Post runoff thoughts
Well, Dr. Robert Bentley will be the Republican nominee for governor. He defeated Bradley Byrne 56% to 44% in yesterday’s runoff election. Congratulations to him on a win that will be talked about for some time.
The big winner was, of course, AEA boss Paul Hubbert. He spent tons of money to prevent Byrne from becoming governor and was ultimately successful. I fully expect him to work to solidify AEA support behind Democrat Ron Sparks for this November, but it will be interesting to watch his relationship with Bentley develop. His relentless pounding on Byrne may just be a really, really big chip that Hubbert (or his successor) chooses to call in at a later date. One thing is for sure, folks with kids in the public education system saw their chances for meaningful reforms that would help their kids’ educational opportunities disappear last night.
The big challenge for Bentley now is to build support from voters in his party after a fractious primary. That was probably Hubbert’s secondary goal. He worked hard to pit Republicans against themselves in the hopes that those sore feelings would persist through November and help Sparks.
Many will set about to determine the impact of cross over voting in the election. I don’t doubt that it had some impact. But with a 12 point victory (somewhere around 56,500 votes) it will be hard to say that crossovers alone won it for Bentley. The truth of the matter is that lots of Republicans voted for him in both the primary and runoff. I know some of them. A lot of people liked his “I will not take a salary” gimmick and others were appreciative of the tone of his campaign.
In other races…
Clay Scofield won the SD-9 runoff in a tight race. Voters in that district were fortunate to have two excellent choices in that runoff. I’m glad I didn’t have to choose. Scofield impressed me from the first time I met him. Good to see I wasn’t alone in that assessment.
Two women won congressional runoffs: Martha Roby in AL-02 and Terri Sewell in AL-07. I didn’t follow the AL-02 race beyond noting that Rick Barber aligned himself with loons and made an absolute fool of himself on Chris Mattthews’ show when he demonstrated a tenuous (at best) grasp of the Fair Tax and/or an inability to communicate effectively.
Looks like John McMillan will win a hotly fought ag commissioner nomination. Did Dale Peterson push him over the edge?
In the words of The Huntsville Times, “Mary Scott Hunter cruised to victory Tuesday in the GOP runoff election in her quest to represent North Alabama on the state school board.”
Morgan County Republicans nominated Ana Woodard Franklin over incumbent Greg Bartlett for sheriff. Beating an incumbent in a county primary is never easy. Franklin looks to become the second female sheriff in our fair state.
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it’ll be interesting to see how (and if) bentley tries to extricate himself publicly from some of his far out positions that probably won’t set well with the independent alabama voter who gets scared off by extremist positions, or the appearance of extremism in its various manifestations. at this point we have to assume voters who pick and choose between the parties in the general are the key. and, it would be interesting to know what bentley is telling big mule organizations — chambers, bill canary’s outfit, mine operators — who were behind byrne. i assume they start talking today. dont look for public announcements.
6 months ago I would have laughed at anyone suggesting the Democrats could win the governors race but the 2 runoff candidates have sliced each other up so badly and left the general populace with such a bad taste for both of them that Ron Sparks has a real chance to back into the governor’s seat due to our own internal suicide tendencies.
Brian – my thoughts on one of your comments above:
“One thing is for sure, folks with kids in the public education system saw their chances for meaningful reforms that would help their kids’ educational opportunities disappear last night.”
We can still reform our system but this is why – more so now than we may have ever realized before – republicans need to take control of the Senate and House. For me, this is the real end-game of the 2010 election cycle.
This will happen only IF conservatives can pull together as one team – one mission from now through Nov 2nd. We need to start doing so, today.
Semper Fi
Bill
Yeah, that statement was too pessimistic and absolute. The opportunity for reform didn’t disappear, but it took a major hit. The message that was sent out was that it does not pay to stand up to the AEA. After watching Hubbert & co. mercilessly beat on Byrne how many legislators will be willing to fight difficult battles with the AEA to enact needed reforms? Maybe some, but I doubt it will be enough.
While I don’t doubt that there were some crossover votes (why do we allow that in Alabama?), I think the bigger issue is that the attack ads worked.
When you say that the guy I am going to vote for was a former Democrat, I pause. When you say he voted for “the largest tax increase in Alabama history”, I have to really think hard about that vote. Frankly if all you saw was their websites and the ads on TV, I think Bentley comes out as the more conservative of the two. That is why I believe he won.
