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

JUNE 5, 2013 NOTE TO THOSE WHO FIND THIS PAGE: I HAVE NOTED ON MY TRAFFIC LOG THAT THIS PAGE CONTINUES TO GET A LOT OF HITS FROM SEARCH ENGINES, BASED ON SEARCHES FOR “ALABAMA TEACHER TENURE LAW.” I AM FLATTERED BY THE CONTINUED ATTENTION. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT SB301 PASSED ON MAY 26, 2011, AND SOME, BUT PERHAPS NOT ALL, OF THE PROVISIONS OF SB310 DISCUSSED IN THIS POST ARE NOW LAW. YOU SHOULD CONSULT AN ATTORNEY OR, IF YOU ARE AN AEA MEMBER, YOUR UNISERV DIRECTOR FOR ADVICE ON THE LAW AS IT PASSED. THANKS!

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 in fact 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.

None Dare Call It Treason

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 Middle 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 Congressional 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 to Obama’s face 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.

When Is Ethics Reform Not Ethics Reform?

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 year 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.

Déjà Vu All Over Again: Sparks Ascendant

“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

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”?

This Week in the Governor’s Race

By and large, it’s been a quiet week in Alabama politics. Most campaigns have apparently decided to give things a break until closer to Labor Day, a decision not entirely unreasonable in this non-global-warming weather.

But that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. And what has happened had a distinct Democratic tilt.

First came the reports out of Houston County that robocalls were being made, accusing GOP gubernatorial nominee Robert Bentley of accepting $100,000 in campaign cash, supposedly for his commitment to continue the Riley policy of shutting down all gaming in Alabama, everywhere. Riley, of course, led the efforts that have, in recent months, shut down bingo operations at Greenetrack in Greene County, VictoryLand in Macon County, and Country Crossing in Houston County.

Then came reports - too big for even the Newhouse outlets to ignore - that Tuscaloosa businessman Stan Pate was claiming that Bentley was approached by operatives for Riley, offering to make sure that substantial sums of campaign money were raised for Bentley if the good Doctor would promise to “look after” Riley’s son Rob and daughter Minda Riley Campbell as governor. (Pate’s allegations have been vehemently denied not only by Riley, but also by Bentley.) Those with long memories - say, back to the GOP dinner before the runoff - will recall Bentley made a big issue of the Riley children’s alleged benefit from Daddy’s position. As Bentley said at the state Republican dinner in late June, before the runoff:

We are going to clean up Montgomery and it’s going to start in the Governor’s office. No longer are we going to have lobbyists in this state that will take kickbacks. We’re not going to have that. I will not benefit from my office. Not any of my children will benefit from my office. We are going to have an ethical administration.

Bentley echoed these remarks in a meeting with the editorial board of the Mobile Press-Register.

These sharp-elbow references refer to allegations made by Riley critics that the law firms employing Riley’s children have been awarded millions of dollars in no-bid contracts for legal work for the State by Riley’s administration, including some of the legal work involved in Riley’s anti-bingo campaign.

What makes the Pate allegations troubling for the GOP is that Pate has been one of Bentley’s biggest boosters since the days when Bentley was viewed as an afterthought in the GOP primary field. Besides the fact that both hail from Tuscaloosa, Bentley was the Republican most willing to distance himself from Riley, and Pate is an avowed Riley-hater. My personal favorite memory of the Alabama win in the BCS Championship Game was Pate’s national-attention-getting stunt of hiring a banner airplane to circle the Rose Bowl before the game, trailing a banner calling for Riley’s impeachment. Since Riley and his family were at the game, one can only imagine what the Commander in Thief was thinking as the plane droned overhead, and national media cameras rolled.

