| Jennifer Foster cuts to the heart of the race thing in the Alabama governor's race in, of all papers, the Opelika-Auburn News: It’s tough being Artur Davis. In the span of just over a week, Davis has taken hits for being black – and then, not black enough.
Here's the timeline of events: Nov. 12: Sparks 2010 campaign manager Justin Saia emails supporters an excerpt from a New York Observer article, saying it "reminds the rest of the country what we have known for a long time here in Alabama: if we want a Democratic Governor, we can't nominate Artur Davis." Nov. 13: Artur Davis 2010 campaign manager Jessica Vanden Berg asserted that the people of Alabama are ready to look forward, not back and said the innuendo about whether Davis can win is nothing new for the Sparks campaign: In his own words, Ron Sparks told a forum of the Over the Mountain Democrats that he was the better candidate because of "how Alabama is."
Nov. 18: Sparks 2010 campaign manager Saia was quick to call attention to a "developing story" in The Hill reporting that Rev. Jesse Jackson said "You can't vote against health care and call yourself a black man." And I do mean quick -- his email hit my inbox a mere 42 minutes after the story went up at The Hill. Nov.19: Rev. Jackson walks back his criticism of Davis in a written statement. The same author at The Hill writes about Jackson's latest statement. The Sparks campaign is not so quick to notify supporters that Rev. Jackson has tempered his remarks. In fact, they were and still are totally silent on the subject. Boom! Davis went from being too black to have any chance of winning to being a pretend black person in a single week. The Sparks campaign has overreached again on the race/electability question. They obviously jumped the gun on the New York Observer article -- if you read the whole article it's actually favorable toward Davis and Saia's remark unfortunately dredged up the old "what Alabama is" embarrassment -- and they were also far too eager to jump on Rev. Jackson's racial remark last week. Apparently cooler heads have prevailed for the moment and Sparks has just dropped the subject. Of course, they've dropped this hot potato before, but keep picking it back up again. Foster is less charitable, emphasis mine: Sparks has won multiple terms as the state’s agriculture commissioner based on his affable nature and his no-nonsense approach to problem-solving. Unfortunately, that Sparks has gone AWOL. In a frantic attempt to turn voters in his favor, Candidate Sparks has become aggressive, bitter and unpleasant. You almost feel sorry for the guy.
Running as an underdog isn't as easy as it looks, especially when you're used to being the lead dog. A successful underdog has to strike a delicate balance to elicit sympathy from voters without inspiring either pity or disgust -- "aggressive, bitter and unpleasant" is nowhere in that game plan. Ron Sparks is finding it very hard to maintain that balance. As for the "Davis can't be elected, wink, wink" meme that continues to bubble up in this campaign ... that pot of slime is sure to keep bubbling for a while; I just hate to see other Democrats stirring it.
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