Democratic Legislature in Alabama - 2014?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Ghost of Elbridge Gerry Haunts Montgomery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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