Pate is about as far from a shrinking violet as you can get. In a 2009 incident, Pate, a commercial real estate developer, was convicted of holding a shotgun on the manager of a restaurant which was in the process of closing on one of his Tuscaloosa properties. (He has appealed the conviction.) Just this year, upset with Riley, and Riley’s handpicked candidate for attorney general, Luther Strange, Pate paid for the production and airing of an ad pointing out Strange’s extensive lobbying and business ties to the oil industry, and asked how Strange could be expected to effectively prosecute Alabama’s claims against BP for the Gulf oil disaster. The Pate ad hit such a nerve that Strange’s campaign issued a cease and desist letter to Alabama TV stations (most did not desist). This is not the sort of man you want to have (1) holding a grudge against you, and (2) millions of dollars he doesn’t hesitate to spend venting his grudges.

The Pate dustup reveals a serious, potentially fatal, structural defect in the Bentley game plan, that goes beyond the potential defection of Pate’s critical financial support, and the threat of a Pate media vendetta. Bentley was the beneficiary of a certain number of Republican and independent voters who are genuinely tired of the patent Mississippi (See? I spell better than the folks at the University of Alabama) casino corruption in the Riley regime. Those voters will likely become, at best, indifferent to Bentley if it becomes apparent as November approaches that he has sold out to the Riley-Business Council contingent of the GOP.

On the other hand, if Bentley holds a grudge for the Business Council’s prodigal spending on Byrne, and sticks to his reformist guns, he risks a cutoff of the sort of Business Council financial aid that it’s impossible for a Republican candidate to do without. It is not safe to assume that the Business Council will heartily support Bentley as the “lesser of two evils.” The Alabama Republican Party reminds me, in one amusing aspect, of the Soviet-era Communist Party. There was a school of thought in the Dr. Strangelove crowd during the Cold War, that we should aggressively confront the Soviets at every chance. This argument was based on the premise that the Soviet leaders were Marxist ideologues who presumed that history was on their side, and that dialectic materialism dictated the eventual victory of communism. The thought was that they would always back down, presuming that capitalism would eventually fall of its own accord. Like the octogenarians atop Lenin’s tomb, the current crop of Alabama Republican leaders presume that history is on their side, and that Alabama’s descent into the abyss of ignorance is inevitable. (We know better, don’t we?) It may well be that they are willing to cut off support to Bentley, confident that Sparks would be a one-term governor, and worried that they would lose substantial control over the GOP in the interim.

Though less amusing than the eruptions of Mount Pate, more telling may be the Houston County robocalls and the efforts they suggest are underway. It appears that the supporters of the Country Crossing development (who have tens of millions of dollars invested) have decided that Bentley has picked the “sellout” option outlined above. They are not taking the Good Doctor at his word that he will allow the people a fair vote on legal gaming, and are pushing back hard. The GOP servitude to Mississippi casinos has wiped out over 2,000 jobs in the Dothan area, not an easy loss to absorb in this economic environment. The potential for political blowback was demonstrated by Bentley’s 63.7%-36.3% shellacking of Byrne in Houston County in the GOP runoff. Even Republicans in Dothan are upset about Country Crossing.

So how important is the Wiregrass to a GOP statewide candidate? Very. Recent years have given us two photo-finish gubernatorial races, and the Wiregrass vote was critical to the GOP in both. In 1994 and 2002, the total Republican margins in the three core Wiregrass counties are shown in this table:

County	2002 Gubernatorial GOP Margin	1994 Gubernatorial GOP Margin
Dale	1,611	2,283
Geneva	1,793	790
Houston	7,165	6,200
Total Wiregrass	10,569	9,273
Statewide	3,120	10,757

This table reflects what has been - until now - a growing Republican trend in the Wiregrass, and its centrality to GOP prospects. More important has been its role in how both parties approach a general election campaign. The working paradigm both employ is that we Democrats have a base - the Black Belt, the city of Birmingham, the Shoals, and a few other pockets. The GOP has Baldwin County, over-the-mountain Birmingham (including Shelby County) - and the Wiregrass. The parties then struggle for the swing vote in places like Madison, Cullman and DeKalb Counties. You take part of a party’s base out of this picture, and that party is in big trouble. Republicans are already nervous about how the BP disaster will impact their margin in Baldwin County, and the loss of overwhelming margins there and in the Wiregrass would almost certainly doom Bentley. At a minimum, they are going to have to devote resources to such things as media buys in the Dothan TV market, that they have grown unaccustomed to spending there.

