Those of us who follow Alabama politics had been awaiting late May like kids waiting for Santa Claus at Christmas.
We knew May 19 would be the golden opening date for candidates to begin making their announcements for governor and other statewide constitutional offices. Why? Because the law stipulates that candidates can begin raising campaign dollars exactly one year prior to the primary elections, which are set for May 19, 2026.
I have no inside sources in the White House.
I do not have access to military intelligence. Or any expert knowledge of the Middle East.
But I’ve spent my adult life watching American presidents try to bomb the region into peace. It never works.
Which leaves me wondering how Alabama’s senators, who on paper have better sources than us Goat Hill wretches, think that President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iranian nuclear facilities solved anything.
Tommy Tuberville, our reputed gubernatorial inevitability, should not have a clear path to the governor’s mansion.
His Senate career is almost all cable news hits, conspiracy thinking, and attacks on transgender youth. His platform is the same reward-the-wealthy, punish-the-marginalized, Trump-is-all pitch we’ve heard from state Republicans for a decade.
Call me naive, but Alabama needs something more than this. We deserve officials whose priorities are public matters and not the private goals of the state’s many wealthy cliques. A gubernatorial campaign that could be waged in its entirety from a beach house won’t provide any of that.
Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh is a political pioneer of sorts.
In her campaigns for the Alabama Power Rubber Stamp Squad — excuse me, the Public Service Commission — Cavanaugh had one message: Being a conservative Republican is the only qualification for office.
She trumpeted her opposition to abortion rights, even snagging Mike Huckabee to back her up on that. Later on, she campaigned for re-election in part on her opposition to “socialism and liberal ‘woke’ ideas.”
The biographer Robert Caro says that power reveals. Power lets you do what you want. And your desires show who you are.
After four years in the U.S. Senate, we have few doubts about what Tommy Tuberville wants.
A man sent to Washington to represent Alabama spends a lot of time on television talking about President Donald Trump or his enemies. Alabama is a peripheral concern. In some cases, Tuberville takes positions that are demonstrably bad for the people here.
When he’s not ignoring Alabamians, he’s embarrassing them. Tuberville in 2022 made an overtly racist assertion that Black Americans are criminals at a rally in Nevada. He also took a very long time to acknowledge that white nationalists are racists.
By middle school, we’re all taught that the word “democracy” combines “demos,” the Greek word for people, with “kratos,” meaning rule.
Rule of the people.
That doesn’t describe the government we live under.
Alabamians say they want Medicaid expansion. They don’t seem keen on the state’s effective abortion ban. If you let Alabama voters decide whether the state should have a lottery, odds are that it would pass, and it wouldn’t be close.
Whenever Alabama’s senior U.S. senator makes a statement, I usually have one reaction.
Has Tommy Tuberville thought this through?
It’s rare to see evidence that he has on anything he shares his opinions on. The senator seems like an old player piano, mechanically striking the notes of whatever melody Fox News or Newsmax feeds him.
My mother is an immigrant.
She left Ireland when she was 17. That’s what the young Irish did in the late 1950s.
There were no jobs. And there was no opportunity. Forget college: There was no free secondary education until the late 1960s. Having finished the equivalent of eighth grade, the only way she could extend her schooling was by repeating eighth grade.
So she went to America. She was a poor teenager from rural Ireland who had to learn to live in a city.
Four members of Alabama’s congressional delegation attacked a private citizen last week.
And now we’re all in danger.
See, U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville and U.S. Reps. Robert Aderholt of Haleyville; Gary Palmer of Hoover, and Dale Strong of Madison went after someone who works at Space Camp.
Not a person accused of harming anyone, much less committing a crime. Not a person who, by any rational standard, counts as a public figure.
Let’s remember the stakes of Tommy Tuberville’s months-long blockade of military promotions.
The Pentagon in February announced a new policy to help service members get abortion services, months after the U.S. Supreme Court gave states like Alabama the green light to impose draconian restrictions on the procedure.
The policy gives members of the armed forces up to 21 days’ leave for abortion or fertility treatments. It reimburses them for travel expenses. And it prevents a health care provider from telling a commander about the nature of the person’s treatment.
White nationalism is racism.
Don’t take it from me. That’s the dictionary definition.
“The belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial and ethnic groups, and that in order to preserve their white, European, and Christian cultural identities, they need or deserve a segregated geographical area, preferential treatment, and special legal protections,” says dictionary.com.
And the definition of a white nationalist?
Some of you have inquired how Alabama will fare in Washington after Senator Shelby retires at the end of 2022. The answer is that it will be nothing less than devastating for the Heart of Dixie. The amount of federal dollars that Senator Shelby has brought home is incalculable and irreplaceable. Alabama is going to be in the proverbial boat without a paddle in 20 short months. We will have negligible power in Washington, and for a state that depends on federal dollars, that is not going to be a good position to be in for Alabama.
Over the years, I have discussed my observations and concepts of the two different roles or routes taken by a U.S. Senator or Congressman during their tenure in Washington.
One clearly chooses one of two postures in their representation of you in Washington. Our delegates in D.C. are either benefactors or ideologues.
The role of benefactor is much better for any state, especially Alabama. This public figure is not only a benefactor but also a facilitator and a statesman. In other words, this person is interested and diligent in bringing home the bacon to the Heart of Dixie.
