Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville says racist white nationalist domestic terrorists are just “Americans?”
The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – As I sit here in the coolness and fog while the rest of the world burns, looking out at what’s happening “out there” through a big computer screen, I see that my old friend Doug Jones is working hard to make inroads with the people of my home state of Alabama in his campaign for governor against Republican Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville.
The Vegas oddsmakers have the race at 92 percent for the Republican and 9 percent for the Democrat.
Alabama Governor Election Winner
Most public opinion polls to date have shown the Alabama governor’s race this year as not competitive at all. But there is one poll that seems to be an outlier: the Yes, Every Kid Foundation survey of likely voters.
All other polling sees Tuberville with a 10-point-or-better lead over Jones. However, the one taken between July 8 and 11 by the foundation hints at a tighter race. The 49% polled for Tuberville and 41% for Jones have “slightly raised some eyebrows,” according to some reporting in the state.
Based on “the coach” and Trump golfing buddy’s easy defeat of Jones in the 2020 U.S. Senate race – he lost by 20 points in spite of being the incumbent Senator and the Democrat, Joe Biden, won the presidential election – most every political pundit long ago assumed the senator’s election as governor was inevitable. Early polls showed Tuberville with wide margins over Jones. The Montgomery-based Cygnal Poll, for instance, taken in November of last year, revealed Tuberville with a 19-point lead. Other polls have been near that margin, according to some little, pathetic excuses for news stories going around on the web.
Outlier Poll Hints at Tightening Alabama Governor’s Race
Is it possible that Jones could make up 8 points in two and a half months and pull off a political miracle?
Birmingham Democrat Doug Jones wins historic U.S. Senate election victory over Republican Roy Moore in Alabama, Tuesday Dec. 12, 2017: Glynn Wilson
U.S. Senator Doug Jones with his wife Louise along with Rep. John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.: Twitter
He is working hard, holding town hall meetings around the state and drawing large crowds of disgruntled voters, mostly Democrats who are unhappy with Trump and his policies, including cutting health care and food assistance benefits and fighting a losing war in Iran when he promised not to get America into more “forever” foreign wars. The war is driving up inflation again, especially gas prices, making it hard for working folks to make ends meet.
Unfortunately, most Republicans these days will not even find out about this because they stick to watching right-wing news coverage on Fox News and such. Many Democrats are still stuck watching mainstream media channels like CBS, even though that network has now been coopted and taken over by the far right money crowd.
So who will tell the public the real story that is going on, the story that can be spread far and wide on social media and make the national networks and late night talk shows too? CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” so what is left? Jimmy Kimmel is still doing his thing on ABC in Los Angeles.
A History of Covering Alabama Politics
Many people these days suffer a lack of institutional memory about the past. The bots are hard at work erasing our history anyway, being trained on the misinformation of right-wing propagandists like Elon Musk on his Nazi platform X, formerly Twitter.
I don’t even think Doug Jones knows much of my history of covering Alabama politics. I had quoted him in newspapers for years, but not our hometown paper, The Birmingham News, which of course stopped printing many years ago, as I predicted in a speech at the Birmingham Southern Writers Conference in the year 2000. (Of course Birmingham Southern is now gone, out of business).
We met and got to know one another more when I was back in Birmingham helping the New York Times cover the Klan trial he oversaw in 2002 as a U.S. attorney appointed by President Bill Clinton. We often ate lunch during the trial at John’s Restaurant in downtown Birmingham, along with Times correspondent then, Rick Bragg.
In 2007, I urged Jones to go to bat for Don Siegelman in the appeal of his political prosecution, which he did, although the two men had a falling out after that. I wrote about the case for The Locust Fork News-Journal and The Nation magazine.
My coverage of the 2017 special election against Roy Moore is well documented, including the definitive account of everything that happened in that race in the Second Edition of my memoir on Amazon, Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again.
But with some time on my hands today, and as you may have noticed I’ve been in a nostalgic mood as a writer of late, I would like to take a few minutes of your time to look back on some highlights over 45 years of covering Alabama politics.
Those Were the Days My Friend: Flora-Bama Lounge Owner Pat McClellan Dies
I don’t want to write an entire book chapter here. Just to hit some key highlights.
My first experience came while covering politics for The Crimson White newspaper at the University of Alabama from 1981-1983, the legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant’s last two years on Earth. It was on a student trip to Montgomery that I first established my reputation for asking the tough questions no one else in the room had the guts to ask.
George Wallace was running for governor, again, and would go on to win his fourth and final term. But on a visit to the office of House Speaker Joe McCorquodale, I asked, “Is George Wallace mentally or physically capable of serving another term as governor?”
