to the Democratic Party. I lay the blame for this squarely at the feet of the media, and of Obama’s opponents in the 2008 primaries, who (with the belated and muted exception of Hillary Clinton) never asked the most germane question of the nomination contest. That was: what business does someone have, being nominated and elected President, who was a mere mid-junior member of a state legislature two years, one month, and seven days before the announcement of his Presidential campaign? Do not get me wrong; I am as happy as anyone that we broke the racial barrier in Presidential elections. But the media’s obsession with Obama as the “first credible black candidate” kept that very question from being asked. Had it been asked in a sufficiently pointed manner, Obama would never have reached the nomination. Instead, we were treated to the likes of Chris Matthews of MSNBC, whose barely-concealed manlove for Obama on the night of the New Hampshire Primary kept him insisting that the student vote from Dartmouth would put Obama back on top, ending the Clinton campaign that night. Never mind that by that hour, Hanover was the only precinct not reporting; Clinton’s statewide lead was larger than the total enrollment at Dartmouth; not every Dartmouthian would vote in New Hampshire; and Dartmouth may be the one Ivy League school where a plurality of students are Republicans. (Of course, Clinton won New Hampshire.)

For what it’s worth, Obama’s 2004 election to the Senate was almost equally fortuitous. The incumbent Republican Peter Fitzgerald declined to seek re-election; and the better-known Democratic former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun opted for an ill-advised Presidential bid. Finally, the eventual Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, dropped out after it emerged that he had forced his estranged wife, Jeri Ryan of Star Trek: Voyager fame, to accompany him to swinger clubs against her will.

And please; if I hear one more pundit or supporter hold forth on Obama’s political genius, or that of his “team,” my nausea will reach the projectile stage. Obama, Axelrod, Plouffe and Emanuel are treated like Magi for winning the 2008 election. Memo to the world: after eight years of Bush bungling, and the Republican self-inflicted wound of the Palin nomination, we could have nominated Pat Paulsen and run up the same winning vote Obama did - and Paulsen’s been dead since 1997! None of these media darlings have shown the wit to realize that when your side is being attacked, and you don’t respond, swing voters will move in the direction of the side doing all the attacking. Obama was so determined to look in the mirror and see Joe Cerebral Cool in 2008, he came closer than we remember to losing the election. As I noted elsewhere, McCain actually had a lead in the polls, despite all the GOP handicaps, as late as the middle of September 2008. If Lehman Brothers had not tanked and given the economy top billing, McCain might have won. Had Obama come out of the gate in Spring 2009, putting the laser spotlight on Big Pharma and Big Insurance, and painting the GOP as blocking coverage of pre-existing conditions and a ban on insurers dropping sick claimants, we would have had a much better health care bill passed. More to the point, no one would be talking about a GOP takeover of either house of Congress. Marginal losses, maybe, but no takeover. And “brilliant orator”? Again, please. Need I remind Obama’s dwindling band of sycophants that even George W. Bush sounded functionally literate when linked to a Teleprompter? Or that Obama, when decoupled from the same device, has been known to go off-message in an embarrassing way - or am I the only one who remembers, “You’re likable enough, Hillary”?

The brief flashes of spark shown by the President in the last couple of weeks give me hope that his Presidency, though doomed to underachievement by his faults to date, may yet be salvaged. (He might even regain my support in the 2012 primary.) But he is going to have to continue to show some fire in the belly, not only through the remnant of this year’s elections, but through and including those of 2012. And in the legislative battles to come. And he’s going to have to put an end to the political whoring of Leura Canary by firing her in the most disgraceful manner possible.

