Mountain Brook voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to cast their ballots in the city’s hotly contested city council elections.
As is the case around the nation, culture and education have risen to the top of the list of central issues facing the wealthy municipality.
In recent years, the affluent Birmingham suburb has contended with its fair share of controversy surrounding perceived issues of race, particularly anti-Semitism.
In 2020, a video was posted to social media that showed boys laughing at a student who had two swastikas, along with “heil,” written on his back. This was followed by an incident in 2018 when a swastika was found drawn in a bathroom at Mountain Brook Junior High.
Shortly after, in response to the incidents, Mountain Brook Schools implemented a so-called anti-bias training program sponsored by the progressive Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called “No Place for Hate.”
Last summer, the school district opted to axe the program after a parent-led uproar ensued over charges of Critical Race Theory (CRT) tenets being incorporated within the program’s curriculum.
Sitting school board members, having acted on parents’ concerns, took heat from ADL over the move to scrap the program.
“What has happened in Mountain Brook over the past several weeks is by far the biggest, disappointing experience we’ve had with the school district in my history with the ADL,” Allison Padilla-Goodman, vice president of ADL’s southern division, told Alabama Media Group in July 2021. “I feel like they’ve made the decision to kind of live with the hate in their district and to not do anything about it.”
However, the school board remained uninfluenced by the far-left organization and defended its move to end the program.
Earlier this year, Mountain Brook residents saw their city make national headlines after the school system fielded accusations regarding a teacher instructing students on the Nazi salute. The incident caused the school system to issue an apology, saying, “We absolutely and unequivocally stand against Antisemitism.”
Presently, the city council is charged with appointing members of the Mountain Brook school board. Due to issues surrounding education, the non-partisan council races have generated increased politicization.
Candidates appearing on Tuesday’s ballot are as follows:
Place 1
- Graham Smith
- Christopher Powanda
Place 3
- Billy Pritchard
- Kent Osband
Place 5
- Lloyd Shelton
- Tate Davis
Smith, Pritchard and Shelton are perceived as traditional, pragmatic Mountain Brook candidates, while their opposition are acting as populist insurgents challenging what some perceive to be the established order.
The Hoover Sun, which recently held conversations with community residents, published a breakdown of the races and documented citizens’ concerns over the heightened political temperature.
Crestline resident Kevin Cornes, who has three children in the school system, expressed worry over the city council elections becoming a single-issue referendum.
“To me, the biggest issue is that some people are running on very narrow issues that, while they may be important, the worry is they don’t really necessarily want to do the minutiae work of running the city, and they don’t have the experience to do that,” said Cornes. “If there’s a specific issue, yes, let’s address that, but don’t do it at the expense of electing the wrong person to the City Council.”
The outlet also spoke to Ralph Yielding, who has lived in Mountain Brook nearly his entire life. Yielding touched on what he asserted to be the unprecedented polarization of the city’s municipal elections.
“I feel like in the past couple of years, there has been a highly contentious and divisive element introduced into the municipal affairs of Mountain Brook that had formerly never been present for the entire existence of the city,” said Yielding.
He added, “I am very concerned about the grievance candidates that have submitted their applications to run, and the hard partisan tenor of what appears to be going on, and it is in stark contrast to what has largely been a nonpartisan process.”
In contrast, the Central Alabama Republican Council has leaned in to what has been described by local media to be the “culture wars” that have been waged in the affluent community.
The group recently commissioned a mail piece distributed to Mountain Brook voters that took aim at CRT and labeled Powanda, Osband and Davis as “solid conservative[s],” while painting the opposing office seekers as “liberal candidates.”
Monday is the final day that voters can request an emergency absentee ballot. Polls will be open from 7:00 a.m. through 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday.
The contentious nature of Mountain Brook’s 2022 municipal election cycle has proven that the well-to-do suburb is not immune to political controversy.
Dylan Smith is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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