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

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.)

Alabama’s “Little Ohio”?

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.

Conventional Stupidity: The 4th Congressional District

The other day, I vented for a few minutes about the “Conventional Wisdom” as it pertains to the Fifth Congressional District. Actually, I vented for a lot longer than that; I just quit typing before I wrote something about the exponents of “Conventional Wisdom” that might get me in legal trouble. Today, I am going to tempt the fates again, and talk about how “Conventional Wisdom” has inflicted long-standing Republican control on a fundamentally Democratic Congressional district. Perhaps there are lessons to be learnt by the DCCC, that can avoid a similar episode of incompetence in the Fifth this year.

As the title gives away, I am talking about the Alabama Fourth District. This district has been held since the 1996 election by Republican Robert Aderholt of Haleyville. Aderholt is noted for being one of the most reliable votes in the GOP Caucus, so much so that he has failed, time and again, to bargain for goodies for his constituents. Indeed, he has frequently voted them out of a job, as with his deciding vote favor of CAFTA in 2005 that spelled the end of literally thousands of hosiery mill jobs in Fort Payne, that were lost to Central American competition. Whatever caused the change in hairlines in the two photos here (the one on the left, from his first campaign; the other current), it wasn’t from excessive activity underneath.

Because Aderholt was allowed to become entrenched in this district, it is widely viewed, especially among the Beltway-genius crowd, as one of the most reliably Republican districts in the country. This reputation is bolstered when, as this year, no Democrat qualifies for the contest. However, the district is Republican in the first place because that same Beltway Conventional Wisdom became a self-fulfilling prophecy in 1996. Before that year, the district had been held for 30 years by Democratic legend Tom Bevill of Walker County. Bevill had reclaimed the seat for the Democrats after its one term in GOP hands after the 1964 Goldwater surge in Alabama. Prior to that one term, the seat had been Democratic since 1901, and even that one-term Republican interval was occasioned by GOP control of the Congress, which seated Republican William Aldrich (as in Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller) under questionable circumstances.

Bevill was a master of the appropriations process, and spent all but the last of his last several terms as chair of the House Public Works Appropriations Subcommittee, the best seat in Congress for bringing bacon back home to the district. Aderholt, by contrast, strikes most observers as an acquiescent bobble-head who can’t find sufficient words to reassure the Republican leadership, and a Republican president when he has one, that he is their most reliable team player. Bevill was a genius at leveraging either issue concessions, or benefits for his district, by hinting that he was getting a lot of heat from his constituents about a bill, and might have to vote against it. (All without sacrificing core Democratic values.) Not so Aderholt. A district accustomed to considerable largess under Bevill has become one of the doormats of Federal appropriations as a result. Bevill’s mastery of the process is exemplified by a speech I recall at his district retirement dinner in his hometown in 1996. One of the speakers was a Corps of Engineers representative, who said she stopped a local policeman to ask for directions to “The Bevill Center,” the venue for the dinner. The cop scratched his head and asked her, “Which one?”

One reason this district is said to be permanently Republican is its voting history since Aderholt was elected in 1996. Now, for the strength to resist calling expositors of Conventional Wisdom what they really, truly are. The district is “Republican” because Aderholt has averaged 67.7% in his seven elections to the seat. Yet, when Aderholt first sought the seat, Bevill had averaged 91.7% in his last seven elections. This graph shows the relative strengths of the two in their last seven elections:


The point of my gripe - no, my fury - is that, in 1996, Democratic nominee, former State Senator Bob Wilson of Walker County, was denied funds from the DCCC (a nominal media buy that had been promised was pulled in favor of “more competitive” districts) on the basis that the district was “too Republican” for the DCCC to “waste” scarce resources - despite the fact its then-recent voting history was more Democratic than the now-Republican history used to write it off. This was being done while the national Republican Party, through PACs, party committees, and guided contributions, was channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars that cycle to Aderholt to take the seat. It is bad enough when such nonsense is propagated by Beltway punditry, but when it originates in the campaign offices of the Democratic Party, one wonders if a treason investigation isn’t merited. After Wilson, two strong Democratic candidates contested the seat before Aderholt could plant deep roots - Don Bevill, the former Congressman’s son, in 1998, and Marsha Folsom, the wife of Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom (then the former Governor) in 2000. Both had entered the race with promises of national party support, which, in both cases, was not forthcoming. Conventional Wisdom, you see, again said the seat was “too Republican.”

And I can hear the New Jersey-American accents pointing out to me, that “tings have changed,” that voters in the Fourth will “no longer vote for a Democrat in the age of Kerry and Obama.” Obama, personally, I concede, is a problem. The racial voting polarization was extreme in this district which, with only a 5.1% black vote, is Alabama’s whitest. Obama got 23.7% in DeKalb County, 21.3% in Marshall, and only 16.7% in Cullman. Overall, McCain got 76.2% of the district’s vote. (But since Bush only got 60.2% in 2000, it may be safe to assume the size of that margin is attributable to racial, not political, factors.) Neither have other Democratic Presidential candidates fared well in the district. However, one appears to be disqualified from status as a DC pundit if one knows that, especially in the South, GOP Presidential voting patterns are not always followed downballot. This is empirically established by the following table, which aggregates the 2006 party votes for those districts in the Alabama House of Representatives which are fully nested within the Fourth District:

Party	Seats Held	Total Vote	% Vote
Democrats	11	94,392	62.1%
Republicans	3	57,645	37.9%

Without taking time to likewise tally courthouse offices, anyone with enough familiarity with the district to have an opinion worthy of audience, knows that the county offices in this District are overwhelmingly Democratic. In fact, Democrats control the majority, if not all, of the courthouse offices except in historically Republican Winston County (a county whose Republicanism dates to Abe Lincoln; it attempted to secede from the state during the Civil War). Even in Marshall County, where Republican trends have been strongest in the district, Democrats still control the sheriff’s office and the probate court, two traditional local power centers. So, I don’t care if your name is “Cook,” or “Rothenberg,” or “Kowalski.” If you try to tell me that this district will not vote for any Democrat downballot because it votes Republican in Presidential elections, I am not paying the $200-$300+ a year you charge for your insider “knowledge.” I can put the cash to better use.

