Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse – Less than two weeks to the primaries: The governor’s race

  As we get down to the lick log in the 2018 June primaries, there are few if any surprises brewing in any of the major state races. Polling indicates that all of the contests are about where they were three or four months ago when the races began.

  There is a tremendous amount of apathy and indifference as we head into the final days. This lack of enthusiasm has also affected fundraising. Most of the high-profile races have not attracted the level of spending as races in the past.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Sizing up the 2018 statewide races

  Every Alabama constitutional statewide office is up for election this year. Just like the governor’s office, you can serve two consecutive four-year terms and then you are through.

  Kay Ivey would have been term-limited as lieutenant governor. She could not have run again for that post even though she ascended to the governorship last year. Young Boozer has served his two, four-year term limit as Alabama Treasurer. Young has chosen to not run again for anything. John McMillan has exhausted his eight years as Alabama's Agriculture Commissioner. He is running for State Treasurer and is favored to win that post. John Merrill can run for another four-year term as Secretary of State, which is what he is doing. The same is true for State Auditor, Jim Zeigler.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Will 2018 be the year of the woman in Alabama politics?

  This political year of 2018 may very well be the year of the woman in Alabama politics. In Alabama’s 200-year history, only one woman has been elected governor. Lurleen Wallace won in 1966. Only two women have served as governor, Wallace, and our current governor, Kay Ivey. It may be a historic year.

  Sue Bell Cobb, the former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, and the first woman to hold that position, is hoping to be the Democratic standard-bearer. She was elected Chief Justice in 2006, in a very expensive, high-profile battle with Republican Drayton Nabors. She had been a District Court Judge in her native Conecuh County for a long time before running statewide. She was elected to a six-year term as Chief Justice in 2006 but quit after four years.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Partisan drama in JeffCo and how it affects the race for Alabama AG

  Jefferson County is transitioning from a Republican to a Democratic county. In the process, they are having an interesting array of intriguing political happenings. You may recall that a few months back I wrote about the indictment of the newly-elected Jefferson County District Attorney, Charles Todd Henderson, on perjury charges. To say a lot has happened since then would be an understatement. 

  Dr. Robert Bentley has vacated the governor’s office under a scandalous cloud. Lt. Governor Kay Ivey has ascended to the governorship and appears to be the favorite to win election to a four-year term of her own in next year’s general election. We have had a special election to fill the remaining three years of Jeff Sessions’s six-year Senate term. Former Governor Bentley’s appointee, former state Attorney General Luther Strange, was overwhelmingly defeated by former state Chief Justice Roy Moore, and the Ten Commandments Judge is poised to become our junior U.S. Senator. And that brings me back to Henderson.