All in all, not a good week for folks from Tuscaloosa. Bentley sees his runoff momentum losing steam, and remember, all you Alabama alumni and fans - it’s “humpback-humpback-I.”

The Battle(s) of Goat Hill - Part II

A few weeks ago, I took a detailed look at a handful of local races for seats in the Alabama Legislature, with a view to dispelling the GOP line that they will certainly be in control of Goat Hill come January. Once again, the Republican Party has issued press releases, announcing the inevitability of its takeover of the Alabama Legislature in 2010. Once again, its obedient friends in certain editorial offices have dutifully repeated their masters’ story line for thousands of readers. A recent headline in The Birmingham News informed readers that “Alabama GOP Sets Sights on Taking Control of State Legislature” - not the most neutral headline, and the article has some neutrality issues on its own. In referring to the race in Senate District 13, it said:

... if Dial, a longtime senator who is well-known in his community, can’t beat newcomer Varner in what is now a Republican-leaning district, chances are Republicans don’t have much of a chance to win the Senate.

OK, exactly who said it’s a “Republican-leaning district”? Looking at the map, a lot of that district consists of hard-line Democratic counties, represented in the House by the likes of Rep. Richard Lindsey (D-Centre). The courthouses in that district are overwhelmingly Democratic. It may be a GOP pickup chance, it may not. Former Democratic Senator Gerald Dial - who lost the Democratic primary in 2006 - is making a comeback try as a Republican. He will be well known, but his last outing in this district was an “L.” But out there as unquestioned, if unsupported, news, is that it’s a “Republican-leaning district.”

The article meets the de minimis balance test, in that it quotes Democratic Chair Joe Turnham and other Democrats, but their quotes are not the best points that could be made. They are not quoted pointing out several prime Democratic pickup opportunities that are likely to offset any GOP gains, and may exceed them. I don’t blame these leaders for not being quoted saying these things, because I know from personal experience the most telling points you make often get edited out of a news story. But there are a few salient points that need to be made about the lay of the land, and they don’t bode well for the Republicans.

Statewide trends and considerations. But first, a word from our sponsor. Well, not really. But if you read my first post on legislative races, you recall that the linchpin of the GOP strategy collapsed when Artur Davis did not win the gubernatorial primary. The GOP had counted on him to pull several white Democratic nominees to defeat with himself in November. A second shell landed in the GOP legislative foxhole on the day of the runoff, when Bradley Byrne went down to defeat. That is when our “sponsor” - AEA, so says the GOP itself - attained its foremost electoral goal of the cycle. The cha-ching! you just heard was something, probably at least two million dollars, that AEA would have spent attacking Byrne in the general, landing in the coffers of Democratic legislative nominees everywhere.

On the other side of the coin, the Republican National Bank, sometimes known by its legal name, the “Business Council of Alabama,” maxed its credit card trying to nominate Bradley Byrne for the governor’s mansion. The Business Council isn’t used to having to contest the GOP nomination, and their lack of spending discipline showed. While Alabama Power and other Big Mules will never run out of money, they will be playing hurt in the Big Game in November. Another self-inflicted Republican injury is political. The bruising GOP runoff between Bentley on one side, and Byrne, Hubbard, and the GOP establishment on the other, has left cracks and fractures all over the Republican edifice. Yes, everyone kissed and made nice in public this last weekend, and the peaceful reunification of the GOP was dutifully reported in The Birmingham News. But don’t you believe it. The wounding of Mike Hubbard in the gubernatorial race has already led him to renounce another term as Republican State Chairman. Despite the Marcus Welby figure Dr. Bentley has managed to cut so far this year, people around Tuscaloosa tell me he has a vindictive side. He isn’t likely to forget Hubbard’s barely-concealed support of Byrne, and if he gets a chance to plunge the dagger into Hubbard’s hopes for the Speaker’s chair, he will. With Hubbard wounded, others have been rumored to be quietly sounding out Republican House members about the possibility of replacing him, whether as Speaker or Minority Leader. The upshot of all this is that there will continue to be distraction inside the GOP ranks as November approaches, and Hubbard will be tempted to overspend in safe districts to shore up his leadership support. Given the known character of Mike Hubbard, we can probably count on him to short-change his party for his personal benefit.

