Ok - I admit it - I was wrong about State Senator Harri Anne Smith beating State Rep. Jay Love in the Republican Primary. But I will make my prediction for the outcome of the General Election - Jay Love but it is going to be close. The reason I give the edge to Jay Love is an issue which hasn’t made it to any of the almost constant TV ads - crime in Montgomery.
First, I have not seen any polling since the primary. Second, I have not had the time I would have liked to have had to make some calls. All of that being said, I am predicting that Senator Harri Anne Smith will narrowly win the run-off tomorrow. The George Jones ad which I previously mentioned along with her illegal immigration ad and ad discussing Rep. Jay Love’s vote on a bill which would have raised taxes on certain oil companies were all very effective. Second, I think that Rep. Love’s support in Montgomery is not as strong as many would think. Love has been repeatedly linked to the ASEA (the state employee’s union) and many of the GOP Faithful in the Montgomery area are not real big ASEA fans. Plus, I have been told that Love has had some short term memory problems when it comes to remembering the folks who got him elected in the first place and is viewed as quickly going from an outsider who was going to fight for change to an insider who is more interested in winning the next election. Regardless of whether this perception is correct, it will likely costs Love votes he has to get in order to win.
I have been a bit busy of late with work and family and have not been able to spend all of the time I would like detailing the run-off between Senator Harri Anne Smith and Rep. Jay Love. With a week to go before the run-off, things are getting interesting - such as this radio adby George Jones. (Only in Alabama are you likely to see country music, economic development, gambling and politics intertwine like this.) This story will explain the basis for this ad. This link will give you a pretty good run down of what has been happening. I suspect that the 11th Commandment of Republican Politics is about to be broken repeatedly between now and next Tuesday. I’ll make my prediction on the outcome next Monday.
I had hoped to post in some greater detail but family and work have intervened. Short version - Senator Harri Anne Smith and Rep. Jay Love will be the top 2 and will battle it out in a run-off. I had thought that David Grimes or David Woods might have knocked Sen. Smith out of the run-off but last night as my wife and I were watching the late news, the Senator’s new commercial on illegal immigration came on. When it was over, my wife who is not usually very vocal about these things announced that she had been on the fence but Sen. Smith had just gotten her vote. My guess is that this ad will make up for a number of missteps and put the Senator in the run-off.
Things are looking good for Governor Riley tomorrow. A recent poll has the Governor leading Lt. Governor Lucy Baxley 59-31. Also, I just heard on the 6:00 news (sorry, no link) that every daily newspaper in the state that made recommendations/candidate selections, chose Governor Riley.
In the lieutenant governor race, Luther Strange leads former governor Jim Folsom, Jr., 50-39 (see above link).
I’m pleased to see that Attorney General Troy King, according to the same poll, is leading Mobile D.A. John Tyson, Jr., 51-33.
However, the close race is between Chief Justice Drayton Nabers against Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Sue Bell Cobb. According to the poll, Cobb leads 44-43. This race has been one advertising/media blitz in recent weeks. This article says the two candidates have spent over $1 million each in the recent weeks getting their ads on television.
It will be interesting to see how things shake out tomorrow, especially given that the weather forecast is rain.
My money is on AG Troy King to win.
And I am counting on my Alabama readers to help make sure that happens.
You can learn all about King’s record, donate money to his reelection effort, etc. vis-a-vis his website, which you can access here.
How in the world did a holocaust-denying atheist garner 46% of the vote in Alabama’s AG dem primary?
My prediction: Moore loses by 25 plus percentage points to Riley.
Nobody likes an anarchist.
Lee at A Bama Blog has written the definitive response to Dana Milbank’s shabby attack on Senator Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.) It ends with this:
Back in 2004, Dana Milbank co-authored a column with David Broder entitled “Hopes for Civility in Washington are Dashed.” To quote the Instapundit…”Indeed.” Perhaps Mr. Milbank should re-read his own material from time to time.
