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

WAKA-TV, Channel 8, the CBS affiliate in Montgomery, has a piece called Talk Back Live where Congressional candidates for AL-02 are on to take calls from the TV audience for 15 minutes each. Republican State Sen. Harri Anne Smith was scheduled to take calls at 5 p.m. today but called to cancel on them.

A source close to the campaign told the Parlor that Smith had “a scheduling conflict,” the same thing that had her miss other public events. The source said that she would appear on the show in the next couple of days. Another source has told the Parlor that Smith is scheduled to be on Talk Back next Friday, on Memorial Day Weekend.

On the other hand, she has a new TV ad out today.

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Continuing to look at the victory of Democrat Travis Childers over Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s 1st House District… and considering what implications, if any, it has for Alabama’s House races.

Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report has an interesting article, “Mississippi Special: Why Childers Won and Why Davis Lost.”

Rothenberg has re-thought some of his initial assessments of the race. I found it all interesting, but I’ll mention only a couple of points.

Hypothesis No. 2: Any Republican with a pulse should have won this district, so Davis’ defeat is a sign of the deep, deep national problems in the Republican Party.

This seems logical. The only problem is that it is wrong. […]

Polling in the district showed Bush’s “favorables” well above 50 percent, and Democratic pollster Anzalone minced no words when he told me, Louisiana’s 6th and Mississippi’s 1st “are not referenda on Bush and Republicans in Congress.”

Rothenberg also agreed with the observation of our Mississippi GOP insider who believed the “message was wrong.”

Republican attempts — both by the Davis campaign and by the National Republican Congressional Committee’s independent expenditure — to polarize the race merely by calling Childers a liberal and linking him to Obama and Pelosi simply didn’t work. That approach was sufficient to produce a victory at one time, and it may have resonated with GOP voters in this race. But they weren’t the swing group in the contest, and those sort of generic messages seem less effective now.

Maybe invoking liberals works in a Republican primary.

There is more, and if this is your kind of thing, you’ll probably enjoy it.

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Jay Love is another Republican campaigning against “liberals” in an ad for an Alabama GOP Congressional primary.

Politico has a story on its front page about the ad being the first to reference the California Supreme Court decision to strike down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

Is the ad’s point that others in this Alabama GOP primary are embracing Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and the California Supreme Court’s decision? Or, by being first with such an ad, that Love hates liberals faster?

I find this interesting. The early signs are that Republicans who are trying to link their Democratic opponents to national figures like Obama and Pelosi are not having success. The reasoning here, I suppose, is that in the primary you are trying to stir up your core support. Still interesting.

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What can we take from the victory of Democrat Travis Childers over Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District? Is it a bellwether for Democratic success in the fall? What is to be learned especially as we look ahead to Alabama’s House races this fall?

A Mississippi Republican offers Parlor readers an insider’s perspective on the Childers-Davis race:

Looking back on this special election, I’m reminded of what Ole Miss coach Johnny Vaught frequently said: You don’t win games on the field. You win them on recruiting day.

When Greg Davis won the nomination to run for this seat in November, Mississippi Republicans lost the seat. The same campaign philosophy that made him the nominee (a very DeSoto County-centric, scorched earth strategy against Tupelo’s Glenn McCullough) ensured that the special election would be a fight between DeSoto County and the rest of the district… and guaranteed a loss. As has been said in the press over the last couple of days, it enabled Travis Childers run on a populist platform, break away (at least publicly) from his own national party, and frame this as a regional battle. Brilliant strategy on their part - the DCCC should be commended. If Anzalone had a hand in that, he certainly deserves to be on the list of winners.

The Republican nominee was stiff and not at all personable, and by all accounts, had high unfavorables by the time he reached the special election run-off. Compounding that, the prototypical conservative v. liberal message was entirely misguided. The good news for Republicans is that the message was unified, which is obviously much better than having a potpourri of messages coming from various organizations. The NRCC, the Davis campaign, the state party, even Freedom’s Watch- they were all nailing Childers to Obama. The bad news is that message was wrong. This year, simply connecting a candidate to Obama won’t work, even in districts where the white population makes up the overwhelming majority. Folks in AL-5 and AL-2 would do well to pay attention to the lesson Mississippi Republicans just learned the hard way.

