|  The Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee met yesterday in Montgomery in a meeting room with no air conditioning, no wifi and precious little cell phone signal. Uncomfortable and isolated -- it may be an appropriate metaphor for the party this year.
[Update: ADP Chairman Joe Turnham has provided a statement on yesterday's SDEC meeting. It is included below the fold in its entirety.] What did the Committee Members do in this sweltering room with no links to the outside world? This is what I can piece together from the two news reports (hat tip Dana Beyerle and Eric Velasco) and a few personal reports of the event. - They changed the bylaws to allow the Executive Board to seek re-election immediately rather than next January. They did so and the current Board was re-elected. "Turnham said that conducting elections Saturday rather than in January preserves continuity through the November election." Ummm, holding the election in January would have provided the exact same continutity. This guarantees the same Chairman, Vice Chairs, Secretary, Treasurer, etc. for another 4 years. We need more detail on this point -- Dr. Paul Hubbert said he was resigning from the Board effective yesterday so who was elected Vice-Chair for Public Labor Sector?
- They changed the bylaws to base minority representation on the % of minority voters who voted for the Democratic candidate in the most recent presidential, rather than gubernatorial, election. This is not a number that anyone can actually determine (a license to make stuff up for political advantage), but in practice it will allow an increase in appointed minority committee members to bring the minority (when asked yesterday, Joe Reed said "minority" means "black" in this case) representation up from about 55% to about 65%. "Alabama Democratic Conference chairman Joe Reed said the change won’t materially affect the racial makeup of the party’s executive committee." That's spin for the mathematically challenged. Reed is the big winner in this action since he has the major say in who gets those extra seats on the committee.
- The committee did not vote on an amendment that would give the President of the Alabama Federation of Democratic Women a place on the Executive Board (
I think it's definitely the Board, not just the Committee). Why the hell not?
- The committee postponed a decision on replacing the Democratic nominee for Circuit Court Judge, Place 17 in Jefferson County. They will meet again on August 26th (with air conditioning, next time?) to take up that question.
- The committee confirmed Tuscaloosa District Attorney Tommy Smith as the Democratic nominee for the general election. I don't follow the details here, but this action will apparently prevent a challenge to Smith from an independent candidate who was on and then off the Democratic primary ballot.
- The committee took no action to fill the ballot vacancy for Circuit Court Judge, Place 7 on the 23rd Circuit in Madison County. I'm told Madison County did not bring a nominee. Why the hell not?
- Here's the agenda so you can see what they planned to take up yesterday. No word on whether they filled any vacancies on the SDEC, but I'm told there are still some vacancies. I don't know what if anything they did about the District Court Judge vacancy in Calhoun county or the House District 8 vacancy. [See below the fold for action on those items.]
That agenda is from @RockRichard who also gets the tweet of the week award for this:
Not sure which Joe was presiding today. Turnham, Reed or Stalin
Which I take to mean that things were being pushed right along from the podium. Several attendees said many people were "disgruntled" in the wake of the meeting. In an op-ed this morning, Artur Davis noted something else that did not happen at yesterday's meeting: The usual ritual at these events is that the runner-up in the primary embraces the winner and pledges full-throated support for the nominee in the fall. In a break with tradition, I did not attend that event and will not be campaigning for the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. I want Democrats and independent-minded voters to know just why not. One of the reasons I entered elective politics as a Democrat is because I worried that the Republican administrations of Guy Hunt and Fob James had set the state back in fundamental ways. The emerging Republican Party in the state offered little in the way of new approaches to revive the economy or modernize our schools. A few narrow interest groups held unusual influence in the GOP, and those interests appeared uninterested in any public purpose beyond maintaining their own power. After almost two years of navigating the Alabama Democratic terrain as a gubernatorial candidate, I fear that the forces that dominate my party have turned into the same conservative anti-reform elements that I went into politics to oppose.
Davis has said he never planned to be a professional politician and he certainly doesn't sound like one now, although his assertion that jobs should be the next governor's top priority is politically astute. He pointedly did not endorse Bentley either (although some will accuse him of it) and reiterated his intention to leave the political arena when his term in Congress is over. This is Artur Davis speaking his mind, expressing frustration with the conservative mindset reformers are up against in the Democratic power structure and closing with a familiar lament that so many educated young Alabamians still have to leave the state to find opportunity. I regret that neither political party in Alabama has laid out a genuine course to keep those young people home. I'm not surprised that Republicans haven't done better, and I am deeply disappointed that Alabama Democrats are failing the test as well.
A lot of people are disapponted in the Alabama Democratic party and concerned about its future, as well as the future of the state. The folks who run the Alabama Democratic Party have literally bet the party on B-I-N-G-O in 2010. The leadership has no time or interest for Democrats who care about any other issue beyond gambling. Constitutional Reform? That's for do-gooders. Ethics in government? Dreamers. Jobs from green industries? This is Alabama. Now this strategy may pay off in a big way in November if Democrats hold both houses of the Legislature, take back the governorship and most of the constitutional offices and win back the 5th district congressional seat in North Alabama. If that happens Ron Sparks and the party leadership will be hailed as heroes. My question for the ADP leadership is this: why change the bylaws to re-elect yourself now, well in advance of the November election if you think you'll be heroes after the election? Is it possibly because the leadership is concerned that even a hand picked SDEC might be in an ugly mood next January and decide Alabama Democrats need to go in a different direction? Elect different leaders who might care about more than a single issue? That path is now closed -- Democrats could lose every race in November but we're guaranteed to keep the same party leadership for another 4 years, whether they're heroes or heels. It makes no sense to me, but it apparently makes a lot of sense to the party leaders who are concerned with "continuity" -- and/or hanging onto their positions. I'd like to see some vision and leadership from the party and our nominees. I'd also like to have seen some calls for party unity after the primary. The Republicans are talking up unity, airing their disagreements and at least getting their grievances out in the open, but Democrats have simply gone back to their isolated corners after June 1 and stewed. Ron Sparks hasn't adopted even token parts of Davis' campaign platform, in spite of his early pledge to "woo" Davis supporters. At least in public, no one in the leadership is even bothering to urge Davis voters to get behind the nominee in November. Ignoring this rift will not bridge it. I don't say these things because I enjoy being critical of my Party or of our gubernatorial nominee -- I hate it -- but because I'm genuinely concerned that the lack of leadership toward bringing Democrats together in a sense of common purpose is going to hurt us in November. None of us will be better off if Democrats lose big this year. If we run the table on Nov. 3rd I will obviously have egg on my face, happily so, but right now I'm worried that we're headed for the political wilderness for a good long time. The future may look bright to you folks in Montgomery, but I'm hearing "all is lost" from too many insiders and November 3 is shaping up more like Armageddon than Oz from where I stand. |