Read the whole thing.
Well, three out of four, anyway. Funny stuff from A Bama Blog.
From State Rep. John Rogers (D-Birmingham):
“Most politicians don’t live to fight another day after a defeat like that one…The guy has completely remade himself because he’s a great politician who also happens to be likable and somebody who you’d like to have a beer with if he drank beer.” (emphasis mine)
Me: Classic. Yep, that’ll do it for me…
Moore’s first ad, which began airing statewide Wednesday, shows him being questioned by then-Attorney General Bill Pryor during Moore’s trial before the state Court of the Judiciary in 2003. The court threw him out of the chief justice’s job after he refused to abide by a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from display in the state judicial building.
Now, I am not one to give ol’ Roy campaign advice, but it’s probably not a good idea to run as an anarchist.
The race for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Alabama has one standout candidate — Birmingham attorney Luther Strange. I sincerely hope he wins out.
If I did not know Luther, though, I think I might be able to work up some enthusiasm for dark horse GOP candidate Hilbun Adams, profiled in today’s Birmingham News:
Adams said he was called to run for the office when it became clear that he was losing vision in one eye from a rare disorder called Coats’ disease. Working with power saws and other tools, it’s important that he have two good eyes for depth perception, Adams said.
“So, it’s, `Lord, can I do something else?’” he said. “And lieutenant governor pops in.”
At that point, he said, he began his month-long quest to find out what the job entails. Not much, he discovered. . . .
“Lucy [Baxley, the incumbent] - she doesn’t do anything, so I’m thinking, well, who couldn’t do that job?” Adams said, loudly laughing, as he often does. “If she’s not doing anything, and no one knows what she does, probably you could do it.”
The Mobile Press-Register/U. of South Alabama poll is pretty widely respected, I believe. Sunday’s results ”showed Riley topping Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley by 16 percentage points [49%-33%] and former Gov. Don Siegelman by 33 percentage points [56%-23%]. Baxley, meanwhile, led former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore [50%-32%], while Moore edged Siegelman [39%-35%] . . . .”
Roy Moore, the disgraced former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, is heading toward a first class butt whuppin’. And I’ve got a special bottle of Blanton’s that I am waiting to open just for that occasion.
For those that haven’t been keeping up, Former Alabama Governor and 2006 candidate Don Siegelman is accused of soliciting a bribe from Former Healthsouth CEO Richard Schrushy for a seat on a state board. Both are on trial in federal court in Montgomery:
Opening statements were Monday, and according to the Birmingham News:
The most heated moment came after a comment from civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, a recent addition to Scrushy’s defense team.
Gray told the mostly black panel that he had represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.
No one is sure what Rosa Parks and MLK have to do with Former Healthsouth CEO Richard Scrushy. I doubt it is the best strategy for Scrushy, a white millionaire CEO, to play the race card.
Then on Tuesday during the trial:
Tempers flared during Tuesday’s proceedings as Butts and chief prosecutor Louis Franklin exchanged words. Franklin objected multiple times to Butts’ questions. After one objection, Butts announced to the courtroom that Franklin was muttering. “Do you want to say that to the judge? Did you just say that I’m a sleaze?” Butts asked.
Franklin said he did, stood up and walked toward Butts. The two stood inches apart before U.S. Chief District Judge Mark Fuller pounded his gavel and called lawyers into an adjoining room.
Here’s the link:
Oh, yeah this is not to mention a former Siegleman aide testified that Scrushy gave Gov. Siegelman a 250,000 check for a spot on a state board that oversees certificates of need.
The Alabama Democratic gubernatorial primary could get really ugly and interesting if Lucy Baxley decides to sling mud.
So says today’s Mobile Press-Register. The story quotes UA emeritus professor of political science William Stewart, long-time observer of Alabama politics: “Judge Moore has made a miscalculation, and I’m afraid some of us analysts attributed strength to him that he obviously doesn’t have.”
