How has the coronavirus affected Alabama politics? The answer is negligibly, if at all. The Republican Primary Runoff to determine the nominee for the junior U.S. Senate seat was postponed by the epidemic. It is set for July 14, which is right around the corner. The race between Tommy Tuberville and Jeff Sessions should be close and interesting.
The delay did affect this race in one regard, though. If the vote had been held on March 31 as planned, Tuberville then had the advantage and the momentum. The almost four-month delay may have slowed that train. To what degree we will not know until the votes are counted in three weeks. Tuberville’s campaign has been totally based on him being loyal to Donald Trump.
Sessions and Tuberville were both given a golden opportunity to use the four-month hiatus to do some good old fashioned one-on-one campaigning, if only by phone. If one of them did it, it could make the difference. We will soon see. People still like to be asked personally for their vote.
The next elections will not be until 2022. It will be a big year. It is a gubernatorial year and there may very well be an open U.S. Senate seat. Senator Richard Shelby will be 88, and he may choose to retire. Gov. Kay Ivey will be 78 in 2022. She will more than likely not run for a second term.
The one development that has occurred during the virus saga is that Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth has made it clear that he will be running for governor in 2022. If it were not apparent before, it is obvious now. He inserted himself into the coronavirus episode. In many instances, he appeared to usurp the center stage from Governor Ivey.
The young lieutenant governor first urged an aggressive public health response, differing from Governor Ivey’s approach. She made a comment about his out-of-nowhere position. She then forgave him and gave him a position on one of her many task force bodies.
Ainsworth then changed courses and tweeted that the state’s businesses should reopen prior to the governor’s recommended date. She seemed undeterred nor miffed by his second assertion of his policy position. Having been around Alabama politics a lot longer than Ainsworth, she may be savvy enough to know that she is giving him just enough rope to hang himself.
Ivey cut her political teeth campaigning for Lurleen Wallace for governor in 1966. That was 15 years before Ainsworth was born in 1981. I doubt he knows of a similar scenario that played out 50 years ago in which a lieutenant governor got too big for his britches and overly and overtly tried to play governor.
George Wallace had won his second term as governor in 1970. If you count Lurleen Wallace's 1966 victory, it would be his third straight gubernatorial victory. He was running for president in 1972 and was shot by Arthur Bremer in a Maryland parking lot. He was near death from the wounds and had to be hospitalized in Maryland for three or four months. It was a miracle that he survived.
A young Jere Beasley had been elected lieutenant governor in 1970, primarily because the Wallace people had supported him. Beasley seemed to insert himself overtly as governor while Wallace was absent as a result of being bedridden. The governor’s people actually had to fly him back home from his recovery for a day so that he could remain governor.
Folks never seemed to forgive Beasley for this ambitious assertion of power. In his following race for reelection as lieutenant governor, Beasley trailed Charles Woods in the first primary and barely won the runoff. Four years later, in the monumental 1978 governor’s race – which Fob James ultimately won – Lt. Governor Jere Beasley finished in fifth place, even though he spent lots of money.
Speaking of money, losing the 1978 governor’s race was the best thing that ever happened to Jere Beasley. He began practicing law in Montgomery and became one of the most prominent plaintiff lawyers in America. He and his wife, Sarah, have had a much happier and prosperous life out of politics.
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