In the meantime, we Alabama Democrats have some work to do. Most immediately, we need to push back hard against the Republican narrative, which will be echoed in the media, that this “scandal” means an inevitable GOP takeover of the Legislature. Look at the arithmetic, media. The Preuitt seat has effectively flipped to the Democrats since he made his pre-indictment announcement that he was dropping his re-election bid; his indictment isn’t changing that. The Ross seat is sufficiently Democratic that I am not even looking up the demographics, and there is no crime of which a Democrat could be accused that would defeat him in a general in that district. (Or which could defeat a Democrat in a special, in the very unlikely event Ross vacates the seat.) The Smith race remains a wild card. Though historically a Republican, Smith has made no secret of her dislike of the GOP; she has appeared publicly with Ron Sparks within the last week. And it is not written in stone that her indictment will hurt her election chances. Her involvement in the bingo legislation was a response to the Riley-Republican War on Jobs in Houston County. She has been indicted for fighting for unemployed Country Crossing workers. This indictment shows the depths to which the Alabama GOP will go to earn their payola from the Mississippi Choctaw casinos by blocking Alabama bingo. If Smith plays this right, Houston County voters may be more likely to support her independent bid. The only seat where this indictment may help the GOP is in Larry Means’s race. Again, Means reportedly came around to support the bingo bill when it was adjusted to include a potential site in his Etowah County district. I am not sure that hurts him, and when I was on the ground in Etowah County last week, what I heard was that Means was pulling away from his opponent. I saw many Means yard signs in Republican precincts through which I drove. He may yet win, and if a special is ever held, it’s a heavily Democratic-leaning district. Short version: the impact on the Legislative head count shouldn’t be that big.

At a more basic, ticket-wide level, this indictment provides one whopping push-back opportunity the media haven’t fully grasped yet. They have reported the Democratic characterization of the indictment as politically motivated, but there’s an even more effective angle of attack. The observant have noted that GOP Senator Jim Preuitt announced he was dropping his re-election bid just days before the deadline (and perhaps not then) for the GOP to name a replacement nominee. Not that Leura Canary would tip off the GOP, or delay an indictment until it was too late for a replacement Democratic nominee ... but you get the drift. (Neither would I want to replace either of the indicted Democrats. Both have more integrity in their pinky fingers than Bob Riley has in his whole body!) Perhaps the best push-back, though, is to ask why, with all the amply-supported suspicion of Mississippi casino backing of Riley and the GOP, Canary - and, Mr. President, your FBI - haven’t been investigating those links. Sometimes, the best defense is a good offense, a point often lost on the Axelrod-Plouffe crew.

So let’s roll up our sleeves one more time, fellow Democrats, and get to work. The old saw says “don’t get mad, get even.” I am to the point of getting both. While you’re at it, use this link to give the President an Ermeyesque motivational message to keep the fire in his belly, and to give us a little help down here shaking off the Bush shackles.

In an editorial note, I apologize for my silence over the last couple of weeks. Someone apparently hacked my Blogspot password and changed it, and it took awhile to persuade the folks at Blogspot that I was the genuine article. I am just glad no Republican propaganda was posted here in the interim.

Take Down the SDEC’s “NO GURLZ” Sign

2010-09-14T06:01:00.068-05:00

On March 1, 1848, Governor Reuben Chapman signed into effect a law whereby Alabama, acting ahead of more historically (and currently) “progressive” states such as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Wisconsin, became one of the earlier states in the Union to afford married women the legal right to fully own property in their own name, and not subject to the automatic ownership and control of their husband, as had been the case at common law. (1847 Ala. Acts 79 (1848) for the documentally inclined.)

On August 14, 2010, the State Democratic Executive Committee took an embarrassing step sideways, if not backward, when it tabled a proposed amendment to its Bylaws that would have made the President of the Alabama Federation of Democratic Women an ex officio member of the Executive Board of the SDEC. When the SDEC reconvened on August 26, 2010, to strip Kenya Marshall of her Jefferson County judicial nomination and replace her with Elisabeth French, First Vice Chair Nancy Worley (as I was told; I was not there) ruled out of order a motion to take the proposed amendment up off the table.

An aside on parliamentary procedure. According to the SDEC Bylaws, the primary procedural authority for the SDEC is the Rules of the Alabama House of Representatives. Under the provisions of Rule 26 of those rules, the Motion to Remove from the Table is recognized as a valid motion. While not specifically covered in those Rules, the Motion to Take from the Table (the difference is purely semantic) is held to be timely if made at the next session of the body, within that calendar quarter. Robert, Henry M., Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, (10th ed. 2000) p. 206. The August 26 meeting satisfied that deadline. If, as I understand, no other main motion was pending, and no other SDEC member had the floor when the attempt was made to remove (or take) the amendment from the table, it was clearly in order. The Party Bylaws specify that any matter of unfinished business is considered to be in order at any meeting of the SDEC, whether or not in the call. Bylaws, Art. VI § 3. A note to proponents: the main motion to adopt the amendment would now be considered dead by most parliamentary law authorities, not having been taken from the table before adjournment of the next meeting. You’ll need to make a new motion to adopt it, and comply with the Bylaws’ notice provisions before you do.

