“Play for Alabama and Pull for Auburn”

Everyone seems to love a story of hypocrisy unmasked.

And here we have Autauga County Republican Party Chair Al Booth taking to task two local elected officials from the GOP for supporting Democrat “Walking” Wendell Mitchell in his bid to be re-elected to HD 30. Larry Butler, the county’s school superintendent, and school board member Kelley Ingram supported Mitchell over Republican candidate Joan Reynolds.

“They need to remember how they got here,” a newspaper story quoted Booth as saying. “If you are a Republican, you support the party. You can’t play for Alabama and pull for Auburn.”

Before the election Booth stopped short in saying Butler and Ingram should be booted from the party. That would be a decision by the executive committee, he said, of which he is a nonvoting member.

This is in keeping with a recent change in state GOP bylaws:

“County executive committees should not accept qualifying papers from Republican office holders who, while holding office as Republicans, openly support candidates who aren’t Republican,” the change states.

The hitch? GOP County Chair Al Booth made such a fuss even though he financially supported Democrat Bobby Day in his race for the senate seat in District 3.

Ingram, who took a more active role in the Mitchell campaign, was tart in her reply.

“Nothing is harder to do gracefully that getting off your high horse,” she said.