McCorquodale said he had recently visited the wheel chair bound Wallace, and he had to conclude that in his opinion, Wallace was in no shape to serve another term as governor, mentally or physically. (More of this story is in the book).
Next I wrote about Wallace while working for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast. One of my stories pissed Wallace off so bad he ran over a copy of the paper with his wheel chair, his chief of staff told me. (Also more in the book).
Next I covered politics for a daily newspaper in North Alabama, including a few stories about the candidates running to replace Wallace in 1986. In spite of using his federal office to run his campaign, Primitive Baptist Preacher, chicken farmer and Amway salesman Guy Hunt won that election. The Birmingham News botched the story again.
He also won again in 1990, and Paul Hubbert of AEA could have been governor, if he had listened to me and gone negative in the final two weeks of that campaign. He went soft, while I had two big investigative stories on Hunt that could have clinched the deal for him. Of course Hunt was later impeached and removed from office for misusing inauguration funds.
Lt. Governor Jim Folsom filled his seat for a short time, but lost reelection in 1994 in spite of luring the Mercedes plant to Tuscaloosa.
Fob James came back and won again, making fun of Charles Darwin with his monkey routine and praising Waffle House for knowing how to run a business, suggesting that the state could learn a thing or two.
In 1998, Democrat Don Siegelman pulled off a major upset, and people, even Howell Raines at The New York Times, hailed him as Alabama’s first New South governor.
By then I was teaching journalism in Tennessee and publishing one of the first online magazines. This was our first cover story, with photos by my close friends Spider Martin.
Alabama Gets Its First ‘New South’ Governor
Of course Siegelman technically won reelection in 2002, but the election was stolen overnight in Baldwin County with 3200 votes changed overnight. The Associated Press called the election for Siegelman the night of the election. In spite of all the claims to the contrary, it is hard to steal an election, unless it is really close. This is how close that election was, so Bob Riley took over for two terms. The Birmingham News loved him.
I was actually sent to Bay Minette by The New York Times to see if I could uncover the fraud on deadline. I was freelancing in New Orleans then, but the national editor had seen my resume and knew I worked in Bay Minette in 1984 and ’85. They pulled me out, however, when Siegelman conceded the race, much like Al Gore did in 2000.
I later proved it was a stolen election in The Locust Fork News-Journal.
More recent history is better known, but when I see people say on Facebook that “the people of Alabama are smart. They will vote to elect Doug Jones,” I don’t know what they are talking about.
So I don’t know if Doug Jones can pull an upset in 2026 or not. If the people do vote for him, it will be out of desperation at the current appalling situation in Washington.
The people of Alabama elected George Wallace four times, in spite of his race baiting and running the state as a dictator’s spoils system. They elected Fob James twice. His first term was not so bad, but the second was a disaster. They elected the dubious Guy Hunt twice. What were they thinking?
Then they elected Robert Bentley, the Luv Gov who was also impeached and removed from office.
The people of Alabama elected Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore as Chief Justice to the Alabama Supreme Court, twice, and both times he had to be removed from office. The first time for sneaking a granite monument of the Ten Commandments into the Supreme Court building in Montgomery, a blatant violation of Church and State according to a federal judge. The second time for refusing to abide by the United States Supreme Court decision ruling making marriage by same sex couples legal.
They almost elected him to the Senate in 2017, except that the people learned he was banned from the Gadsden Mall for hitting on teenaged girls while he as an assistant district attorney in Etowah County.
Doug Jones won that election by the slimmest of margins in what Maryland Senator Chris Van Holland called a “political earthquake,” as documented in my book. You won’t find that story in the Birmingham News or AL dot com, because it is owned by Newhouse, the publishing company that gave us Trump with a cover story in GQ magazine in the 1980s and then the book Trump: The Art of the Deal.
Doug Jones is a good man and did a good job as Senator, even though the people did not find that out in the press or broadcast coverage by the media companies in Alabama. He would represent them well in Montgomery, as he did in Washington.
Who is telling that story? Some people on Facebook maybe. That will not be enough.
I don’t think it can happen without a massive amount of national publicity about the shortcomings and obvious stupidity of Tuberville, including making fun of him on the late night comedy shows. That’s the stuff that will travel all over social media. Everyone will hear about it, agree with it or not.
Where is the journalist still around who can do that story? Hey, I might be semi-retired in California, but I sill have the chops – but only if people are willing to fund the work. I have a reputation for asking the tough questions and telling it like it is, not publishing some mealy-mouthed political speak left over from the centrists in the 20th century. Where are you going to find that these days in the land of the A.I. bots?
Hey, I’ve got other things to write about anyway, and a lot of good music to play.
Summer in San Francisco: Bad News and Some Good News on the Environmental Front
___
If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.