Though fun, the parliamentary-trivia interlude is now over.

What remains is to express my disappointment, sorrow, and ire at the actions of the SDEC leadership at their manifest opposition to this amendment to the Bylaws. For two straight meetings of the SDEC, the amendment has been thwarted by questionable calls from the Chair (first by Chairman Joe Turnham; in his absence on August 26, by First Vice Chair Nancy Worley). Since the amendment’s proponents were denied their clearly-articulated call for a division of the house at the August 14 meeting (and I was in attendance there), it’s not possible to say with certainty that a majority of the Committee supports it, but the voice vote to table it was certainly close, if not audibly defeated. Nothing leaves people feeling more alienated and unenthusiastic than leaving a meeting with the sense that they have been cheated. The middle of a general election campaign is probably the worst possible time to do that to a significant group of supporters.

Not only did these actions leave bad tastes in a lot of Democratic mouths, they gave the GOP a wide-open shot to run down the Democratic Party’s long-stated commitment to gender equity. As Chief Pig Mike Hubbard was heard to squeal:

The Alabama Democrat [sic] Party has once again shown just how big their tent really is as they have denied the President of the Alabama Federation of Democratic Women the right to have a seat on the Party’s Executive Board. The Alabama Republican Party is proud that Mrs. Elois Zeanah, President of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women, and all previous and past Presidents of the organization are, by nature of their position, automatically afforded a seat on the Party’s Steering Committee.

Regardless of the procedural and PR issues surrounding the suppression of this amendment, it’s simply something that is the right thing to do. With the possible exception of the men and women of organized labor, no one contributes the person-hours to the endless and thankless tasks of staffing headquarters, stuffing envelopes, working phone banks, and knocking on doors, than do the members of AFDW. And if their contributions of “sweat equity” to the Democratic enterprise were not enough, they are increasingly important to the Party’s fundraising effort, as traditional large contributors give way to the grassroots in the Internet era.

The main argument made against the amendment is that since the First Vice Chair, and Chair, of the SDEC must be of opposite gender, at least one woman is assured to be on the Executive Board. This is not persuasive. As I have noted before, there is no provision for the elimination of the positions of Vice Chair of Minority Affairs should a person of color be elected to the Chair or First Vice Chair position.

Another problem with the current setup is that women are not allowed to elect the “women’s” representative on the Executive Board, as the Minority Caucus is permitted to elect the Vice Chair for Minority Affairs. Whether the Chair or First Vice Chair is the mandated woman in the apexal dyad of the SDEC, that woman is elected by the entire Committee, not by the constituency she is supposedly representing. In this case, what is good for the ganders is good for the geese. And as a matter of principle, these constituencies should each select their own representatives among the Vice-Chairs. The criticism has been made by others, and it is well taken, that although there are provisions in the Bylaws for assuring proportionate minority representation on the Executive Board (again, elected solely by the Minority Caucus), there is no similar requirement for membership supplementation to assure gender equity. The saliency of this point is underscored by the fact that, except for First Vice Chair Worley, all the Vice Chairs elected at the August 14 meeting were male.

One passing note about the elections of the Vice Chairs is in order. One white SDEC member was complaining to me after the August 14 meeting about being excluded, along with others, from the Minority Caucus meeting at which Dr. Reed was selected as Vice Chair, and other seats were filled to bring the SDEC into compliance with the Bylaws. If the Caucus did close its meeting, and I was not there to observe this happen, it violated the applicable rules of the Democratic National Committee. Minority members of the SDEC, in their individual capacities, are free to meet whenever they wish, discuss whatever they need to, and exclude whomever they want. However, when they are sitting as the Caucus, and exercising their official prerogative to select Party officers, they must conform to the requirement that, “All meetings of the Democratic National Committee, the Executive Committee, and all other official Party committees, commissions and bodies shall be open to the public, and votes shall not be taken by secret ballot.” Charter of the Democratic National Committee, Art. IX § 12 (2010)(emphasis added). The elections of Dr. Reed and others could be subject to legal challenge if they are undertaken at a closed meeting, and I want us to avoid the mischief that could cause.