And for the local news from across Alabama. Again, this topic wouldn’t be complete without looking at a few districts time, space and the lack of runoff results kept me from writing about earlier.

Senate District 5. This district is centered on Walker County, a Democratic stronghold. It takes in the one sparsely-populated corner of Jefferson County in the Birmingport area, and parts of Tuscaloosa County into the fringes of Northport and Tuscaloosa. The Democratic nominee is Jasper lawyer Brett Wadsworth. While this seat has been in Republican hands for the last three terms, there have been extraordinary circumstances contributing to that. Well, there’s not anything particularly extraordinary about a lot of money. But the two Republicans - Curt Lee and Charles “Slugger” Bishop - have both been wealthy candidates who liberally (so to speak) self-financed. Neither of their Democratic opponents has been able to match the money dump. The GOP this time is fielding Greg Reed, a Jasper executive in a mid-small medical equipment company. While he’s not starving, Reed lacks the deep pockets that enabled Lee and Bishop to swamp their Democratic opponents with checks. The fact is, the base voting history of this district is Democratic, and Wadsworth is not obviously outgunned financially. As the photo indicates, he, or someone helping his campaign, has a good eye for snagging voter attention. This district should, at worst for the Democrats, be considered a tossup. A more factually-based evaluation would call it a Democratic leaner.

House District 8. This Morgan County district has been represented by Democrat Bill Dukes, who was noted for being the eldest member of the current Legislature. When health concerns induced him to drop his re-election bid a couple of months ago, the GOP got out their chalk and wrote “House-8” in their “takeaway” column. Not so fast. The Democratic nominee is Drama Breland (who many not have the most notable name in this post - keep reading). Breland is a well known Decatur businesswoman, and the wife of popular retired Judge David Breland. Despite the GOP’s claims to this as a pickup possibility, it’s really a carefully drawn Democratic district, which includes most of the black neighborhoods in Decatur. No Republican bothered to run against Dukes in 2006, and the last time one did in 2002, he handily held the seat, 74.0%-26.0%. There are a lot of GOP voters in Morgan County. They have been carefully quarantined in other districts. Forget the GOP hype, this is at least a Democratic leaner, if not a safe Democratic seat.

House District 26. This district in Marshall and DeKalb Counties is being vacated by longtime Democratic Representative Frank McDaniel. As soon as McDaniel announced his retirement a few months back, GOP mouthpieces immediately wrote this district into their “pickup” list. That may have been premature. The Democratic nominee is Randall White of Boaz. White recently retired after a 37-year career in adult education, and most of the people in this district with a G.E.D. know him and owe that certificate in part to his efforts. That’s a nice base to build from. White is also a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Boaz, and has staked out pro-life and Second Amendment positions that will make it impossible to paint him as Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans have nominated Kerry Rich, who held the other House seat from Marshall County (now held by Democrat Jeff McLaughlin) from 1990-94 before deciding re-election was futile. More importantly, while White was being feted by business and civic groups for his retirement, Rich was undergoing a primary and runoff fight that made Byrne-Bentley-James look like a Sunday School picnic. This was the sort of fight that leaves feelings hurt and coffers empty. One of Rich’s opponents filed a successful complaint with the FCC after Rich failed to take himself off the air of his radio station (as a DJ), or offer opponents equal time. This is at least a tossup race.

