Alabama race for governor shaping up as must-see political event

[Thom Little]

The cast: A Republican incumbent who alienated his base with a tax hike plan. A chief justice who lost his job over his Ten Commandments stand. A former governor under a racketeering indictment. A lieutenant governor who helped her ex-husband run for governor twice.

.......

On the Republican side, ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore, the Ten Commandments crusader, is challenging Gov. Bob Riley, who is trying to rally his business backers after a failed $1.2 billion tax proposal his first year in office.

"It will be a classic clash between the church factor of the Republican Party and the business factor of the Republican Party," said Jess Brown, a political scientist at Athens State University.

On the Democratic side, the featured players are indicted former Gov. Don Siegelman and Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, who's trying to become Alabama's second female governor and the first elected in her own right.



http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AL_YE_GOVERNORS_RACE_YEARENDER_ALOL-?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-24-15-57-50

[rpannier]

1. A group of Winners all...

Man...no wonder people have so little respect for politicians. None of these people sound like they should be anything but on the unemployment line.
Of the four, Baxley seems the best.

[No Exit]

2. The republican-controlled feds are doing all they can to help

They've trumped up ANOTHER indictment of democrat ex-governor Don Siegelman. (The other one got thrown out.)

[High Plains]

3. And there's a gun-lovin', pot-smokin' Libertarian

who is getting some attention, too. A housewife named Loretta Nall who wrote a letter to her local newspaper criticizing the marijuana laws, then was raided by the police and busted for a half a joint. She's white, but has spent a lot of time working with black Alabamians around prison and drug war issues. A social justice libertarian?

An example of what happens when the two big parties ignore issues like this.