The Secretary of State has some 1,000 duties assigned to it. Unlike the U.S. Secretary of State, who is in charge of the U.S. State Department, the Alabama Secretary of State is actually like a secretary. Besides being the chief elections official, this officer is heavily involved with keeping and processing records. There are some 500,000 executive, legislative, elections, and business records held at the office. The specific duties of the Secretary of State are found throughout the Alabama Code and the Alabama Constitution.
This one is a no-brainer. Incumbent Nancy Worley (D) faces State Auditor Beth Chapman (R). I won’t try to build suspense as regular readers already know that I’m voting for Beth Chapman (R).
Nancy Worley is a former president of the Alabama Education Assocation after spending years involved with education and nonprofit organizations. She was elected Secretary of State in 2002 with 49% of the vote in a three-way race. Since taking office, Worley has had at least the following problems.
- Settled in a lawsuit from an employee because she denied his freedom to express his religion.
- Involved in an administrative hearing for firing another employee, Anita Tatum.
- Faces possible legal action for illegally soliciting campaign contributions from her employees.
- Bought an SUV with $8,000 in upgrades with state money on the same day she laid off 5 employees because of budget cutbacks.
- In 2005, Alabama’s Board of Registrars complained to the state that Nancy Worley was too incompetent to oversee them.
- Ignored a state-appointed committee’s year-long deliberations and decision and chose a electronic voting system that they did not recommend for implementation.
- Ran “voter education” ads with state money that many said amounted to free campaign advertising.
- Sued by the federal government for failing to allow military personnel overseas full voting rights in primary run-off elections.
- Challenged in the Democratic primary by her chief elections administrator, Ed Packard.
- Removed from her duties as chief of elections for failing to bring the state into compliance with HAVA.
- May yet be found in contempt of court for failing to cooperate with Governor Riley’s committee to bring Alabama into compliance with HAVA.
Worley blames her problems on several things. She says she shook things up in the office, even having to remove “busy” buttons from the employee phones that allowed incoming calls to get a busy signal. She also says that the county probate judges and voter registrars (the front line in elections) have been less than helpful in her efforts to bring Alabama into compliance with federal HAVA standards. Her first “scandal,” buying an SUV with $8,000 in upgrades is blamed on her not knowing that the SUV wasn’t the standard model.
There is no dispute about the facts of the bullets I have above, so there are two explanations. The commonly accepted belief is that Worley is to blame which means that she is completely incompetent to do her job. The other explanation is that Worley’s staff and county voting officials under Worley are giving her hell and causing problems. In that case, she is a poor leader. She is often cited by both supporters and opponents as being abrasive. Supporters say it’s a good thing in dealing with lazy government workers. Opponents say it makes a hostile work environment. A little abrasiveness can be good, especially if you’re coming into an office that has had work-related problems. Being unable to work with others is a failure of leadership.
Beth Chapman (R) is currently the State Auditor. She’s had success in that area, as every State Auditor seems to. She spent 10 years in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, eventually becoming the state Executive Director. After that, she finished graduate school and worked for the Fob James administration and formed her own political consulting business.
Her campaign seems to center around the fact that she’s not Nancy Worley and voter identification requirements. In an email exchange I had with her about a year ago, she told me that while she has to meet all federal election guidelines, she is 100% devoted to having clear paper ballots to ensure fair elections.
In 2003, Chapman delivered one of the stupidest speeches ever uttered:
I say we should support the president of the United States and the U.S. military and tell the liberal, tree-hugging, hippy, Birkenstock-wearing, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and music and whine somewhere else.
After all, if they lived in Iraq, they wouldn’t be allowed the freedom of speech they’ve been given here today.
I understand it received 5 standing ovations from the crowd. War sure does make people stupid. Unfortunately for her, she is running for an office which only requires job competence, not a bloodthirsty hatred for those evil “liberals” who want to destroy the world. In the category of job competence, Chapman seems to have Worley beat.
One area Chapman can be criticized for, however, is her failure to comply with the Alabama Constitution’s residency requirements. The constitution clearly states that the State Auditor and the Secretary of State must reside in the state capital, which is not in north Shelby County where Chapman lives. Her current excuse given on Alabama Public Television, that she deserves special treatment for being a woman, is not good enough.
If she were running for any other office than this office against this incumbent, I would have some serious problems with her. But we’re not really voting for her — not in the classical sense. That is to say that we’re not trying to affect government policy and law. Instead, we’re being asked to play as Alabama’s HR staff with only two job candidates. Based on their resumes, I say Chapman is more qualified and Worley deserves to be redistributed to another area outside of state government.
