AL Speaker Mike Hubbard Is Having A Bad Day

by: countrycat

Thu Dec 13, 2012 at 12:55:23 PM CST

Bill Britt at the Alabama Political Reporter is reporting that AL Speaker Mike Hubbard is the target of a grand jury investigation regarding his financial dealings during the 2010 election.

A Special Grand Jury has subpoenaed records concerning Alabama Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn). According to three sources with intimate knowledge of the investigation, a Special Grand Jury led by the Public Corruption Unit of the Alabama Attorney General’s Office is gathering documents related to Hubbard’s time as Chairman of the ALGOP.
[...]
Hubbard, who is credited with being the architect of the 2010 takeover of the StateHouse, has recently come under fire in press reports related to quid-pro-quo arrangements between campaign contributions and Hubbard-owned businesses.

More information about those financial "arrangements" is available here. 

Current Alabama GOP Chair Bill Armistead has no comment and, not surprisingly, neither does Hubbard.

Now this should get pretty interesting.  There's already a lot of trouble brewing in the Alabama Republican Party.  Thinking they've totally dispatched the Democrats to the netherworld, the rats are turning on each other - with gusto.

• There's a leadership fight and Gov. Bentley joined in the scuffle when he announced his support for Matt Fridy instead of current chair, Bill Armistead. 
• Governor Bentley has problems "leading" the legislature, which happily overrode his veto of Senator Gerald Dial's "slush fund" bill last session.  AG Luther Strange had to get involved in that one.
• There's an audit that party officials don't want you to see and the subject is... Mike Hubbard!
• Former Governor Bob Riley has been busy raising money for his Shadow Alabama Republican Party instead of the actual party- partly because he doesn't like Bill Armistead & company.
  

And now we find out that, while Mike Hubbard was busy "storming the statehouse," a big wind seems to have blown a lot of cash into his bank account.

Very interesting indeed.