House District 38. Right in Mike Hubbard’s back yard, and held by a Republican incumbent, this district is not one the GOP needs to have to divert resources to hold. But divert they must. The Democratic nominee is - some things you just can’t make up - Huey Long, a former Chambers County commissioner. While Lee County, a rural part of which is in this district, has shown regrettable Republican tendencies in recent cycles, Chambers County is historically much more Democratic, and retains a strong local Democratic trend. Perhaps more worrisome for the GOP, in 2006, when Riley held a comfortable lead at the top of the ticket, Republican incumbent Duwayne Bridges only held onto this seat by a 50.7%-49.3% margin. Danny, at Doc’s Political Parlor, observes that “I believe the argument could be made that” Bridges is “as vulnerable as” at least one or two of the Democrats whose seats the GOP tout as “in play.” One subtle point I gleamed in looking at Long’s Facebook page: one of his Likers is former State Representative John Rice of Opelika. That’s Republican former Representative John Rice of Opelika, whose fierce partisan tendencies have long been notorious. While many regard Rice as something of a spent force, he should still be considered as a notable local Republican. If this indicates, as I suspect it does, any sort of split in the Lee County GOP, Bridges is in for a long election night.

Senate District 8. Some of the Republicans’ claimed “in play” seats are simply fantastic. Among them, they count the seat of Senator Lowell Barron (D-Fyffe). Barron’s opponent is one Shadrack McGill, who hails from the isolated mountains of western Jackson County. McGill appears to be a young Tea Party type who has become involved after listening to numerous political sermons at his rural church. Apart from whatever crumbs the state GOP throws his way, his finance will be negligible. Four years ago, when Barron was challenged by a seasoned GOP activist who prodigiously self-financed from his successful business, Barron handily won, 56.6%-43.4%. For the last quadrennium, Barron, undistracted by his previous duties as President Pro Tem of the Senate, has even more assiduously worked to cultivate the volunteer fire departments, high school bands, and Little League ballparks that are the meat and potatoes of legislative campaigns, especially in rural districts. Only this month, Barron again became a hero to every good ole boy in his district, when he brokered a compromise with the National Park Service that should allow continued four-wheeling in the Little River Canyon National Preserve. Among the broken links and jarring grammar of McGill’s website is the observation that “Shadd is pursuing a degree in Political Science.” He’s about to get a serious homework lesson. If the GOP thinks this seat is really in play, Loretta Nall has successfully infiltrated the GOP High Command.

As with my previous review of Legislative seats, my point is not that the Democrats are going to sweep the seats I have named. Even I will admit that’s unlikely. But it’s equally unlikely that the GOP will, either, and therein lies the fallacy of their PR campaign. When they tout their impending takeover of Goat Hill, they are counting every seat I have listed as a likely or solid pickup. That’s simply unrealistic. The problem is, most of the media in Alabama have not really challenged them on this. How can we get them to? Well, a first step is the labor-intensive process of educating first-tier media collectors - that is, reporters - about these individual races, and their impact on the overall numbers. If we don’t do that spadework, no amount of clever turns of phrase will reverse the hostile tenor of the resulting news coverage. As was done with some effect in the piece from The Birmingham News that opened this post, we can also remind the media - and the voters - that this is not the first time the GOP has proclaimed the coming of its Legislative Antichrist. It’s just the latest iteration. Those of us with long memories recall when, as recently as the 1970s, Birmingham’s George Siebels (actually quite moderate, considering his party affiliation), was the default Republican leader in the House, as he was the only Republican in either chamber. While a return to that golden age is unlikely, we need to remind the media that, despite the occasional court-delivered Republican governor, the Alabama voter has trusted the Democratic Party with the Legislature, and for good reason. The only thing more important is to fight to see to it that we continue to deservedly do so. These are tasks not only for the statewide Party leadership, but for each nominee for the Legislature and their local supporters. The links to these candidates’ websites provide another valuable opportunity to work for this worthy goal.

"R" - Is It for "Republican," or "Rasmussen"?

Actually, shame on me, it’s a trick question. But, to quote the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James, “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.”

