Posted by This started out as the second half of the previous post about the suits to disqualify the elections of some Democratic state senators, but I didn’t want to lose you in case your eyes glazed over with the talk about consolidation of lawsuits. If you are just getting here, you might back up a post (or more). Otherwise, picking up right where we left off…
Democratic Party lawyers have intervened to say that any action taken against Barron, Zeb Little, Sanders, and Bedford must include the Republicans who also faced no primary opposition and did not file campaign finance reports.
Democratic attorney Joe Espy said Wednesday he’d prefer that the court rule the four Democratic senators and all the Republicans followed the rules that had existed for 16 years, but if the court rules otherwise, its decision should cover both political parties.
The list of Republicans includes four senators, 21 representatives and two appellate court judges.
State Democratic Party Chair Joe Turnham has an opinion that may be entirely too reasonable to be heard in the din:
“The people have spoken and if campaign laws are ambiguous and confusing the place to settle that score is by fixing the contradictions and ambiguities of the Fair Campaign Practices Act in the next session of the legislature, not by overturning the votes of thousands of Alabama voters from the 2006 elections on ‘gotcha technicalities,” Turnham explained.
Lastly, consider this. After the primary defeat of Sen. Gerald Dial (one of the conservative Democrats who challenged Barron’s Senate leadership) led to the suit to disqualify four unopposed Barron Democrats, Jack Lowe, Jr. runs a late run-in campaign against Dial’s unopposed Senate buddy Larry Means. Follow that with the suit to nullify Means’ election (especially considering what Means means to the challenge to Barron’s control of the Senate). If you don’t see Barron’s fingerprints all over that, you should look again.
Or as Sen. Bedford politely put it, it will be ironic if a case that began with defeated Sen. Gerald Dial, who is one of Means’ Senate buddies, ends up getting Means.
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In a moment of irony… HANK SANDERS IS ON THE LIST!!!
Sorry, but am I the only one who finds that to be hilarious?
Okay, I got over the hilarious part. I know it’s nothing new, but I was just recalling his previous run-in with the ethics committee. Guess I’d be laughing longer if it weren’t true.
Or maybe I’m reading this wrong… Is he the one who is making the complaint or one of the ones that the complaint is being made against. They all seem to be running together these days…
I’ve been thinking… Maybe they’ll just keep adding people from the other group to this list and get rid of every single state senator and representative that we have. It sure would make things simpler in Montgomery. :)
It does run together. And it’s confusing.
Sanders is one of the first four named in a suit seeking to overturn their elections. They (and every other person on the list save one) were acting in accordance with an AG opinion from 1990 when they did not file their financial disclosure reports for the primary elections because they were unopposed.
Others besides the original four were added to the list, because hey, we don’t think we did anything wrong, but if something is going to happen to us, let’s make sure we have everybody on the list who did the same thing (which is not a matter of dispute).
Sen. Larry Means did the same thing except it was for the general election after AG Troy King had issued a new opinion that people in these situations do have to file.
Here is a post where I tried to step through it so anyone interested could get up to speed – because as you say it is a bit confusing.