Steve Flowers: Inside The Statehouse: The Reapportionment game

  For generations we in Alabama observed the partisan gridlock in Washington as something that transpired far away in the nation’s capitol. That was probably because we were a one party state for many years. Our ancestors were determined to be Democrats to their death after the vindictive shackles of Reconstruction were overthrown. The oppression and vengeance enacted on the South by the radical Republicans after the Civil War made the South Democratic for close to 100 years.

  When I arrived in the legislature in 1982 there were only a handful of Republicans in the 105 member House. They were from the silk stocking suburbs of Birmingham, Mobile and Montgomery. They could have had their caucus in a phone booth.