Now, no one knows better than I that the operation of the SDEC is one of factions, opposing (and malleable) alliances, and contentious decision-making. Frankly, I am glad it is. That is little-d democracy in action. We Democrats have a big enough tent to allow for this. Let the Republican meetings look like the first round of the shuffleboard tournament at the Obese White Peoples’ Retirement Village. I know that the resistance to this Bylaws amendment has its roots in particular personalities, faction, and underlying controversies. On most of those controversies (including this year’s gubernatorial primary), I have sided with those personalities and factions that are pushing back against this amendment.

Perhaps that gives me some room to speak to those personalities and factions not as opponents, but as a friend, and in any case as a fellow Democrat. I ask them to drop their opposition to this amendment, and to allow it to pass. Those who have been opposing this amendment are strongly, if not overwhelmingly, represented on the current Executive Board. The addition of one additional member to that Board, which already has 25+ members, is not going to result in any change in the likely outcomes of Board proceedings. What is more, there are those who are not as well-disposed to the amendment’s opponents as am I. Some of those persons, who claim to be good Democrats, are using the opponents’ position on the amendment to attack the opponents. Those individuals have often spoken ill of the amendment’s opponents, and of the need to push them out of Party leadership altogether. Such talk is rubbish, but, I ask the amendment’s opponents, why hand them ammunition? This amendment is a long overdue recognition of irreplaceable work done by a key constituency of the Party.

If no better argument can be made for amending the Bylaws to give the AFDW this recognition, it is this: despite the rather impertinent treatment with which their request for a seat at the table was treated, the women of the AFDW have not gone to the house and sulked. Everywhere I turn this year, I see their leaders, and their members, busily working to elect Democrats at every level. While this speaks volumes about their character, it would be unwise for those who have taken them for granted to think that we can continue to treat them thus forever, without serious consequences.

Even before Governor Chapman signed that Act in 1848, the Alabama Legislature had passed numerous “private acts” - a common method of obtaining relief in those days - to protect the property of individual women from automatic ownership by abusive, intemperate, or spendthrift husbands. The Suffragist movement was as active in Alabama as anywhere, led by the efforts of such leaders as Birmingham’s Pattie Ruffner Jacobs (shown here). Even hapless Richard Shelby, as a Democratic State Senator before his elevation to Congress and his defection to the Republicans, led the fight in the Alabama Senate for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. It’s embarrassing for the party of gender equity not to continue this proud tradition, and recognize the work of the AFDW. Pass the damn thing. Please, so we can get back to beating Republicans together.

Don’t Get Sprayed by the Poll Cat

2010-09-10T06:01:00.028-05:00

Amazing what the inattentive can miss.

Once again, we are close enough to an election that every newscast is likely to offer us a new poll on one race or another. The thing about many of these polls is, they always seem to come in handy to prop up the media’s accepted narrative of an election cycle. Of course, the media’s accepted narrative this year is that the Democrats are going to be buried in an avalanche of Tea Party enthusiasts who are all upset about Democratic accomplishments in health care, financial regulation, and preventing the recession from becoming a Depression.

What has been lacking in all this coverage is a little Political Science 101. Yes, the Tea Partiers make for amusing news coverage. For TV news, they are better B-roll material than the media have enjoyed since Chicago 1968. But the first question should be: what, exactly, do they bring to the GOP table? Look (if only briefly) at the crowd at the typical Tea Party event. The first thing you notice is, they are overwhelmingly white, and the handful of blacks the TV cameras find often look like they’re out past their curfew from the nursing home. If you do listen to interviews, or even the speeches of the “leaders,” you realize pretty quickly that the educational standard of these mobs is ... a little lacking. But they do show up for rallies and political events, so we know they have an above-average level of political participation. Finally, they obviously express extreme, not to mention confused (“Keep the government away from my Medicaid!”) conservative ideals.

Just to put it simply, if we put this data before a competent political scientist who had just emerged from a three year coma, and never heard of the “Tea Party,” what would he or she predict about these Tea Partiers’ 2008 voting behavior? If you guessed first, that this group probably voted ≥ 98% for McCain, you get a free pint of Publius’s BBQ Sauce, when I get around to a production run. Perhaps equally importantly, given their current high level of activism, our political scientist would tell us that these people were already in the active voter pool in 2008. Modalities of activism may change - 2008’s phone bankers are 2010’s Tea Party demonstrators - but overall participation levels are more stable. Somehow, though, it is always the unspoken assumption not only of media commentators, but of the “experts” they trot out for their stories, that these protesters are all newly emergent voters who will bolster the GOP’s weak 2008 and 2006 showings. All too often, this “analysis” has gone unchallenged by Democratic spokespersons.