Wow, that felt better. And I managed to say what I wanted without using any of what Dennis the Menace called his dad’s “golf words.” Which leaves me in enough of a charitable and relaxed mood to observe that the performance of the DCCC in Southern districts has notably improved, as shown by their heavy presence in the Alabama Fifth in 2008. (I sense the gentle nudge of the boot of Howard Dean, implementing his successful 50-State Strategy over the objection of Conventional Wisdom insiders, who remain convinced we can elect a President and Congress with only New York and New Jersey.) So long as the Party maintains this 50-State Strategy, this district will be less of a challenge, even in Presidential years. When it was lost in 1996, the Clinton-Gore media buy in Alabama was exactly zero; Clinton lost the state by 6.9%. Had that margin been trimmed by a couple of points by some negative on Dole, this district would probably have still been Democratic today. Perhaps, when this district comes open, there will be some enlightened staffer who will realize the pickup opportunity this district represents.

And that day may not be far off. Rumors keep bubbling around the district - though never covered by the media - that Aderholt is looking for a parachute, preferably golden. Of course, there were more parachutes when there was a Republican in the White House, but the tales persist. (One wonders if the Obama political shop is sufficiently astute to see the possibility of something like the appointment of John McHugh, the Republican from the New York 23rd, as Secretary of the Army. Probably not. That appointment caused a special that elected that district’s first Democrat in 150 years.) It may be that Aderholt is waiting to see if the GOP can take the House back this time. A review of Aderholt’s May 12 FEC report shows that, through that date in this cycle, he has not made a single contribution to a candidate of his own party, and isn’t engaging in the sort of fundraising that intraparty support requires. That is not the behavior of a Congressman who wants to hang around, and thereby must grease the rails of his career advancement on the Hill. (And even I refuse to attribute that course entirely to his naïveté.) A smart local politician, or clever DCCC staffer, will keep one peeled eye on this district at all times.

In the meantime - and I almost dare not ask it - is this district winnable before Aderholt tires of life on the Potomac? The local voting fundamentals say yes, but realism dictates skepticism. Had the DCCC of 1998-2000 been on the ball, it was easily doable. Today, Aderholt has spoken, as the incumbent, at a lot of Rotary lunches and high school graduations. Many Congressional “statements” advocating heterosexuality, private ownership of automatic weapons, and the birth of unwanted babies, have been duly “reported” in local newspapers. A lot of voters over the age of 60 in 1996, who would remember what an effective Congressman can do, are no longer among the living. Still. It’s a little more than “a fella can hope, can’t he?” A close look at the voting trends above show that Aderholt has not performed particularly brilliantly against token, if noble, opposition. A review of returns in his, and other, races, indicates that the district has about a 25% straight-Democratic-ticket voting cohort; not bad for a 91% white Southern district. The overall trend of Aderholt’s vote share is downward (though it will rise with no opponent this cycle). A review of his expenditures this cycle reflects a lack of spending discipline, and a lot of funds expended for items of questionable political benefit. (e.g., repeated “staff lunches” at Ruth’s Chris Steak House; Ribeye, $37.00. Baked potato? $8.00 extra.) His cash on hand on May 12 was only $345,409.00, which, even by House standards, isn’t going to get him in the Richard Shelby Impervious Wall of Cash Club. Perhaps most importantly, he has issue vulnerabilities (see, 4,000 unemployed Fort Payne sock mill workers, supra), that could be exploited by an opponent.

Of course, a successful challenge presumes a successful challenger. I have some names in mind, but various more pressing political issues preclude me from dropping them. You know who you are, and when and if the opportunity presents itself, I will gleefully extol your viability to the world. In the meantime, a few thoughts about such a candidate. He or she will need some pre-existing name recognition, whether from politics, business, or elsewhere, simply to overcome Aderholt’s structural advantages as an incumbent. This race is going to require a lot of money to win. At a minimum, it requires media buys in the Huntsville and Birmingham television markets, and generally, Columbus, Mississippi. The candidate will need either the ability to self-finance, or an ironclad commitment from the DCCC, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. (A third possibility is some “Fairy Godmother” donor base, such as the Brown schoolmates who did so much to boost Josh Segall’s campaign in 2008, or Terri Sewell’s tap of her Princeton and Harvard Law buddies.) The balance could be raised once some negative goes up on Aderholt, and challenger viability is established. On issues, the candidate will need to be able to articulate the damage done to the pocketbooks of the district’s rural and small-city blue collar workers by Aderholt’s Republican non-ideas, with relentless discipline and ruthlessness. The task is not impossible, only arduous. But then, we are meant to earn our bread by the sweat of our brows. Unless, of course, we are Republicans.