This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the race to become Alabama’s next congressman. Going in alphabetical order, Yellowhammer will give you our take on the seven candidates who qualified for the Republican nomination in Alabama’s 6th Congressional District. The candidates are Scott Beason, Will Brooke, Paul DeMarco, Chad Mathis, Gary Palmer, Robert Shattuck and Tom Vigneulle. They are running to succeed 11-term congressman Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills, who has decided not to seek re-election in 2014.
Part 1 of this series — discussing Scott Beason and Will Brooke — can be found HERE.
Paul DeMarco
State Rep. Paul DeMarco, R-Homewood, is the early frontrunner to be central Alabama’s next congressman.
First elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in a special election in 2005, the Birmingham business community immediately saw DeMarco as a potential future Speaker of the House. But he’s had his eye on D.C. for a long time. When political insiders started whispering last year that Congressman Bachus may retire, DeMarco was already telling key donors he was ready to run.
Some politicians are simply looking to work their way up, regardless of what path they need to take. But a lot of people believe congress has been DeMarco’s end game from the beginning. One reason for that perception is that it seems like he’s been at every single political or community event in the 6th District for the last several years. If there was chili cookoff, local Party meeting, or charity 5k, DeMarco was there. That commitment to be at every event has won him a lot of good will in the community, especially in the Homewood, Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills areas. He’s a tireless campaigner.
He’s also proven himself to be a strong fundraiser. Although the business community may have cooled on him slightly over the years, he has built a reliable base of support among business leaders, especially at the city’s major law firms, which are always some of the top contributors to political campaigns.
DeMarco’s biggest challenge will be combatting the perception among some that he’s “squishy,” not willing to take a stand on tough issues. Other candidates are already laying the groundwork for that line of attack by criticizing him for opting to attend a fundraiser instead of the first major debate.
His voting record in the Alabama House is pretty reliably conservative. He may not have been the most vocal legislator on contentious issues, but he can usually be counted on to vote the “right” way. That said, any legislator’s record is susceptible to demagoguery. Everyone’s taken a bad vote at some point, or supported an imperfect bill that’s easy fodder for a 30-second campaign spot.
If DeMarco can continue his brisk fundraising pace (likely); solidify his support in the population center of the District, in which his current legislative district resides (challenging with businessman Will Brooke holding similar appeal); and manage to pick up at least some support in Shelby County and more rural areas (doable, but not a natural fit), he’ll be very tough to beat in a runoff.
Chad Mathis
Dr. Chad Mathis has run a successful medical practice and would undoubtedly be taking a pay cut to go to Washington, D.C. When he says he’s concerned about the future of the country, it feels sincere.
Mathis has been laying the groundwork for a campaign long before anyone had a clue he was even interested in running. He began establishing relationships with key influentials a couple of years ago, although he’s not a native of the 6th District and doesn’t have the long-time connections that some of the other candidates have. But the most notable relationships he’s built are with national conservative groups like FreedomWorks, The Madison Project, and influential conservative blog RedState.com. Each of those groups got on board with the Mathis campaign much earlier than most people expected.
Mathis is aiming to be the Tea Party candidate in the race. He has consistently referenced the time he spent as a volunteer on Ted Cruz’s US Senate campaign in Texas in an effort to establish his conservative credentials. But State Sen. Scott Beason’s entry into the race has made that positioning a lot more difficult to achieve. Beason is a proven commodity to the hard right, and many of them are going to stick with him.
But while Beason has a difficult time raising money, Mathis’ early fundraising caught a lot of folks by surprise. He had a large fundraising haul in the first reporting period, although he did get a much earlier start than other candidates and loaned his campaign a big chunk of money. His fundraising — combined with the announcement of a very respectable campaign team — made people take him seriously. He raised a lot of his early cash from doctors. Is he tapped out? We’ll know in a bout a week when the next round of fundraising reports come out.
In what could be a sign of things to come, the Mathis campaign has already gone hard negative. This Red State article probably gives a decent idea of what they’re approach to each candidate will be.
Many insiders believe it’s going to be tough to win as tea party firebrand in the 6th District where the population center is solidly conservative, but probably not quite as ardent as some other areas of the state. Mathis is going to put that theory to the test.
(Correction: the original version of this article mistakenly said that Mathis ended the first fundraising period with the most cash on hand when, in fact, DeMarco did with $352,988.50.)
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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