Commitment Issues

Yes, commitment is a wonderful thing.

Alabama Primary 2012 has come and gone. The financial boon enjoyed by broadcasters, hoteliers and restaurateurs catering to the media, and attention-seeking middle-level Republican leaders being solicited for endorsements has passed, not to be repeated until 2016. Because Alabama will be deemed one of the least competitive states in this November’s election, the attention paid to our politics will enjoy a similar slumber. The national media’s terminal case of ADHD will compel it to focus on Illinois, until it’s some other unfortunate state’s turn.

The inability of the national media to analyze the results in any state for more than a couple of hours on its primary night often leads it to miss critically important facts about what happened on the ground that day. Even the pampered caucus-goers of Iowa don’t get any meaningful post-caucus analysis, and it would be foolhardy for Alabama to expect any better. When you combine these facts with the media’s obsession with the Republican Kill-Thy-Neighbor primary, it’s not surprising that something amazing in the Democratic primary could be overlooked.

I am referring to the relatively high number of Alabama Democrats who declined to vote for President Obama in our primary, and instead cast a vote for “uncommitted.” While total results are not available on the Secretary of State’s website, in those counties currently reporting, 16.8% of Democratic primary voters declined to vote for Obama, and voted “uncommitted.” Among those reporting counties, “uncommitted” actually beat Obama in at least seven counties.

Once upon a time - before the presidential campaigns of George Wallace - uncommitted delegates were quite common in Alabama presidential primaries. Sending uncommitted delegates to a convention gave the state bargaining leverage. A number of loyalist Democrats continued the tradition into the Wallace era, providing Wallace foes a voting option in the primary. Since the election of Jimmy Carter, however, the phenomenon has faded into disuse, although remaining a legal option. Until now.

Obviously, a significant number of Alabama Democrats felt compelled to register unwillingness to support the President. One caveat is in order about the 16.8% figure: as the map shows, a number of the counties not yet reporting in the Secretary of State’s system are in the Black Belt. Those counties will undoubtedly lower the 16.8% figure when full results are officially canvassed. But the figure will still be significant; those counties don’t account for enough of the state’s vote to lower it much. And the fact remains that “uncommitted” carried a number of counties.

Several explanations offer themselves for this phenomenon. The most obvious is that of race. Many of the counties carried by “uncommitted” are overwhelmingly white, and were carried by Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary. Obama got a mere 10% of the white vote in the 2008 general election. But there is at least one county where race isn’t such an easy explanation, and that is Washington County. Washington County is 26.2% black. Common sense tells us that the Democratic primary electorate is going to have a much larger percentage of black voters than that. Compounding the complexity of analyzing Washington returns is the fact that white voters have not, for the most part, abandoned the Democratic primary for the Republican. Only 16% of the total votes cast for President in the Washington County primary were cast in the GOP contest. The Democratic primary is still, apparently, a white-majority affair. Even so, in picking through the precinct results for Washington County, I noted at least a couple of precincts where Obama’s total fell below the black percentage of the population reported by the Census. In sum, race may be the explanation, but the data isn’t good enough to draw any conclusions. If only the media had exit-polled the Democratic primary.

The alternative explanation - and the two can coexist - is residual discontent among Democrats with the incompetent messaging of the Obama administration, which, as I have noted, has had disastrous effects on the Alabama Democratic Party. More serious are continuing concerns - which I also previously noted - that Obama’s team made a conscious decision to allow the Alabama GOP to torpedo the Democratic Party by leaving corrupt Bush U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in place in Montgomery, where her politically-motivated sham indictments contributed greatly to 2010 GOP gains. (Please sue me for defamation, Leura. I’d love to have subpoena power to take depositions and unearth bank records. You’d love Tallahassee. And congratulations to Milton McGregor, the other victims, and their legal teams.)

