Well, well--even embittered little peckerwoods have coattails.

Parker beats Justice Brown in Supreme Court Place 1 race

TOM GORDON
News staff writer

Former Chief Justice Roy Moore backed four candidates in the Alabama Republican primary, but only one scored an outright victory Tuesday night.

That candidate was Tom Parker, a former Moore aide who campaigned against Supreme Court Justice Jean Brown's vote to remove Moore's Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building.

With of 2,469 of 2,583 boxes reporting statewide, Parker, though decisively outspent by Brown, outpaced the Place 1 incumbent, 105,642 votes to 102,441 votes, or 51 percent to 49 percent.

Last year, Brown and other members of the GOP-dominated high court voted under threat of a federal court order to remove the monument Moore had placed in the judicial building rotunda. Moore was removed from office for refusing to obey the order, and has since pushed the acknowledgment of God in public buildings as a national issue.

Parker faces Democrat Robert Smith, a Mobile lawyer, in the Nov. 2 general election.

Interesting race, although I think Brown's loss has more to do with the perception (at least among likely male voters in my household) was that she tried to play both ways with the Ten Commandments issue--on one hand, saying it was sad to see them go, then saying she led the way for the more neutral display that took its place--and came away looking disingenuous. As far as I could tell, Parker's only ad on television mocked her for being endorsed by "every liberal paper in Alabama" (read, "every major daily in the state, some of whom are laughably unliberal in their editorial bias") and mocked her "politically correct, ACLU-approved display" of the Ten Commandments. Whatever happened, it is disconcerting that Republican voters just nominated someone who has no experience as a judge.

Moore also backed two other high court hopefuls, Criminal Appeals Judge Pam Baschab in the Place 2 nomination race, and retired Covington County Circuit Judge Jerry Stokes in the Place 3 contest. Baschab, however, lost decisively to Shelby County District Judge Patti Smith. Incomplete returns showed Smith with 116,474 votes, or 58 percent, to 85,407, or 42 percent, for Baschab. Smith will face Democrat Roger Monroe, a former state appellate judge, in November.

Meanwhile, Jefferson County Probate Judge Mike Bolin was the pacesetter in a four-candidate race for the Place 3 nomination, but Stokes near midnight was close to getting enough votes to force the race into a runoff. The incomplete returns showed Bolin with 98,656, or 50 percent of the votes cast. Stokes was second, with 50,738 votes or 26 percent. Montgomery County District Judge Peggy Givhan had 34,056 or 17 percent, and Houston County Circuit Judge Denny Stokes had 13,798, or 7 percent. [...]

This one is close, but probably more due to the number of candidates involved rather than anything else. The fact that even in a crowded field Bolin got 50% should be good news for him--anything less than 50% would have meant a much tougher climb.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist,

Whu?! Odd to go out of state for a comment about this, given the amount of poli-sci professors in the state...

said Tuesday's results showed that Moore has political clout, but not as much as his supporters would like.

"A powerhouse would have gotten three or four of his candidates elected," Sabato said. "But he did clearly help his close aide to win the highest profile election for the Supreme Court. Is Moore a one-issue wonder who will fade in time? We'll have to wait until 2006 to find that out."

Don't count him out. Remember, Lyndon LaRouche has run unsuccessfully for President seven times. Some people are naturally muleish, and throughout our history we seem to have had more than our share of little banty roosters wanting to try to face down the federal courts. Of course, roosters don't stand much of a chance against a farmer with an axe, but, you know. Barnyard fowl aren't the cleverest birds.

Moore's backing did little in the primary contest for the 6th Congressional District. His chief attorney, Phillip Jauregui, lost decisively to incumbent Spencer Bachus. [...]

Again, in a survey of likely male voters currently sitting at my desk, this was a non-starter to begin with. Bachus has been effective at doing what Representatives are supposed to do--bringing home lots of filthy Federal lucre to his district. To his credit, he has not fallen into the usual mode of insisting that everything be named after him, as seems to be the general rule, and has been cognizant of the needs of people in his district other than the ones who voted for him--a lot of the money he has funnelled has been to improve mass transit, generally NOT something appealing to suburbanites and rural dwellers. To throw him off for an unknown, whose only claim to fame was being Jedge Roy's mouthpiece, was a bit too much to expect.
posted by Terry at 7:42:00 AM