So you’re a Democrat in Alabama, and you want to be elected to high office? You approached your run for office thinking that Doug Jones showed what’s possible for a Democrat in Alabama. Therefore, you determined the time is right to run.
And here you are. You put up your qualifying fee and made it through the primary. It’s you versus a well-funded Republican incumbent in a state outside the Seventh Congressional District, and a handful of other urban minority precincts elects very few Democrats.
It’s a David versus Goliath story. It’s going to require a solid ground game, a fair amount of travel and a campaign message that will sway some Republicans to overlook party labels and mark the ballot for a Democrat.
What’s Walt Maddox’s first significant push? Perhaps it could be the success story of Tuscaloosa and all the things he has accomplished as mayor. Tuscaloosa is still a place people might want to visit – several nice restaurants, an up and coming riverfront, an affluent and diverse population, or yeah – and the University of Alabama and all it has to offer.
It’s a simple message: Do you want Alabama to be more like Tuscaloosa? Vote for me.
Instead, the one big thing – the thing that he has tirelessly played up to the media, the topic about which he made internet videos and the one upon which his off-the-rails, left-of-center allies in the media seem to agree is Gov. Kay Ivey’s refusal to debate him.
In Alabama’s Second Congressional District, there’s a similarly mystifying event taking place in the race between Rep. Martha Roby (R-Montgomery) and her Democratic opponent Tabitha Isner.
Unlike Maddox, Isner doesn’t have a public service resume on which to run. She has to make the case in what is now arguably the most conservative congressional district in Alabama that she is a better alternative to the incumbent Roby.
She has to find vulnerabilities in this heavily agricultural congressional district. Whereas Roby’s Republican opponents ran against her for not being Trump-y enough, she might be served by saying Roby is way too much Trump – supporting tariffs and restrictions on labor. Her best shot would be to build a coalition of Democrat-voting Black Belt Democrats in Butler, Conecuh, Bullock and Barbour Counties and win over the handful of pockets of Republican-leaning swing voters in Montgomery, Elmore and Autauga Counties.
The math is very tough. But what does she do instead? She makes Roby’s lack of town hall meetings an issue with bizarre performance art in front of the Bird Dog Monument in Union Springs and posting it on YouTube.
A few of Alabama’s media celebrities have taken the bait. Alabama News Network’s senior political reporter Tim Lenox confronted Roby with the video, who shrugged it off.
“I have a packed August where I’ll be spending a lot of time with my constituents both in public meetings and in private meetings,” Roby said at an appearance earlier this week in Montgomery. “[P]rivate meeting scheduled previously scheduled one-on-one meetings — there’s lots of different ways to communicate with your constituents.”
Doug Jones didn’t win a U.S. Senate seat in 2017 because he hammered Roy Moore for not debating him. He had a big assist from the Democratic Party’s opposition research wing known as the mainstream media. He also did a few other things the Democratic Party of Alabama’s past and present won’t do, and that is work beyond preserving the status quo – but that’s a subject for another time.
Is it noteworthy that a Republican opponent is reluctant to debate or hold town halls? Sure. Is it something to harp on as if it is the magic ticket to higher office? No, it’s just a dumb obsession.
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.
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