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

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

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

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

McGill Complaint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill Johnson Canary Letter

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Open Letter to Attorney General Holder

Hon. Eric Holder

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

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

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

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

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

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

HAND DELIVERED BY U.S. MARSHAL

Dear Ms. Canary:

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

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

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

Thank you for your compliance with these instructions.

Sincerely,

Eric Holder
Attorney General

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

Your friend,
Publius IX

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

P. IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Down the SDEC’s “NO GURLZ” Sign

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Get Sprayed by the Poll Cat

Amazing what the inattentive can miss.

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

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

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

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

Which brings us to what the inattentive may have missed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOP Takes Strike Three Looking

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

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

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

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

“No way,” he tells the Parlor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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