Archive for: October 30, 2006
October 30, 2006
There were obvious themes for both candidates
Strange: Everything distinguishes me from my opponent. Folsom has ties to incumbent Democrats in the legislature. I have ties to incumbent Republicans in the Congress. I’ll use those ties to get us federal pork.
Folsom: I brought Mercedes to Alabama. All economic success is because of me. I have experience bringing to senate together. Strange is a Washington lobbyist.
I understand Folsom’s skipping about Mercedes. He worked very hard to get that plant and was highly criticized for it. It obviously turns out that he was right, but the voters have already gotten that message. Bring it up once or twice, but get over it. Folsom also completely avoided the question about double-dipping. I think he was done talking after 40 seconds of his 3 minutes.
Folsom also said he supported a constitutional convention, which made me happy. Strange is opposed.
Folsom came across as a better speaker, but I’ve always thought his accent was mesmerizing. Strange did a good job too, and I really liked his point-by-point approach to answering questions. Strange does win in the jokes category. He managed two audience laughs. Folsom responded to both with a follow-up joke and got a couple of audience chuckles.
I think Strange got a win out of this one. He seemed better prepared, even if it was bragging that he could get Senator Shelby to bring the state more federal pork. Folsom just seemed a little too aloof. In the end, though, they spent a half-hour saying what could have taken 10 minutes.
What a sham. That was probably the most ineffective thing I’ve ever watched. Riley mopped the floor with Baxley, to be sure, but it offered no insight. A really funny point was when Riley did his Reagan-esque, “Here we go again,” referring to Baxley attacking him on no-bid contracts. He talks about how there has been 90 days of negative attacks coming from Baxley, but then Riley spends most of the second half of the debate saying Baxley is too stupid to understand state government.
There was a lot of, “Baxley has never been an ally in bringing economic development to Alabama.” Baxley responds with, “Riley has never invited me to any meetings and has excluded me from press conferences.”
Baxley also spent a lot of time bringing up the same topics — no-bid contracts, $1 billion tax plan. I never knew those lines could be applied to so many subjects. She was obviously reading much of her responses which means she had generic statements prepared. It wasn’t very effective as they were obviously too general at best and off-topic to be more realistic.
One of the only real debates I saw was how to deal with a federal problem — illegal immigration. Riley stayed lock-step with Bush in volunteering our Alabama guard to go to the border while Baxley touted that we ask too much of our guard already. That’s the only real thing I connected with her on and it was on something the governor has no power to do anything about. Baxley also connected with me half-way on constitutional reform, but she stopped short by suggesting that special interests should be invited. She may be correct that it’s the quickest way to get a convention done, but it played into Riley’s hands.
Riley won this thing by staying on topic much more so than Baxley and bragging about Alabama’s success. I almost felt bad for the lieutenant governor.
This is a bit of a follow up to a previous post by Dan regarding negative ads. According to FactCheck.org, Republicans and Democrats have both spent a great deal more money on negative attacks this year than other ads.
According to the Federal Election Commission, so far in this election cycle the NRCC has spent $41.9 million attacking Democratic opponents and $5 million supporting its own candidates, roughly an 8:1 negative-to-positive ratio. The DCCC has spent $18 million and $3.1 million, respectively, for a 5:1 ratio. Most of that money on both sides is spent on television advertising.
When you look at some of the ads being run in other states, the ones being run in Alabama don’t look so bad in comparison. Some of these are downright childish.
I know I’m preaching to the choir if you’re coming to my website to read political commentary, but Gerald W. Johnson, professor emeritus at Auburn University, sums it up pretty nicely in his opinion piece about the state of Alabama’s electorate — “We need more idiots to act like citizens.”
The fundamental problem of Alabama politics is that we may have far too many idiots and far too few citizens. Before you rush out to join the “tar and feather him” brigade, let me explain what I mean.
I, personally, would have just stuck with the accepted definition of “idiot.”
The live debate between the candidates [minus a Libertarian] for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general will broadcast on Alabama Public Television tonight.
A special broadcast of For the Record with Tim Lennox will precede the debate at 6:30pm. Gubernatorial candidates Bob Riley and Lucy Baxley will face each other in an hour-long debate starting at 7:00. Then the lieutenant governor candidates, Luther Strange and Jim Folsom, will have a half-hour debate starting at 8:00. The two attorney general candidates, Troy King and John Tyson, will start at 8:30.
A quick correction, though. Former governor Albert Brewer will no longer be moderating the debate. That honor now goes to Montgomery Academy debate and speech coach Jay Rye.
That’s my response to certain voter registrars who say that a recent Supreme Court decision that mandates they follow the law is making their jobs harder. The Alabama Supreme Court recently upheld a lower court’s decision that voter registrars could only bar ex-cons from voting if they were convicted of a felony involving “moral turpitude,” which is what the Alabama Constitution says. Some registrars in Alabama were barring all ex-felons from voting, regardless of their crime.
[Mobile County chief clerk Margie] Lawshe said her office had a few phone calls from convicted felons asking whether they could register, and the Mobile County board decided to handle each case on an individual basis, as recommended by King’s office. “It’s been kind of cut and dry so far,” she said.
I do sympathize a little. The problem is that there is no simple list of which felonies do and do not involve moral turpitude. Our state legislature has never passed a law to define that, so it takes an attorney to give legal advice based on prevoius court decisions and attorney general opinions.