Brian and Dale Jackson convinced me that the right candidate was Byrne, but the average voter only sees the TV ads and maybe their campaign websites.
I strongly supported Byrne, but there was no question Bentley was my second choice in the primary. While Bentley’s approach with the AEA is different than mine, I have no doubt he and I probably agree on 99.9% of the issues, and I am confident he will be a conservative governor. I will strongly back him – even work in the campaign – for the November election.
Time to go beat Bingo Ron.
we allow crossover voting in alabama because we don’t have party registration, which we need. people who are democrats should register as democrats, people who are republicans should register as republicans. if you aren’t either you shouldn’t be deciding who the nominee of the political party is. independent? libertarian? why should you decide who the democratic or the republican candidate is?
ivan, are you suggesting that citizens who don’t register as members of one of the two major parties should not be allowed to vote? With the ballot access law we now have they would be excluded from voting because it’s almost impossible for minor parties to have their candidates on the ballot. I don’t think it’s constitutional or proper to disenfranchise those people. Give every party equal ballot access and then maybe I’ll agree with you.
Don, Ivan’s point (I think) is that the purpose of a primary is to select the nominees of the parties. His argument is that Republicans shouldn’t be picking the Democratic nominee and vice versa. Furthermore, unaffiliated folks also shouldn’t have a say in who the party nominees are. If they want to participate then they need to choose a side.
I am sympathetic to your ballot access/3rd party position. I think the bar should be lowered for 3rd party candidates to get on the ballot. I suspect Ivan’s response would be that he supports Libertarians selecting the Libertarian nominee by whatever manner is available to them, but that if you CHOOSE to affiliate with a 3rd party that you shouldn’t meddle in the primaries of one of the two power parties. The choice to affiliate with a 3rd party in Alabama has unpleasant side effects, but you know those when you sign up and all you can do is work to legislatively ease those pains.
I don’t like that taxpayer dollars fund party primaries. The parties should pay to determine who they nominate for the general (whether through a vote, convention, or any other process).
In any event, no one is disenfranchised because I doubt you’ll find a constitutional right to select party nominees. Regardless of how the primaries are set up you can still vote in the general so you are not disenfranchised.
While I’m a bit hesitant to advocate for formal party registration I do think that the current arrangement where one party can interfere in the nomination process of the other party is a greater evil.
I don’t think crossovers decided this election. Byrne ran 50,000 votes behind Twinkle. SHE didn’t get any crossovers . . . .
Chan: I agree. Bentley won because he returned his primary voters to the polls and then picked up the lion’s share of the James/Moore supporters. AEA voters only gave him a buffer. Kudos to him for doing what I thought would be almost impossible to do.
My question is what did they do to the local races around the state that many republican candidates lost/won by a handful of votes? We may never know the impact at the lower levels.
I thought that outside of the Bentley win, the most interesting return was the Morgan County Sheriff’s race.
Yeah, I think Bartlett caught some bad press over semi-starving the inmates, or more likely, the fact that he profited from it.
When your a county Sheriff its never a good idea to lead off the 10 o’clock news being whisked away by US Marshals in handcuffs like Bartlett was. So you could see this coming for him. Another interesting result was in Cullman County where Mr Parker(R) won the county commission race but abruptly dropped out b/c he didnt fill out the proper financial forms and one final noteworthy result comes from Birmingham where we will not have to put up with Shelia Smoot going to Congress.
I have a more radical approach as to how we should handle primaries in this state… Include both parties’ candidates on one ballot, and the top two move on to the general election– even if it’s two Republicans or two Democrats. I think the way the primaries are currently done it encourages the election of two extremes to run in the general as opposed to encouraging two moderate candidates with more widespread appeal.
That being said… Don’t be shocked if, given the results in the GOP runoff, Ron Sparks pulls this off. What happened yesterday was the exact same thing that happened to Artur Davis in the Dem primary. Exact same situation with candidate that was clearly better against a candidate that was obvious backed by special interests to anyone paying attention. Exact same tactics of astroturfing and attacks from special interests that forced the other to respond– making him seem like the jerk in the process– while his opponent just batted his eyelashes and couldn’t understand why on earth they’d resort to negative campaigning when [insert more batted eyelashes] “I’ve run such a clean campaign.”
