Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Can Robert Bentley break the curse?

  If Robert Bentley wins the governor’s race in five weeks he will be the first legislator in the course of state history to ascend directly from the legislature to governor. Only a handful of governors have ever served in the Alabama House or Senate. It is basically a graveyard or dead-end street in Alabama politics.

  Let me take you back 100 years and give you the prior experience of our governors to prove that legislative experience is not a stepping stone. Starting in 1906 Braxton Bragg Comer was an industrialist and very successful businessman. His only political experience had been as president of the current day Public Service Commission. Emmet O’Neal was a lawyer and President of the Alabama Bar Association, with no elected office experience.