A look at the map above, and a passing familiarity with the 2010 Democratic casualty list, reveals that several of the “uncommitted” counties were represented in the Legislature by Democrats who lost their seats, or their leadership positions. Those Party leaders certainly weren’t motivated to support Obama in the primary, and it would take a very short leap of the imagination to see them, and their supporters, exacting a measure of revenge.

Yet another fact that should be considered is that many of the “uncommitted” counties still have Democratic courthouses. Voters must vote in the Democratic primary to have a meaningful voice in the election of their local officials. Among the “uncommitted” counties, for example, Jackson had contested races for probate judge, circuit clerk, superintendent of education, and commission president. Neighboring DeKalb, which Obama carried, had only a single local race for superintendent to draw voters. A larger primary cohort could well have brought in voters more likely to express racial bias in their votes.

Those counties carried by “uncommitted” are, for the most part, the foundation of the historic Democratic base in Alabama. A problem in those counties, whatever its etiology, signals a problem the Obama campaign badly needs to address. While solving the problem might not make Alabama competitive in November, Obama has “reach” states in the South - Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Georgia - where every vote will count. In those states, Obama can’t afford to leave base Democrats off the bus.

Having entered the White House like the fortunate prince of whom Machiavelli said, “Coloro e’ quali solamente per fortuna diventano di privati principi, con poca fatica diventono, ma con assai si mantengono; e non hanno alcuna difficultà fra via, perché vi volano: ma tutte le difficultà nascono quando e’ sono posti,” Obama had better hope that the sage was wrong in noting that “E chi crede che ne’ personaggi grandi e’ benifizi nuovi faccino sdimenticare le iniurie vecchie, s’inganna.” (Il Principe, Chapter VII. The quotes are the first and the penultimate sentences of the chapter. )

The Battle for the Republican Soul ... and Other Oxymorons

This Tuesday is the occasion for the Alabama 2012 primary, moved to its early date in the 2011 legislative session in an effort to make Alabama more relevant to the presidential nominating process. In a further effort to save money (it does cost a lot to run an election), the Legislature also moved the primary for downballot races to the March date.

The media, as it is wont to do, has put a laserlike focus on the presidential primary. This is not wholly irrational. Alabama will indeed be the focus of the nation’s attention Tuesday night, especially as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum (I am not going where his tie choice leads!) try furtively to push each other out of the Republican race. As only one example of this focus, The Washington Post offers this catchy graphic showing the race’s importance. Mitt Romney, in an effort to secure a win in the Deep South that would contribute substantially to his “inevitable” theme, has expressed a newfound affection for grits and other Southern culture, that is certainly as genuine and sincere as his commitment to freedom of reproductive choice and universal health insurance. The Alabama GOP presidential primary is worth watching, and it will be worthwhile to pick over the numbers starting Wednesday.

I say this because of the adage in Sun Tzu’s widely-read classic The Art of War, that “if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.” But if we really want to know our enemy, the GOP presidential race may not be the place to look. That contest has become an exercise in pathological syncretism, as the three non-Paul contenders have devoted their full energies into seeing which can most totally pander to the Tea Party wing of the GOP. (Much to the justified delight of President Obama’s campaign staff.) Because of this, the Republican presidential results are going to tell us little more than which of the three was most effective at deploying this strategy.

The more perceptive analyst will be looking at downballot GOP races, in particular at those for Chief Justice and President of the Public Service Commission.

The race for Chief Justice features incumbent Charles Malone of Tuscaloosa, appointed last year by Governor Bentley; Mobile County Circuit Judge Charlie Graddick, and former Chief Justice Roy Moore. Many write off the latter two as contestants for the Shorty Price Award for Futile Candidacies. Graddick burst on the state political scene in 1978 as the candidate for attorney general whose “fry ‘em til their eyes pop out” TV ads (the posted clip is the only remnant I could find online) brought him to the head of a crowded field in the Democratic primary. After two terms as AG, he ran for governor in 1986, and won the Democratic runoff against Bill Baxley. He was properly, if inartfully, stripped of the nomination by the SDEC for encouraging illegal crossover GOP votes in the runoff. After another unsuccessful statewide run - this as the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor against Don Siegelman in 1994 - he settled into a circuit judgeship in Mobile County, where he had started as district attorney in the 1970’s.