The legislature is expected to define which felonies involve moral turpitude in their next session.
I hear it every two years — voters are sick of negative campaign ads. First of all, I’m not sick of them. I’m just sick of a certain type of negative campaign ad. If a challenger says the incumbent is supported by gambling interests and takes trips to the Bahamas with lobbyists, that’s fine as long as it’s true. That’s something I need to know to make an informed decision; thanks for that information. You can even throw in a “controlled by special interests” in there. But if you put a doctored photograph with that information that shows the incumbent in the most humiliating way possible, you’re turning me off. You’re turning me off because you’re no longer giving me information that supports you and hurts your opponent. You’re slandering your opponent — and you’re doing it in a way that I would ground my kid for if he or she were treating another human being that way.
Most people don’t read FCPA reports and read every single news story about a particular race. We expect the opponents and media to point out certain things for us. But if you also pay attention, you notice that the candidates have realized that this means they can frame the debate. Instead of talking about the important issues affecting Alabama, we’re being tricked into thinking that the most important thing to figure out is which candidate is more liberal than the other.
According to at least one political observer, the governor’s race is lopsided not because of policy differences, but because Riley was more effective at convincing voters that Baxley was a liberal.
“Clearly Governor Riley by the polls has the lead, and what he did in that ’she’s too liberal’ ad was frame Lieutenant Governor Baxley before she could frame herself for voters. I think it put her in a hole,” [Professor Emeritus William H.] Stewart said.
It’s not that there aren’t people in this state who are screaming for the candidates to talk about something important. College students throughout the state recently tried to increase public awareness of the need for constitutional reform by reading the entire constitution with it’s 700+ amendments. After 12 consecutive hours, they were less than halfway through.
The students had hoped to open a dialogue with Gov. Bob Riley and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, about what may well be the most pressing issue facing our state. To their great disgust, the students heard nothing from the candidates but silence.
There are many other groups who are trying to talk about Initiatives and Referendums, poverty in the Black Belt, economic development of west Alabama, election reform to reduce voter fraud, improving education in Alabama’s rural areas, etc. etc. But of course those issues take a back seat to the important things in this election: who wrote a check to John Kerry and who took perfectly legal campaign contributions from Indians.
To my knowledge, the only candidate who has addressed any important issue this year has been Loretta Nall. That is of course the reason she is excluded from the ballot. Why would the powers that be give her the credibility she needs to push the candidates to talk about the real issues.
There are a few things that I’m really proud of Alabama about. One of those is the fact that in the early 20th century, Alabama was one of the first states in the U.S. to enact open meetings laws. Our Sunshine Laws are considered some of the best in the country, but new technology is starting to make them a little outdated.
“Most states have laws that are significantly newer than ours, and they address more modern concepts like electronic records,” said Dennis Bailey, attorney for the Alabama Press Association. “They also give clearer procedures for getting” the records.
There are a few problems with our current statutes. A significant problem is that while the law requires offices to comply with requests for records, it lacks clear procedures for doing so. The result is that each executive office has their own procedures, or none at all. As Bailey pointed out, they also don’t specifically address electronic records.
A bipartisan group of legislators and others met for a symposium Friday to discuss a bill they plan to introduce which will update the laws. According to the attendees, it has a good chance of passing and will standardize the process for different government agencies as well as address new technologies.
There are some really dirty politics going on around the state with the legislative races. One of my favorites is for Senate District 30, where Sen. Wendell Mitchell (D) is being challenged by Joan Reynolds (R), a Greenville businesswoman and Butler County Republican leader.
When Governor Riley vetoed a bill to name an official state spirit of Alabama (Conecuh Ridge Alabama Fine Whiskey), the legislature over-rode his veto with Mitchell voting in favor of the override. This somehow means that Mitchell is in favor of drunk driving.
“Because of Mr. Mitchell’s actions [to name an official state spirit], we will continue to see an increase in the number of drunk drivers and the number of domestic abuse cases,” said Reynolds, 62.
That statement is so dumb I can’t even explain how wrong it is. It’s like if you came up to me and said, “Up is down.” I could possibly mathematically prove that no, “up” is actually “up,” but what’s the point. You’re just being stupid. Reynolds has actually voted to lower the legal BAC levels for drivers from 0.1 to 0.08. This is certainly not an endorsement for Wendell Mitchell, but I think it’s safe to say that I would never vote for this Reynolds lady.
Two developments in the race I’m having the hardest time deciding. It’s hard because all I really know is that one guy is tall and other guy isn’t a member of the Mountain Brook Country Club.
Birmingham News: Ashcroft endorses Strange
A former attorney general, governor and U.S. Senator, John Ashcroft is considered the leading member of the Christian right-wing of the Republican Party. He was also instrumental in the formation and passage of the USA Patriot Act and an enthusiastic supporter of the War on DrugsTM. His endorsement of Luther Strange takes a few points away from Strange in my book.
Birmingham News: Folsom won’t be ‘rubber stamp’ for governor if elected
In an obvious response to recent indications that he would be happy to ride Gov. Riley’s coattails, Jim Folsom is trying to distinguish himself by saying he will be an independent Lt. Gov. and not part of a Gov/Lt. Gov. team. I had been waiting for Strange to be criticized for that one.
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