Tom Cole held a conference call Wednesday with reporters, and said that after three special election losses in a row, it becomes less an issue of campaign tactics and more an issue of the product we’re putting in front of voters. Following that logic, Karl Rove wrote in Thursday’s WSJ that the first two losses were a result of “bad candidates” and the third a result of the Democrats nominating a conservative. Rove is partly right - the third loss, too, is a result of a bad candidate.

It’s easy for the Montgomery politico to comment on the Parlor Thursday that the NRCC should have done “whatever it took.” That politico should understand that you can spend a million, spend two million, spend whatever you’ve got - but if all things are equal with the candidates on election day, the jackass that can’t relate to the rural, hardworking Mississippian (or Alabamian) is the one that’s going to lose, even if he is a Republican.

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Looks like Luther Strange is getting on a toll road to see how far it may take him. Strange represents a group that is proposing a public-private partnership to build a toll road from Montgomery to I-10 in Florida or perhaps Highway 98 further south. No federal or state money would be used, and the project could be built within five years. (Incidentally, Strange lost the race for Lt. Governor to Democrat Jim Folsom who is pushing a highway project of his own.)

Republican Strange, the once and future candidate for statewide office, floats these ideas past us to remind us that he is out there thinking up his good ideas for the state, e.g. removing sales tax off of groceries, increasing state funding for pre-K programs, and at one time he was

working on putting together a public-private partnership on work force development that could involve using students to rehabilitate houses, which would provide them with marketable construction skills.

The toll road would create economic corridors and bring thousands of jobs to the area, Strange said in the Dothan Eagle. It is not just a toll road, but “an economic development ‘foyer.’”

And while Strange is not in full-fledged campaign mode, he appears to be approaching its foyer.

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Folks are still reeling from the victory of Democrat Travis Childers in Tuesday’s special election for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District. One campaign veteran told the Parlor that it is “hard to overstate the shockwaves that sent through the beltway Tuesday night.”

A Republican politico in Montgomery told the Parlor that Democrat Travis Childers’ victory in Mississippi was “a disaster,” adding “The NRCC should have spent WHATEVER IT TOOK to win that seat - with the NY Times running stories about the south going to Obama, etc… you don’t lose - period!”

Former NRCC chair Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia was foot-stomping unhappy at a weekly meeting of GOP House members:

Rep. Tom Davis stomped on the concrete floor of the Capitol basement when asked by reporters about Republican fortunes at the moment.

“This is the floor,” he said, by way of explanation. “We’re below the floor.”

Inside the meeting, Davis had just presented his colleagues with what he said was a 20-page memo outlining his prescription for a way out of this mess. He did not offer details to the press, yet did not spare the party and the president scathing criticism in his public comments.

“The president swallows the microphone every time he opens his mouth,” Davis said.

. . .

Asked if he thought there should be a change in House GOP leadership, he brought up the 2006 election and the loss of Congress, then wondered aloud why, when “the plane is being flown into the mountain,” there has been no change in direction.

The GOP lost 30 House seats in 2006, and Davis estimated that, without changes, the GOP could lose 25 seats in November.

Several readers on both sides of the aisle have emailed the Parlor to point out that Alabamian John Anzalone helped Childers’ campaign. Roll Call had a feature about him last night, and The Fix, the Washington Post’s politics blog, named Anzalone in its short list of Tuesday’s winners:

The Alabama-based pollster is the hottest commodity in the consultant business these days. Anzalone handled polling for Childers as well as Rep. Don Cazayoux, who won the Louisiana 6th District special election earlier this month. Among the other candidates in Anzalone’s stable: State Sen. Kay Hagan, who is challenging Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) this fall; and state Sen. Debbie Halvorson, the odds-on favorite in the open-seat race in Illinois’s 11th District.

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PSC Presidential candidate Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh has scored quite the endorsement from former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee this week. I have understood that since bowing out of the presidential race, the former governor of Arkansas has been quite the party man, playing nice, building bridges, and so I am a bit surprised to see him get into this GOP primary. I hear that Cavanaugh is close to Huckabee and especially to his Huckabee’s campaign manager, Chip Saltzman.

PSC issues are not so campaign-friendly… we all want low utility rates but beyond that the issues get a bit wonk-ish. An endorsement from the man who won the state GOP primary has to be a great boost in this race.

