Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, accepted a $10,000 contribution directly from Brandt Ayers on Friday, according to a mandatory financial disclosure filed with the Secretary of State’s office.
Ayers is the former longtime editor of the Anniston Star (which his family has owned since 1912) and chairman of Consolidated Publishing, which operates Talladega’s The Daily Home, Heflin’s The Cleburne News, Pell City’s The St. Clair Times, The Piedmont Journal and The Jacksonville News, in addition to the Star.
On January 1 of this year, Ayers was accused of multiple sexual assaults that occurred in the 1970’s against then-employees of his. In an interview a day after the allegations went public, he admitted to the assaults, yet said he would not step down as chairman of his media conglomerate because he “served honorably, even courageously, in the public interest.” He would resign two days later, even though his wife took his chairmanship, ensuring no real change to the Ayers family’s power.
Maddox’s acceptance of Ayers’ contribution, which is tied for Maddox’s third largest donation from an individual over the course of the entire campaign, flies in the face of the #MeToo movement, with Ayers being called the “Alabama version of [Harvey] Weinstein.” Accepting the contribution also raises eyebrows from the perspective that Maddox has criticized Governor Kay Ivey for voting for Republican nominee Roy Moore for the United States Senate instead of Maddox’s ally, now-Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook).
It should be noted that the allegations against Moore have yet to be proven, yet Ayers confessed. His assaults and the accusations against Moore come from the same decade.
Additionally, the contribution dredges up controversial storylines that have swirled around Ayers previously, from his longtime status as a Democratic activist (even while he ran several news outlets) to the journalists in the state who knew about Ayers’ sexual misconduct yet stayed silent for decades. One of these tight-lipped journalists, Bob Lowry, is now retired, yet finds himself spending his free-time berating conservatives and stumping for Maddox and other Democratic candidates on Twitter. Then, there is the husband of one of the victims, Pulitzer Prize-winning Joey Kennedy, who has written multiple op-eds that support Maddox this election cycle.
Debate Topic #4: Roy Moore’s Misconduct #believe #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/DhGe5Mulqo
— Walt Maddox (@WaltMaddox) August 20, 2018
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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