Such political news as there has been this last week, has been dominated by a Rasmussen “poll,” purporting to show Republican nominee Robert Bentley with a 20% lead over Democrat Ron Sparks. Not that we are surprised, but many in the media in Alabama immediately pounced on the story to show the irresistible momentum of the Bentley colossus. An example, from the Mobile Press-Register, is at the right, but The Birmingham News and others have been following the same lead, for weeks, from the same polling shop. Whether the effect is intentional or inadvertent, you can almost see their editors circling the block around their newspaper offices, beating a bass drum and shouting “It’s inevitable! Bentley will win! Join the parade while you can!” For this reason, journalists should be careful about how they handle polls, and we, as Democrats, should know the truth behind polls, their biases, and their issues, so we can intelligently respond to media stories such as the one from the Press-Register. Otherwise, such polls can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s a movie we’ve watched before. On November 7, 2002, The Birmingham News found itself with some explaining to do:

The Birmingham News, the Mobile Register and The Huntsville Times on Sunday published a survey of 600 likely voters that showed Riley leading Siegelman 47 percent to 39 percent, with 11 percent undecided and 3 percent favoring Libertarian John Sophocleus.

Powell, associate professor of communication studies at University of Alabama at Birmingham, conducted the poll Oct. 28-31 for the three newspapers and WHNT-TV in Huntsville. In Sunday’s article about the poll, Powell said, “Riley has pulled significantly ahead. He is poised to win the election.” But Tuesday’s election turned into a cliffhanger, with just a few thousand votes - a few tenths of 1 percent of the more than 1.3 million cast - separating Riley and Siegelman.

“The poll was wrong,” said Siegelman spokesman Rip Andrews, noting that Siegelman protested that it was wrong when the poll was released. “We never had any evidence that was credible to suggest anything but a very, very close race,” Andrews said. ‘Which is what we kept saying to some deaf ears in the media.”

At best, it’s a remake of a movie we’ve watched before, and as with most remakes, the cast isn’t even as good as it was in the original. But one recurring theme of the Alabama media saga is that it frequently has the same scriptwriter - Rasmussen Reports. “Rasmussen” is a name that recurs in news reports with remarkable regularity, especially in the columns of the Newhouse outlets in Alabama, and it’s well past time for them to come under a little scrutiny. (To be fair to Rasmussen, the 2002 botched poll was conducted, as noted, by UAB marketing professor Larry Powell.)

Let’s start with looking at Rasmussen’s record in Alabama. In a poll conducted only eight weeks before Bentley’s strong second-place showing in the June 1 Republican primary, Rasmussen didn’t even query respondents about Bentley! That’s not a promising start.

The Rasmussen shop states on its website that it “does not do polls-for-hire.” However, records indexed by the Center for Public Integrity show that Rasmussen was paid over $100,000 by the Bush campaign in 2004. Whatever explanation Rasmussen has for that discrepancy, I haven’t been able to find. Rasmussen’s website says that, because it has frequently been sought out to conduct polls for hire:

To meet this demand, Pulse Opinion Research was launched as a separate company several years ago to provide field work (interviews and processing) for surveys. Pulse licenses methodology developed by Scott Rasmussen and provides the field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys. It provides all customers with the same quality field work that we rely on every day.

This creates obvious problems. If Pulse and Rasmussen are closely affiliated - say by interlocking ownership - then the “independence” of Rasmussen is a sham, about which they are proactively deceptive by affirmatively touting it. Rasmussen states that it contracts out its “field work” - the actual making of calls - to Pulse. If the two are truly independent of each other, this raises obvious questions about quality control and oversight.

Nate Silver, at fivethirtyeight.com, while kinder in some other aspects to Rasmussen, had the following to say about his methods:

I’m not saying that Rasmussen’s question wording is always biased. It isn’t. And I’m sure you could find a couple of cases where the wording tends to portray the liberal argument more favorably. But cases like these happen consistently enough with Rasmussen that I’d say it’s a concern. And when they do use unorthodox question wording, nine times out of ten it favors the conservative argument.

Silver also notes that “So far in the 2010 cycle, their polling has consistently and predictably shown better results for Republican candidates than other polling firms have.” (Emphasis in original.) Finally, Silver notes that “they have a knack for issuing polls at times which tend to dovetail with conservative media narratives.” That observation - made in January - really rings true with respect to the “20% Bentley lead” poll. From the June 1 primary until the runoff two weeks before the Rasmussen “poll,” Bentley was actively advertising on television, making daily appearances, had canvassers and phone banks working, and was the subject of regular news coverage, including favorable “Bentley Wins!” headlines on July 14. Sparks, during this same interlude, was not running paid TV ads, was not frequently covered in the news, and was working on resting and assembling a field operation, not deploying one. If I were to pick the optimal time to poll for Bentley, the two weeks before the Rasmussen poll would have been the time. Presuming Rasmussen is knowledgeable about polling, he knows this, too, and the timing of his poll cannot have been accidental.