Judge Roy Moore, of course, is widely perceived as a caricatured religious fanatic, whose insistence on placing the Ten Commandments in the Heflin-Torbert Building led to his ouster as chief justice. While Moore’s views on the First Amendment need work, his brief tenure on the Court was somewhat more complex. His fixation on the Ten Commandments, for example, includes the radical concept that “Thou Shalt Not Steal” applies to banks and insurance companies, and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” applies to Fortune 500 companies that knowingly sell dangerous products to consumers. This, more than any tactical retreat in the face of public opinion, explains why the state GOP stood silently by while he was ousted from the Supreme Court. (The Judicial Inquiry Commission that prosecuted him was then chaired by a Democratic stalwart, Circuit Judge Randall Cole of DeKalb County.)

Chief Justice Malone is not only a political protégé of Governor Bentley, he is a fellow Tuscaloosan. Like Bentley as governor, he has disappointed as chief justice in not standing up to Business Council interests, but both have had to look over their shoulders at GOP primary races, and both have doubtless not wanted to become the primary target of Business Council wrath. Whether either can, or will, do better after those primaries remains to be seen, but our corporate masters have to have some residual anxiety about that prospect.

Thus, the race for chief justice gives us a pretty good picture of three competing power centers in the GOP. Moore’s vote will give us a clear picture of the strength - or weakness - of those Republicans for whom the New Testament is the shibboleth. (Pardon the mixed biblical metaphor.) Malone, like Bentley, represents that part of the GOP that would like to see the party appeal to a broader constituency than the Mountain Brook Country Club or the First Baptist Church of Gardendale. (For that reason, this element may be the most dangerous to a Democratic renaissance in Alabama.) Graddick probably represents the quiet wishes of the Business Council element of the party. Although The Birmingham News reports that “Malone has the backing of the state’s business establishment,” take that with a grain of salt. Malone’s support from the business community represents more of a hedge, and a prudent support of a chief justice who will, regardless of the primary outcome, be in office until next January. A careful review of Graddick’s financial disclosures will reveal substantial business support, if only viewed through the prism of the actual weakness of the GOP’s much-ballyhooed PAC-to-PAC transfer ban.

The race for the right to face Lucy Baxley for PSC president this fall provides a sharper picture of the BCA-Tea struggle within the GOP. Associate Commissioner Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh is the consummate Business Council puppet. She is so close to BCA lapdog Bob Riley, that she could avoid conception by giving the former governor her Yaz. Her support is clearly centered on that wing of the GOP.

Her principal opponent in the race is Kathy Peterson of Shelby County.
Peterson is the wife of unsuccessful 2010 agriculture commissioner candidate Dale Peterson, whose YouTube ad continues to bring ironic chuckles. (If only people knew that Dale and Kathy’s “farming” business is based on raising show llamas!) Peterson’s vote is going to give us a good feel for the continuing vitality of the Tea wing of the Republican Party. Her husband’s support of the brief bubble of presidential candidate Herman Cain has been repaid by the salesman of mediocre pizza’s campaigning in Alabama on her behalf.

In many respects, these GOP contests are not between light and darkness, but between darker shades of pitch. We should be as careful of rooting for a “moderate” in these races, as we would be of rooting for a “less extreme” mullah in an Iranian “election.” While I will be watching the presidential returns closely, in the long run, I will be picking apart the returns in these two statewide races more closely. They will tell us much more in the long run about the beast we need to slay. Or, at least, cage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sixth (District) Sense (UPDATED January 14)

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

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

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

Be still, my Democratic heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UPDATE

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

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

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

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

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

Turning the Paige on the Republican Majority

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turn Out the Voters, or Turn Out the Lights

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democratic Legislature in Alabama - 2014?

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.