ENTERPRISE – With less than three weeks to go until Election Day, by most indications statewide Republican candidates in Alabama are on solid footing.
Down in the Wiregrass’ Coffee County, Republicans aren’t taking that for granted and are gearing up for the November 6 contests.
At a gathering at the Enterprise Country Club just north of downtown Enterprise, the Republican Women of Coffee County (RWCC) held their last meeting before next month’s election, and RWCC President Johnna Roberts urged attendees to encourage as many people as possible to vote straight-ticket Republican.
“I’m hoping the excitement is there,” Roberts said to Yellowhammer News. “It’s so important that we get Republicans elected in the midterms. It’s important for Alabama. It’s also important for the country, too. We have to maintain a majority in Congress. It’s important to get our Republican representatives elected. We’re going to do everything we can here.”
Roberts said her group was distributing signs urging voters to vote “straight Republican” and employing a phone and text campaign that will remind people to go vote.
Headlining the event were GOP lieutenant gubernatorial nominee Will Ainsworth and incumbent Republican State Auditor Jim Zeigler.
Ainsworth, who hails from northeast Alabama’s Marshall County, was perhaps not as well-known to the Coffee County group as his Republican primary opponent Twinkle Cavanaugh.
He was introduced as a candidate that had won the approval of Birmingham-based radio hosts Rick Burgess and Bill “Bubba” Bussey of the “Rick & Bubba” radio show, and therefore he must be alright. He indicated that he was grateful of the support Coffee County voters had given him in the primary and the primary runoff.
“Coffee County was our best county, hands down, in the Wiregrass,” Ainsworth said to Yellowhammer News. “It’s certainly good to be here. I came here several times throughout the primary and also the runoff.”
Ainsworth acknowledged the elements of complacency from Republican voters in this campaign season but added the recent U.S. Senate confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh and the controversies surrounding it have activated some GOP voters.
“I think any time you got a Republican president and things are going well, you wonder if people are going to be complacent,” he said. “I do think the Kavanaugh situation woke Republicans up and let them know Democrats are trying to destroy our party. I think that woke them up, but outside of that, things are going so well. You just wonder if people are fired up enough to vote because sometimes fear or change is what drives people to vote, not necessarily when things are going well.”
Zeigler, who had earlier made the rounds at the RWCC event with his signature miniature-sized “waste cutter” business cards, also warned against complacency and noted he wasn’t taking his election for granted.
“The best way to get beat in an election is to be overconfident, to assume you’re going to win,” Zeigler said to Yellowhammer News. “And I would never do that. I’ll be campaigning for two days in the Wiregrass, and for the next three weeks, I’ll be asking people to hire me back for another four years as the state auditor.”
“Too many Republicans tell me, ‘Don’t worry about it. You got it made. Governor Ivey, you and all the Republican candidates are going back in,’” he added. “While I hope that’s true, I’m going to run as if I’m behind. Being ahead encourages the other side to use negative campaigning. We may see that between now and November 6.”
Republicans tend to fare well in Coffee County. In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won the county by a 76-to-20-percent margin over Hillary Clinton. In the 2017 special election between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones, Moore won the county by a 67-to-31-percent margin.
According to Roberts, Republicans in her county remain supportive of Trump, but she stressed the importance of the U.S.-Mexico border wall on which Trump had campaigned during the 2016 campaign.
“We love what Trump is doing,” she said. “I think they’ve longed to have someone do the things – taxes. People are big on the wall … It is important to our voters. The Constitution is really important to them – gun rights.”
The RWCC president said she also expected to have a good turnout in Coffee County relative to the region.
“I do think our voters will turn out,” she added.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.
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