Those tactics have worked twice now by the exact same groups to elect a clearly inferior candidate who also clearly had the odds stacked against him. I’d imagine, Brian, that you’re feeling much the same way I felt when Ron Sparks won– like a carpet was pulled out from under you. This shouldn’t have happened. I feel like our election was stolen from us. And yes, I wanted very much to vote for Bradley Byrne in November now that Davis was out of the race.
And so I say again… If the people of Alabama are crazy enough to fall for this stuff twice, they’ll likely fall for it again in November in the general election. And I can tell you for certain exactly who those forces will be working for. I’m praying I’m not right, as Bentley is not my top pick, but he is definitely the lesser of two evils at this point.
Al Mod, are Alabamians crazy or lazy? By that I mean are they too lazy to get up from sitting in front of the boob tube and make an effort to inform themselves about candidates and what’s going on in politics, or will they just sit there and drink the TV ADS KOOL-ADE? If they are, maybe that means they’re crazy.
I agree that our election was stolen, and the thief is the man behind the curtain orchestrating everything, Dr. Hubbert.
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday was “Ticket Day” when voters went to the polls and voted their ticket. Today is “Lick It Day” when everyone who took a licking yesterday is licking their wounds and those who gave them a licking are licking their chops. The biggest chop-licker is again that man behind the curtain, Dr. Hubbert.
BTW, Al Mod, what became of your blog?
I don’t have the time and energy to update it these days. I do occasionally write, but I find it easier to contribute to another blog. You can occasionally see my contributions on Left in Alabama– if the cats don’t mind too much.
Brian has explained my views about party primaries accurately. i’d go along with making it easier for third parties to get on the primary ballot. and there’s no constitutional question about primaries limited to party members. it’s been the way in many states for many years. i don’t like the idea of “top two runoffs” — how does that strengthen political parties so that each represents its own principles and agenda? we have the beginning of political parties structured into our process starting in 1800 with jefferson’s election and formalescing in andrew jackson’s time. we can improve but the basic idea should be preserved — people who register as democrats choose the democratic nominees, people who register as republicans choose the republican nominees. if a person doesn’t fell like he or she fits in either major party, they need to find like minded voters and organize. Tea, anyone?
“how does that strengthen political parties so that each represents its own principles and agenda?”
Easy answer. It doesn’t, and that’s the point. I’ve yet to understand the actual need for political parties with agendas and what good it does us.
Don Spurlin ran hard in Hsv props to him!
But the better candidate ended up winning it. Spurlin was desperate and had to put out “FIGHT THE HOUSING AUTHORITY” signs to get some votes right at the end. Spurlin kissed the right people’s butts in Huntsville and we have to give him that.
Being genuine means more though and the best guy pulled it out! Hope Spurlin gets behind and helps him bet the Democrat.
Brent he will support Scofield. Spurlin won South hsv by almost 1300 votes..nothing desperate ab that. wish I was cool like you..
Good. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings I just thought it was a rather desperate move. But it’s over now and I hope we can put it behind us and get to November. We have some good candidates to get in!
Some of the stupidest things I have seen in this runoff came from supporters in this race. Be glad we had to great candidates and Blount County was the only place Don got beaten bad and supposedly they had a extraordinary number of crossovers for the governors race, but those people would have had an effect in this race. I am glad Don does not have the sour grapes attitude some of his fellow candidates did, I am sure Clay will represent us well. I will be curious to see the Blount county returns in the general race.
Al Mod,
Political parties are free and independent entities and as such are free to choose their nominees by whatever method they see fit. In Alabama, the two major parties have chosen to select their nominees via party primaries that are subject to each party’s rules. The minor parties generally choose their nominees through a nominating convention or something similar.
The problem with your “radical approach” is that 1) it could compel one party to nominate multiple candidates (or none) for a particular office against its will and/or 2) it would make the state – as opposed to the parties – the sole gatekeeper as to which candidates could appear on the general election ballot. That’s not just radical but also unconstitutional.
if anyone who thinks there aren’t basic differences between the republican and democratic parties — at least in congress — ever could sit through a congressional conference committee working its way through a contentious bill and at it at 3 am he or she would never question the difference between parties again.
A lot of people are assuming (I think) that Hubbert will now give only soft support to Ron Sparks (Motto: He puts the “goober” back in gubernatorial) and be okay with Bentley winning.
Does that jive with what you know about Hubbert and his tactics? Has he ever done that before?–or can we expect him to be “all in” for Sparks and spend millions running attacks ads against Bentley now?