What has stricken me so far in this election cycle is how dominant has been the presumption that Tea Partiers represent a response to widely held views, and not that widely held views have been formed by the misleading narrative of Tea Partiers as a “populist groundswell of opposition to the Democrats.” Voters with shallow ideological roots (an impolitic way to describe “swing voters”) are easily swayed by the dominant themes they see in news coverage, and the Tea Party has been Story One in the media since mid-2009. One thing we do know about these voters is that their attention to politics sharpens as an election approaches, and they begin behaving more consistently with their interests and prior predispositions, than with the wind that was blowing them around in the spring and summer.

Which brings us to what the inattentive may have missed.

In all the impending-Republican-deluge hype, one little story has been overlooked. This week, the Gallup Poll released a poll indicating a sudden shift in the generic Congressional ballot. Whereas the Republicans had moved out to a 51%-41% lead a week earlier, the poll this week shows a dead heat at 46%. Part of this is that the 10% GOP lead may look a little like one of those outliers that from time to time intrude on the best polls. It was something of a jump in the GOP total when we look at the poll’s results so far this year:

But these results bode well for the Democrats, and are consistent with an historic structural trend in polling and voting patterns. In order to get an idea of how this has historically worked, we need look no further back than the Gallup daily tracking poll from the 2008 Presidential election:

In this poll, we see something that many have forgotten: as late as early September 2008, McCain actually had a lead over Obama! Most of us have fixed memories of a near-landslide 52.9%-45.7% win, as represented in this map, which adjusts the state size for electoral votes:

Seeing those 365 electoral votes on the map in 2008 has left a lot of people forgetting how close the whole thing was a few weeks earlier. But it’s an old story in American politics. People respond to the dominant theme in the weeks and months before Labor Day, because most people have relatively low levels of political attention until an election is imminent. This year, the low-information voter is asked by the pollster how he plans to vote, and his or her vague thought (in the 3 seconds or less before answering) is something like, “All I been hearin’ is ever’body gittin’ all over Obama,” so he or she indicates a Republican preference.

Then, something funny happens on the way to the local precinct. As ads fill the airwaves, and yard signs dot the drive to work, the voter becomes more aware of the impending election. On the margins, voters begin paying more attention to the detailed news coverage of the election, not all of which is horse-race drivel. Suddenly, the reality of Ron Paul or Sharron Angle wanting to dismantle Social Security makes it to the radar screen of the lower-information voter, and suddenly those previously expressed GOP preferences start dropping off. The end result starts looking more like November 2008.

There are two important points to take away from all this. One is that it is important for us to push back, as Democrats, against the accepted wisdom of a GOP tsunami. A majority of voters - I hate to quote Nixon, but the silent majority - agree with our positions on the issues, when they are focused on them. The second thing, and this may be more important, is to keep heart. There are doorbells to be rung, and envelopes to be stuffed. 2008 wouldn’t have happened if we’d given up when McCain was “ahead” in September.

Today’s post is dedicated to the memory of JR (1945-2010) - union man, and a proud Democrat.

GOP Takes Strike Three Looking

2010-09-03T06:01:00.058-05:00

The Republican story line has taken another hit. Or three.

Late in the day Tuesday, word broke in Montgomery that State Senator Jim Preuitt, Republican of Talladega, had announced that he was throwing in the towel on his re-election bid. Preuitt made headlines on April 6 - the last day of qualifying for this year’s primaries - when he showed up at Republican headquarters to file, after serving as a Democrat since 1990. Before that, Preuitt’s main claim to fame was never sitting for a portrait in which he didn’t look like the magnesium citrate was taking too long to work.

Just how big is this? It’s huge. Every back-of-the-envelope calculation in both parties, and among the media, regarding Senate control next January, figured on Preuitt squeezing out the win in his new pachydermic garb. His Democratic opponent, retired Circuit Judge Jerry Fielding of Sylacauga, was seen by many as a good candidate - if not running against a 20-year incumbent with deep pockets. The Big List at Doc’s Political Parlor has carried the district as “Leans Republican” most of the year. There are only 35 members of the entire Senate, so a flip in any seat has disproportionate impact, especially when the chamber is as closely divided as is the current Senate. For the Republicans to lose a seat they hadn’t even treated as in play is even more significant when you consider that everyone who isn’t a GOP shill (sadly, that includes some in the media), has said that if the GOP can take control of the Senate, it only has a one-seat margin to do so. That margin is now gone.

