Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks won't run for Congress

Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks says he won't run for the 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by Bud Cramer.

Brooks, who's a Huntsville lawyer, said Thursday he has been encouraged by many voters to qualify as a Republican for Congress. But he said he has many trials coming up and can't abandon his clients during their time of need. Brooks said he also has family commitments that take priority.

Brooks ran for lieutenant governor in 2006 and finished third in the Republican primary.

This is bad news for Republicans. In addition, state Senator Arthur Orr won’t be running.

It looks like Tom Butler will be the nominee. He should be a good candidate. Bob Riley has been pushing his candidacy, which may be a factor in Brooks & Orr’s decisions.

Well, bad news for Conservatives. This may end up a general election showdown between 2 60-something State Senators, Butler and Dr. Parker Griffith. Butler should win based upon how well the GOP Presidential candidate should do in the 5th. Mentioning that it has been one party Democrat for 140 years and that it is truly time for a change ought to be an angle we play up (of course, Butler is a change only on paper, he might be more liberal than Cramer).

I thought this old article would be as good a place as any to post this question: how good of a conservative is AL-05 GOP congressional candidate and Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks? (Brooks decided not to run in 2008, but is running in 2010.) He’s a litigation lawyer, which in Alabama is usually a bad omen when it comes to tort reform. It’s also strange that he did not include in his campaign site any reference to his views on abortion or guns (at least not that I could find). http://www.mobrooksforcongress.com/Mo_Brooks_for_Congress-start.html

His primary opponent is businessman and GOP activist Les Phillip, who is a Navy veteran that emigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago as a child. His platform is solidly conservative. He also happens to be black, which may not necessarily be an asset in the AL-05 (it’s only around 20% black IIRC, and quite a few 2004 Kerry voters swung to McCain in 2008).

If Brooks isn’t as conservative as Phillip, or if Brooks has manifested RINOistic tendencies in the past, I will send Phillip the contribution his campaign requested. A black Republican elected to Congress in a Southern district held by a Democrat may be too good of a story to pass up, and Phillip would be able to advance the conservative cause far more than Brooks possibly could. We’ve got to win the election first, though.

Griffith is running scared. Saying he won’t back Pelosi again.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0809/Dixie_Dem_wont_vote_for_Pelosi.html

Brooks website paints him as a conservative.

He’s probably the stronger GE candidate unless Phillip can pull a few black votes against the white rat.

But all things being equal I’d rather have a businessman/veteran than other lawyer in there.

And we need to elect some black Republicans. Especially Allen West. It’d be nice to elect enough to form a little caucus.

Yes, Brooks’s website paints him as a conservative, but I’m a bit concerned about “the dog that didn’t bark”: why would Brooks stay silent on his views on abortion and guns? Maybe he’s 100% pro-life and pro-gun and left it off the website because (i) he wanted to highlight a limited number of issues and (ii) Griffith is pro-life and pro-gun, and Brooks wanted to concentrate on issues with which he differs with Griffith (although I assume that Griffith would claim that on the issues that Brooks did highlight Griffith stands shoulder to shoulder with Brooks), but it still makes me a bit uneasy.

I don’t know how many black votes Phillip can get, but I assume that it would be a bit more than Brooks can. I was going to say that if Griffith is running against a black Republican we might see a lower black turnout because more casual black voters wouldn’t be as energized to vote for the white moderate-to-conservative Democrat over the black conservative Republican, but given that Congressman Artur Davis is likely to be the RAT gubernatorial nominee I think that there will be a large black turnout (albeit not at Obama 2008 levels) no matter what.

I, too, would love to see several black conservative Republicans in Congress (I’ve been working for that for years now: I’ve given money to at least a dozen black conservative Republicans since 2002), but if Brooks is a solidly conservative first-tier candidate and Phillip is a solidly conservative second-tier candidate I would probably sit this one out.

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