Silver is not the only analyst critical of Rasmussen’s techniques and slants. As one political science professor was quoted about Rasmussen on Politico:

“He polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod,” said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who studies polling. “It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”

Rasmussen uses automated calling, often called a “robopoll,” a practice so prone to error that many major media organizations, including The Washington Post, have an editorial preference to not publish their results. While polls like Rasmussen like to point out that they have the advantage of giving every respondent the same pronunciation and inflection in the questions, that advantage is more than lost in the shortcomings of a robopoll. Any robopoll is going to have to limit itself in the number of questions it asks. People are just not going to listen to the robot as long as they will to the person who asked “Hi, how are you doing?” at the beginning of the call. This is critical because it limits the “screening” questions that can be asked about the age, location, race etc. of the person answering the call. Has the computer picked too many white households to call? Too many from Mobile, compared to its share of the vote? How many times has the respondent actually voted in the last few elections? A serious, and accurate, poll needs to know a lot of this information to determine if its raw data needs to be mathematically adjusted so that the published result is a fair cross-section of the actual electorate. When you are dealing with the limited attention span of someone listening to a recording, you have to limit those questions severely. A related issue involves what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the “unknown unknown” (it pains me to quote him, but his memory is good Democratic motivation) of people who simply hang up when they hear the computer talking. We simply have no way of knowing how those people differ from those who merrily sit there and punch “2” for Bentley. Another “unknown unknown” in any robopoll is how many of the “respondents” were actually six-year-olds who thought it would be good grownup fun to punch a number when the nice computer asked them to. A live caller will catch this one.

Another robo-calling polling outfit is Public Policy Polling out of North Carolina. They released a poll a week before the June 1 primary, showing Artur Davis with a 10% lead over Ron Sparks. We all remember how accurate that turned out to be. The same shop came out with at least one poll showing Troy King leading Luther Strange in the GOP primary for Attorney General - which Strange eventually won, 60.2%-39.8%.

So who is the personality behind Rasmussen Reports? Scott Rasmussen serves as the President of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in New Jersey. Under New Jersey law, Orange Grove is treated as a municipality. In 2007, Rasmussen, as President, terminated the public’s right to rent the Association’s beachside pavilion, rather than be forced to allow homosexual couples, including longtime Ocean Grove residents, to use it for civil union ceremonies under New Jersey law. The pavilion had been leased for weddings for decades prior to this action. If this sounds familiar to Alabamians, it should. The City of Montgomery, faced with a Federal court desegregation order in 1959, closed all the city’s parks, swimming pools, athletic fields and playgrounds, and kept them closed until 1965, in the famous case of Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, 417 U.S. 556 (1974). While the pavilion episode does not directly pertain to polling, it does give a pretty valid perspective of Rasmussen’s political point of view, and it’s certainly not liberal or moderate.

There are two lessons to take away from all of this. First, for journalists, it’s important to take that extra five minutes and look into the background and methodology of the pollster whose “results” you’re about to put on page one. Especially if the pollster’s name starts with the same letter as “Republican.” You run the risk of repeating the mistake of 2002, when false reports of a Riley lead created the bandwagon that pulled him close enough to Siegelman for the “After Midnight” recount to do the rest. For Democrats involved in a campaign, at any level, it’s important to be informed about the weaknesses and biases of polls, and to push back when a pollster like Rasmussen is trying to declare an election over. This is true whether you’re the candidate or campaign spokesperson in Montgomery talking to the reporter, or just the local Democrat at the morning coffee table at the local meat-and-three cafe. With only one or two exceptions in Alabama, reporters will balance their story on a poll if we are ready and willing to give them the information they need.