How gone is it? Danny at Doc’s Political Parlor asked GOP State Representative Ron Johnson of Sylacauga if he were planning to seek the GOP nomination. His response:

“No way,” he tells the Parlor.

He states clearly that he has no interest in being in the Senate, and also notes that Senate District 11 is a very Democratic district. “I really don’t know any Republican other than Preuitt that would be likely to win that district.”

There may be even more good news, but stay tuned for this. There is a legitimate dispute as to whether the GOP can legally replace Preuitt on the ballot. The Code of Alabama does not provide a clear answer as to what is the last date a party may replace a withdrawn candidate. A Secretary of State regulation, adopted in 2003, says that:

Election officials are authorized to submit, accept and otherwise act on amendments to certifications of candidates to the full extent permitted by the circumstances or until the applicable ballots are printed, whichever occurs first.

In this case, absentee ballots have already been printed for Talladega County, which is in SD 11. Now, reports quote Beth “I wish I was Mrs. Dog” Chapman’s office as saying because all ballots haven’t been printed, the GOP can still substitute a nominee. However, at the infernal SDEC meeting in Montgomery on August 14, when the Kenya Marshall nomination was being debated, a point of inquiry was raised as to when the drop-dead date was for the Party to replace her if she were stripped of the nomination. Responding for the Chair, ADP ED Jim Spearman said the Secretary of State’s office had advised him that would be Friday, August 27. It was on the basis of that representation that the SDEC re-convened on August 26, to give Marshall the longest possible time to sort out her Bar case. Even if the Secretary of State is not legally bound by that representation, changing the advertised drop-dead date would constitute a change in a voting practice or procedure, requiring preclearance by the Department of Justice under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even if that preclearance is obtained, it won’t be done before we have reached what all parties will have to concede is a for-real drop-dead date, by which ballots have to go out to comply with the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

Meanwhile, back at the Supreme Court ... The number of Republican Supreme Court Justices who have donated to Democratic Supreme Court nominees has now doubled. Justice Champ Lyons, a Mobile Republican, acknowledged this week that he has given $1,000.00 each to the campaigns of Democrats Judge Mac Parsons and Rhonda Chambers. This, of course, follows the earlier $5,000.00 contribution to Parsons by GOP Justice Tom Woodall. Lyons explained his contributions by saying “My first loyalty is to the Alabama Supreme Court ... We’ve got two extremely qualified Democrats running for the Alabama Supreme Court.” King Pig Double Dipper, and GOP Chair, Mike Hubbard has been quoted as saying in response, “Oink.” Wait, excuse me. What he said was, “I have no idea, and I have not spoken with them. It’s obviously something we don’t condone.”

This support from Justices Woodall and Lyons is significant. Both have been working alongside Justice Parker, Parsons’s opponent, for the last five years, and have seen his what-me-worry approach to his judicial duties at first hand. They have also likely had the occasion to review some of Judge Parsons’s work, when his decisions were appealed to the Supreme Court. Likewise, Justice Lyons has had the opportunity to closely review the work of Judge Kelli Wise, who is currently on the Court of Criminal Appeals, and whose opinions go up on appeal to the Supremes. (Judge Wise, since her election, has reminded me of the advice of the late Lewis Grizzard, who cautioned against proximity to “women whose first name ends in ‘i’.”)

And, down in the Wiregrass. Democratic nominee Jennifer Adams, who is also the Houston County Democratic Chair, has withdrawn from the race for the Alabama Senate in District 29. You will recall that the Republican Party refused to allow incumbent Senator Harri Anne Smith qualify to run in their primary because of her support in 2008 for Democratic Congressman Bobby Bright. (This, after the GOP has called Democrats “insular,” “power hungry,” and “dictatorial” for decades for enforcing the Radney Rule.) Smith has qualified as an independent for the seat. I have two guesses about this. First is, that some deal has been hatched for Smith to caucus with the Democrats if she’s elected. The second is this: she may well win. In her GOP Congressional primary campaign against Jay Love in 2008, she mopped the floor with him in that part of the Second Congressional District which she represents in the Senate. And Bright, whom she endorsed, did well there, too. At the very least, this is another instance of where the GOP is going to have to drop some serious coin on what should be a safe, base district.

