Alabama Politics in
Doc’s Political Parlor
& Home of Lawn Mower Repair

Sometimes local politics has the best stories.

Two years ago, Sunny Dawn Smallwood ran for Jefferson County Treasurer (and lost to Mike Miles in the Democratic Primary). This year, at the 11th hour, she decides to run for Probate Judge (Place 2) in Jefferson County as a Republican. Her father, Judge T. M. Smallwood, has been a judge in one court or another for around 30 of the last 38 years or so. Her brother, J. T. Smallwood, is Jefferson County Tax Collector. The family has a fondness for initials; Sunny will be on the ballot as S. D. Smallwood.

Sunny Smallwood has made a campaign issue of how experienced she is. Here you will see a card that she handed out at campaign stops through most of the summer and which reads “S. D. (Sunny) Smallwood, Probate Judge, 25 Years Experience.” The gavel, symbolic of a judge, is helpfully placed on the card. A problem here is that she doesn’t actually have 25 years experience as a probate judge, though the card could certainly make you think she does. She doesn’t have any experience as a judge of any kind.

Perhaps she means 25 years of legal experience? No, she was trained and employed as a nurse, and was admitted to the Alabama Bar Association in 1994, only 12 years ago.

Even her own description of her law experience in a 2001 deposition (Case 00-2152, Jefferson County Circuit Court) was underwhelming:

I got my license then [in ‘94], and in about ‘95 I started practicing just part-time and almost always just personal injury, only like wreck cases, some wills, anything that I could do on a part-time basis that wouldn’t entail, you know, litigation or anything like that. And it was usually only people I knew, friends, people that, you know, was in our family because at that time I really did not want to give up nursing.

So reasonable people began to question and talk about what she meant by her “25 years experience.” Perhaps that is why in August, she had changed the card that she was handing out.

To her credit, she took off the misleading “25 years experience.” She took her first name off, too, and a cynic might suggest that she was trying to pick up any support that might come her way if people confused her with her father. Or her brother. Now she is merely “Experienced.” And if anyone mistakenly thought the gavel meant she was experienced as a judge, well, maybe you can’t fix everything. At least, she seems to have learned something about the years of experience.

However, her self-correction was short-lived. A large ad (at least 6″ x 10″) that has run in the last two issues of the Over the Mountain Journal tells a different story. Now she has 30 years experience. At what? Who knows?

And, she is “Voted Most Qualified!” By whom? No one seems to know. Not by the Birmingham Bar Association whose judicial poll gave Smallwood the second lowest percentage of votes calling her “Qualified” or “Highly Qualified” as a judicial candidate. (Only 10% called her “Qualified” or “Highly Qualified.”) Smallwood’s opponent, Sherri Friday, received a much higher rating.

Again, with no first name listed on the advertisement that touts 30 years experience, perhaps some will confuse her with her father. Her first name will not be on the ballot, so is she hoping some voters will carry that confusion into the voting booth, vaguely remember T. M. Smallwood or J. T. Smallwood, and vote S. D. Smallwood?

If experience counts, will voters’ experiences with Ms. Smallwood’s spurious campaign count for anything?

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