Here is the ad with Huckabee:

She has a more biographical ad running also:

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AL-02 Democratic candidate Bobby Bright raised $75k at a fundraiser last week for his Congressional campaign, according to a source close to the campaign. The event had no host committee and was put together by developer Jerry Kyser and Greg Allen of Beasley Allen. If Bright is dreaming of pulling off what Travis Childers did last night in Mississippi, he’ll need more successes like this. His first quarter fundraising #’s were anemic, though he probably will not face a strong primary challenge from state NOW President Cheryl Sabel or Dentist Cendie Crawley.

Bright may face a GOP nominee with his or her own fundraising woes. The GOP has already shown to be at a financial disadvantage this year, and we are not seeing signs that it is getting any better. The NRCC spent about 20% of available money in last night’s unsuccessful attempt to defend a red seat in the South and is 0 for 3 in House special elections this year, all in right-leaning districts. Will donors to GOP campaigns begin to cut and run?

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Jennifer Foster talks, or listens rather, to state Rep. David Grimes, GOP candidate for the 2nd Congressional District.

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The Democratic National Convention in Denver will have a “State Blogger Corps,” one per state, that will be credentialed and seated alongside the state delegations at the Convention in Denver. When I applied for the Political Parlor to represent Alabama there, I thought the Clinton-Obama drama might create a convention even more exciting than most, but that part of the story now looks to be finished by convention time. Regardless, I am glad to learn that the Parlor has been accepted as Alabama’s credentialed blog at the Democratic National Convention.

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Alabama Democrats considering their Congressional candidates’ chances in AL-02, AL-03, and AL-05 will be encouraged that Democrat Travis Childers won a special election for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District ("one of the safest Republican areas in the nation") tonight over Republican Greg Davis.

The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire earlier this afternoon:

A third loss for Republicans could be a bad omen for what’s to come in the fall, as the party is already fighting an uphill battle for control of the chamber. Democrats currently have a 235-199 majority. House Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has already been vastly out-raised by their counterparts at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, making it much more difficult for Republicans to invest the resources necessary to put a significant number of House seats in play. Or as the DCCC put it, “The NRCC simply can’t get off defense if Republican districts President Bush won easily by more than 60 percent are in play.”

This race is also the second test (Louisiana was the first) of a Republican strategy to align local Democratic candidates with Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama in campaign ads and mailers.

Bush won the District in 2004 with 62% of the vote, and this is the third House seat Democrats have wrested from Republicans in special elections this year.

You can’t really say that the GOP left any bullets in the chamber:

Republicans have spared no resource to ensure victory in the First Congressional District, which was vacated by Rep. Roger Wicker in December after he was appointed to fill the Senate seat of former Sen. Trent Lott. Mr. Lott retired before the end of his term.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has spent more than $1.3 million in advertising and direct mail. Mr. Davis also has benefited from funding from outside Republican groups. Freedom’s Watch, a group working to elect Republicans to the House, has spent an additional $550,000 on advertising. The NRCC has sent staff to Mississippi to help boost Republican voter turnout, which will be critical to Mr. Davis’s chances.

Republicans have drawn on a long roster to campaign for Mr. Davis, including Gov. Haley Barbour, Sen. Thad Cochran, Mr. Lott, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Vice President Dick Cheney, who appeared Monday at an event with Mr. Davis.

An ABC News blog added, “President Bush, first lady Laura Bush and Sen. John McCain all recorded automated phone calls on Davis’ behalf.”

Politico’s perspective:

A GOP House leadership aide told Politico last week that “if we don’t win in Mississippi, I think you are going to see a lot of people running around here looking for windows to jump out of.”

The $1.27 million that the NRCC spent in the heavily Republican district amounted to nearly 20 percent of the committee’s entire cash-on-hand. The committee has now spent more than $3 million to defend three conservative House seats, losing all three of them, and it is ill-equipped financially to compete fully in an ever-widening playing field for November.

Childers’ victory means that three of Mississippi’s four Representatives in the U.S. House are now Democratic.

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Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom is starting some movement on a plank from his 2006 campaign: a Mobile to Florence highway through west Alabama. A joint legislative commission is to report recommendations to the 2009 legislative session. Not only is this touted as a boon to economic development - especially in the Black Belt counties it would traverse, but Folsom would no doubt like to undergird that rumored run for the governorship in 2010.

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The state GOP picked up a “Diversity Chairman” and a “Victory Director” in recent weeks according to releases from the state party.

The party’s Diversity Chairman George Williams, a retired Army Major in Bay Minette, says in the release, “I look forward to working with all minority groups within the state; educating them on the history of the party, the party’s vision for the future and helping tear down the stereotypical walls that have been built around politics in Alabama for too long.”