Finally, a late development with the shoe on the other foot. Word has broken that gubernatorial nominee Ron Sparks has said some nice things about Richard Shelby:

“I want Richard Shelby helping me to save the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. I want Richard Shelby to help me when we start looking at military closures in Alabama because they are extremely important. Can you imagine the economic impact of the military leaving Alabama?”

Understandably, this has caused some blowback in Democratic circles. That might be more understandable if many of those same critics hadn’t been among those blindly singing the praises of Artur Davis as he voted against health care reform, and otherwise pandered to the GOP. I am not sure this one slip, buried in the news on a holiday weekend, will make that big a splash among the wider Democratic base.

For one thing, Shelby has always had a way of maintaining a foot in the door of the Democratic base, even after his 1994 party switch. In his last Democratic run in 1992, against black icon (the not-yet-indicted) Chris McNair, Shelby coasted to a 46.4%-36.6% win in Macon County. (Disclosure: after Shelby announced his switch the day after the 1994 General, it was yours truly who thought of the bumper stickers later seen around Montgomery: “DON’T BLAME ME: I VOTED FOR McNAIR”. Someone with a couple hundred bucks left in their campaign paid for printing them, and I still have one.) In the 1998 General, he carried Colbert County, a reliable Democratic bastion, by 54.0%-46.0%. Shelby has always known how to put out street money to enervate Democratic opposition without the media catching on.

I see two possible explanations of this move by Sparks, and they can be classified as (1) cynical, and (2) very cynical. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t approve of either, but if either helps regain the Governor’s Mansion, my criticism will be tempered. The cynical explanation is the Cult of the Consultant. It has become Conventional Wisdom among Democratic “experts” that the key to victory is appearing to try to be reasonable and bipartisan. While poll respondents t ell pollsters they want politicians to be bipartisan, I don’t buy it. It’s what they tell pollsters; it doesn’t describe how they vote. Fighting works, as the decline in Obama’s approval ratings while he continues to try to be the Philosopher-in-Chief shows. The Commissioner may have fallen victim to some bad advice about how to handle this issue. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to a Democrat of unquestioned party ideals and loyalties. One of my favorite memories of the 1996 cycle is watching as a DC hack, sent down to “advise” Roger Bedford on how to campaign, stood trembling for his life as a 250-pound Steelworker, who had not one ounce of fat on his frame, told the “expert,” from a range of about three inches, what he thought of his Bedford radio ads in which Bedford was touted as “a Reagan Democrat, not a Kennedy Democrat!” (The ads were pulled as soon as the DC hack could change into some clean trousers.)

The even more cynical explanation hails back to the issue of Shelby’s money. Shelby’s cash on hand as of June 30, 2010 was $17,179,661.00, and he hasn’t been skimping on the fundraising canapés since then. That is an awe-inspiring sum of money, even for those of us who want to scream at Shelby himself. There are two salient facts about that figure. One is that it could do a lot of damage to the entire Democratic ticket if unleashed. That comes out to $256,412.85 per county. The other such fact is that, if this is (as many believe) Shelby’s last hurrah, when he leaves, he can do pretty much what he wants with the unspent balance. He can spend it on libraries, parks, and other shrines to which his name can be affixed, make contributions to other politicians (then earn fees lobbying them), and, depending on the accounting history, put some in his own pocket. Sparks’s statement certainly lessens the need for Shelby to spend money; by how much is open to debate. What is not open to debate is that Shelby is perfectly capable of cutting a deal with Sparks, to keep that $17,179,661.00 (or at least the vast majority of it) parked in the bank, in exchange for Sparks’s statement. Shelby is no more loyal to his current party than he was to his former. If this is what has happened, Sparks may have done a great service to the entire Democratic ticket - including, to an extent, William Barnes, his Democratic opponent.

Don’t shoot the messenger here. I am not saying I approve. I am merely speculating about what might be going on. But it bears watching to see. In the meantime, let’s all enjoy the collapse of Republican efforts to take the Legislature, and their problems holding their lead on the Supreme Court.