The B’ham News has this report.
CT’s Weblog posts some interesting tidbits regarding possible motives for those church burnings. Put me in the category of people who are skeptical of the “joke that got out of hand” or “drunk” theories. (Either could be true for one fire; it strains credulity to accept it for nine.)
Last week I linked to an item looking at the campaign cash on hand for the candidates in the Alabama Governor’s race. Via a reader, in line with a comment on last week’s article, comes this report that the possibility of Roy Moore getting out of the GOP primary and going independent remains possible.
This morning’s Birmingham News looks at the Alabama Governor race, following an analysis the most recent campaign contributions, and discovers what most expected: Roy Moore’s financial strength, for the most part, comes from donors out of state. Read the entire article for much more information.
Jeff Jacoby, Boston.com article:
SUPPOSE THAT in 2005 unknown hoodlums had firebombed 10 gay bookstores and bars in San Francisco, reducing several of them to smoking rubble. It takes no effort to imagine the alarm that would have spread through the Bay Area’s gay community or the manhunt that would have been launched to find the attackers. The blasts would have been described everywhere as ”hate crimes,” editorial pages would have thundered with condemnation, and public officials would have vowed to crack down on crimes against gays with unprecedented severity.
…
In the past two weeks, 10 Baptist churches have been burned in rural Alabama. Five churches in Bibb County — Ashby Baptist, Rehobeth Baptist, Antioch Baptist, Old Union Baptist, and Pleasant Sabine — were torched between midnight and 3 a.m. on Feb. 3. Four days later, arsonists destroyed or badly damaged Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in Greene County, Dancy First Baptist Church in Pickens County, and two churches in Sumter County, Galilee Baptist and Spring Valley Baptist. On Saturday, Beaverton Freewill Baptist Church in northwest Alabama became the 10th house of worship to go up in flames.
Ten arson attacks against 10 churches — all of them Baptist, all in small Alabama towns, all in the space of eight days: If anything is a hate crime, obviously this is.
Or is it? ”We’re looking to make sure this is not a hate crime and that we do everything that we need to do,” FBI Special Agent Charles Regan told reporters in Birmingham. Make sure this is not a hate crime? If 10 Brooklyn synagogues went up in flames in a little over a week, wouldn’t investigators start from the assumption that the arson was motivated by hatred of Jews? If 10 Cuban-American shops and restaurants in Miami were deliberately burned to the ground, wouldn’t the obvious presumption be that anti-Cuban animus was involved?
Me: I’m glad to see that these church burnings have finally started getting some national attention in the last week…but, along with Jacoby, I have to ask: where’s the outrage? Where’s the righteous indignation from the national media and the elites? Even the Southern Poverty Law Center, located in the heart of the Heart of Dixie is running at a full sprint from this one. As Jacoby points out, the notion that some crimes are more deserving of the label “hate” simply because of who the victim is, is an absurd one, but as long as the elites continue to use it, I’d like to see them apply it generously across the board to all groups of people…even Baptists.
The issue of replacing partisan judicial elections with some other kind of selection mechanism has come around again in Alabama. I’m to be on a panel next week for the Federalist Society of Birmingham, debating the point.
The last time I looked at this issue was in 2001. Here’s my request: If anyone out there in the vast SA reading audience can steer me to studies of this topic published since 2001, I’d really appreciate it. I have already tracked down the articles by Andrew Hanssen, Alexander Tabarrok & Eric Helland, and Melinda Gann Hall. If you know of others — particularly empirical studies — please let me know by email at medebow at samford dot edu.
Many thanks.
From this morning’s Washington Times:
“I suppose we can all agree that it is an international filibuster because it was apparently hatched in Davos, Switzerland, where Senator Kerry now is with those masters of the universe that are out there trying to figure our world economy out,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican.
It’s no surprise to learn that Sessions is a Tom Wolfe fan, and also is skeptical of the prospects for international economic policy “coordination”.
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