The party’s new “Victory Director,” Michael Joffrion, started last week. According to that release, “As Victory Director, Michael will be responsible for building the grassroots organization of the ALGOP and managing the get out the vote efforts for the 2008 election cycle. This will include structuring a statewide volunteer organization and managing the voter registration and ballot security programs.”

Joffrion was Field Director for Rudy Giuliani’s Iowa Campaign Committee and most recently served as Political Director for “Charlie Ross for Congress” in Jackson, MS.

FWIW, I have heard from Republicans around the state who opine (and typically in an abrupt change of subject from the topic at hand) that the GOP grassroots efforts around the state are not strong.

One Montgomery insider told the Parlor about the efforts of the Business Council of Alabama to counter grassroots strengths of AEA and ALFA by using local Chambers of Commerce. Though BCA is a major player in Alabama politics, BCA has never been strong in the grassroots, and the business people and professional people involved in local Chambers of Commerce are “typically opposed to AEA and represent the potential for a Republican base, an embryonic grassroots movement.” The BCA effort - initiated by BCA head Bill Canary - can “use the Chamber to communicate with the community and with legislators.”

Don’t they meet some resistance to use the Chambers of Commerce toward this end, I ask? There are a lot of Democrats in these communities and in the Chambers.

“They are not going to be 100% successful in every county, and they are being very sophisticated about it. They are not saying, ‘This is what we are going to use to kick Paul Hubbert’s ass.’ No. It’s an opportunity to participate in BCA, the brotherhood. It’s about jobs. Preserve and protect the brotherhood. You want a local mailing list, a database? Then you want the Chamber. You got contacts. You got troops. Troops to rally.”

AEA has its fundraising and grassroots strength. ALFA, he said, had increased dues to hire John Pudner (Director of External Affairs) to work its grassroots. BCA’s interests are not the same as ALFA or AEA. This “embryonic grassroots movement” is BCA’s effort “to create grassroots pressure to offset the pressure that legislators get from AEA.”

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Associated Press this week:

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel last year shut down a previously undisclosed investigation into the federal prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, according to an internal memo made public Wednesday.

The investigation was being conducted by a task force formed at the agency a year ago to pursue high-profile political investigations in Washington, most notably whether the White House played politics in firing U.S. attorneys. It began gathering information on the Siegelman case in September and was planning to request documents from the Justice Department in October before Special Counsel Scott Bloch ordered the case closed, according to the Jan. 18 draft memo, made public by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.

This is all the more interesting given that Bloch, the agency chief, is being investigated for claims of both dismissing cases without adequate examination and obstruction of justice. Related to that investigation, federal agents seized computer files and documents from his Bloch and his staff this week.

Wall Street Journal this week:

Mr. Bloch, who was appointed by President Bush, has been under investigation since 2005 by the Office of Personnel Management for employee claims that he abused his agency’s authority, retaliated against its staff and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination. Mr. Bloch couldn’t be reached to comment.

The Justice Department joined the case as the inquiry was widened last year to include possible obstruction of justice, which is a criminal offense. The Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 28 that in the midst of the inquiry Mr. Bloch used an agency credit card to hire a commercial firm, Geeks on Call, to erase data from his computer and those of former staff.

Bloch said that Geeks on Call removed a computer virus. The WSJ looked pretty firm on its take. On that particular incident, enough people are involved that you would think the truth can be established.

It’s bad enough that one of our foundational institutions, the Department of Justice, is off-track enough to merit the attention of the independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency that is the Office of Special Counsel. But that Office is not looking so independent.

Now our watch dogs need watch dogs.

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Here’s another event where Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh was the sole Republican PSC presidential candidate invited though all GOP candidates (or, in this case, both) for another position were invited. How does she do that?

A trio of Republicans running in next month’s primary election brought their campaigns to Huntsville.

Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, a candidate for Public Service Commission president, and Mary Windom and Chris Mixon, rivals for the Place 2 position on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, were guests at a luncheon Tuesday hosted by the Huntsville Republican Women.

A reader close to a rival campaign tells the Parlor that GOP PSC presidential candidates Matt Chancey and Jack Hornady were not aware of the event. Looks like Cavanaugh is starting out as the presumptive nominee or her campaign is doing a terrific job of creating that impression.

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