The Big Mac Attack Continues

2010-08-31T06:01:00.008-05:00

Yesterday’s news brought gales of laughter in law offices and courthouses across Alabama. Word hit the state about midday that the Supreme Court campaign of Democratic Judge Mac Parsons of Jefferson County had gotten a $5,000.00 contribution. As I lamented in last Friday’s post, such contributions are neither unusual nor intrinsically noteworthy. What catapulted this particular subvention into the headlines was its donor: Republican Supreme Court Justice Tom Woodall.

Only last week, Judge Parsons, always one of Alabama’s most quotable politicians, had garnered statewide headlines with the pleasingly indecorous pronouncement that Republican Justice Tom Parker, the incumbent whom he is challenging, is “lazy.” In a world where the usual judicial campaign consists of touting how conservative one is, and how liberal one’s opponent, this was a bracing, fresh approach to judicial campaigning. Those who have never experienced Parsons’s wit - which is often as not self-deprecating - would do well to watch his brief remarks earlier this year to the Over the Mountain Democrats:

Both Parsons’s jab at Parker, and the likely motivation behind Woodall’s donation (Woodall refused to comment further) come from Parker’s clear unfamiliarity with the Protestant Work Ethic. Or, for that matter, the work ethic of any other faith or sect. When Parker first went on the Supreme Court in 2005, he was assigned the usual stack of pending cases, most of which had been previously assigned to his predecessor, the unlamented Justice Jean Brown, whom he had ousted in the GOP primary. Within months, whispers were being heard that no opinions had emerged from Parker’s outbox. His reputation for low output has continued throughout his term on the Court.

Probably in anticipation that his output would become a re-election issue, Parker has produced published opinions at (what is for him) a blistering pace this year: 6 since January 1, 2010. But a comparison of the current Justices’ output bears review at this point. Since January 1, 2008, the Court’s current justices have each produced the following number of published opinions of the Court:

Justice	Opinions
Bolin	81
Stuart	76
Lyons	75
Woodall	64
Murdock	64
Smith	60
Cobb¹	36
PARKER	35
Shaw²	21

Maybe Parker indulged a little too liberally (pun intended) at Winter Carnival while at Dartmouth, to be able to put in a full work day. Whatever the cause, he is clearly not pulling his weight on the high court. A number of his cases have, under the leadership of Chief Justice Cobb, been re-assigned to other members of the Court. Normally an insular and collegiate lot, even if ideologically divided, the Court is rumored to be ready to replace Parker. The Woodall contribution may only be the first of several cracks in the partisan edifice.

In large part, this post has been a continuation of last Friday’s, with a special emphasis on the peculiar circumstances of one race. I noted the press given Parsons’s “lazy” comment in passing, but there is an object lesson there for the rest of our judicial candidates, and indeed all our nominees. The Republicans aren’t ten feet tall. They have vulnerabilities. Those weaknesses are usually not hard to find. (In the parlance of political pros, oppo research ain’t rocket science.) And if you take nothing else from either post, please note this - the media love an effective attack! When we dare to land a punch and draw blood, it will be covered! And whether you like or dislike this aspect of American politics, it is this sort of gamesmanship that reaches undecided voters. Unfortunately, if unanswered, it even works when there’s no basis to it. (Remember Willie Horton?) But when it is based on fact, it’s a game-changer.

So by all means, when you email your letter to the editor about the Supreme Court races, don’t forget to tell the reader about how little of his paycheck Republican Justice Parker is earning. More importantly, when you’re planning any other campaign, or ringing the doorbell of an undecided voter, don’t forget that the side that wants to win the most, usually does. Coach Steve Sloan will be remembered by most as a good quarterback, and a nice guy. He was the sort of warm, empathic individual you want calling on friends at the funeral home visitation. He never really showed anger as a coach. He also retired from college coaching with a 68-86-3 record. Nick Saban may not be the teddy Bear (another groaner, I know) type, but ... you get the point.

¹ Following the practice of Chief Justices of both parties for decades, Chief Justice Cobb only takes a half-load of opinions to draft, due to the duties of the Chief Justice as both the head of the Supreme Court, and administrative head of the entire Judicial Branch. Please note that if her total were doubled, she would have produced more published opinions than 5 of the 8 Republicans.

² Justice Shaw only came onto the Supreme Court in January of 2009, yet he is already on track to pass Justice Parker in published opinions released before the end of this year.