Posted on 02/16/2010 7:30:19 PM PST by LdSentinal
JACKSONVILLE, AL -Following a hard fought election and a critical race for both parties, Republican K.L. Brown has overwhelmingly won the House District 40 Special Election, with unofficial results showing Brown with 55% and Democrat Rickey Whaley with 41% of the vote. Independent candidate Carol Hagan received 2.5% of the vote.
Brown's decisive victory moves the Alabama Republican Party within 8 seats of a majority in the Alabama House of Representatives as Brown becomes the 45th Republican.
Following announcement of the election results, Rep. Mike Hubbard (R-Auburn), Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, issued the following statement:
"Today's historic victory is a major accomplishment for our Party and a great kickoff for the 2010 elections," Hubbard said. "On Wednesday, we will seat our 45th Republican member of the Alabama House, the most in 136 years. This is a great start to changing the culture of corruption the Democrats have enjoyed for too long in the Alabama Legislature.
"We congratulate K.L. Brown, an exceptional conservative candidate who will be the voice of the people of Calhoun County and not the puppet of special interest groups in Montgomery."
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
Also today, New Hampshire Republicans successfully defended an open state senate seat in a special election, by a large margin. The Republican is strongly anti-tax and a social conservative.
They should have overtaken it 30 years ago. Just shows you have effective the demonRATs are at gerrymandering.
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLTIDE!Good for the folks over in Alabama.I wonder what happens in november?
I bet it would help that I spell Roll correctly.Sheesh,gubmint skooos.
It’s important to win this and many other state houses this year with the Census. Redistricting will be decided in 2011.
30 years ago, there were hardly any Republicans in the AL legislature.
Closing the gap in the AL House.
Not really. The Democrats in Alabama used to be conservative and people (myself included) really only started making the switch to the GOP in the 1990s.
But it does look like the legislature goes this year. For that district it was a very strong Republican margin.
Some real and lot of fake conservative democrats have ruled the roost down there. 30 years ago there were more real ones. Today they are largely fakes like Bobby Bright. Voters are catching on to the con.
State leg and local offices are always the last to fall.
Excellent. The Senate too you think?
I assume that all AL state legislative seats are up this year (along with the governorship). What is our margin in the state senate? Can we take at least one house (along with holding the governorship) and get the upper hand on redistricting?
It’s 21-14 rat. Need to gain 4 seats.
Sounds like we can win both houses in AL.
Right, but AL has been voting GOP in presidential races and statewide races pretty consistently the last 30 years. If the districts were not so grossly gerrymandered, that would have translated to a GOP takeover of both statehouses 15-20 years ago.
Nope. Let me tell you something, with the exception of a few occasions after Reconstruction, the Republicans didn’t consistently elect even a single member in the AL House - not one - until after 1978. In the AL Senate, not until about 1982 did they elect a Republican.
The federal breakthough was decades ago (1964), but thanks to George Wallace, the GOP didn’t make any legislative headway until those above dates. There’s no way on earth you go from zero to majority in less than a decade as you’re suggesting, gerrymandering or not. Add to that, too, that elections for the legislature don’t occur every 2 years, they’re every 4, so it can make gains VERY slow to occur.
The fact that we’re now within reach of majority after being at nothing roughly 3 decades ago is nothing short of remarkable.
Wasn’t it a similar case in SC? Seems like I’ve heard that they had close to zero Republicans until the mid-late 80s. (I have no idea where to find this information.)
Should’ve added to my last post that pre-Watergate in AL there were a handful (and I do mean handful) of GOP legislators, but they all got swept out to the last.
SC, I believe, did not elect any at all Republicans to the legislature whatsoever from the 1890s until the early 1960s (there may have been one in the late ‘50s, but I’d have to research that, I know one person switched to the GOP prior to Thurmond). Thurmond could probably be credited with jump-starting the party in the modern era, making it a little bit safer to cross over or run as one. There was a consistent, but smallish presence from the mid ‘60s onward.
By around the 1970 elections, they had close to 10% of the House and came also close to 20% by Watergate, but that caused a decline, but not dramatic (the GOP actually won the Governorship in 1974, but that was more because of a bitter battle on the Dem side — the Dems got it back in the better GOP year of ‘78). It took around a decade to recover from the Watergate losses in the legislature. Beginning in 1984 up through 1994 was probably some of the most staggering gains registered by any state party, going from at or below 20% in the House to just over majority status (had it not been for the ‘94 landslide nationally, it might’ve still been a few more cycles before we captured the House). In 6 years alone, we went from 43 to 70 seats, that could probably credited to the skilled leadership of the late Gov. Carroll Campbell.
It took until the 2000 elections to flip the Senate, because it was a much slower process (4 year elections, one reason why AL & MS have been such slow to move to the GOP). We’ve not made many gains in the past decade, pretty much preserving what we have. One reason it may be unlikely we go that far beyond 60% of the body is because of White liberals and Blacks. We lost seats in the legislature in ‘08 because of Zero.
The racial polarization remains a very crippling problem and impediment to any more substantive gains in the body. The GOP has tended to take the position that it’s not worth attempting to make serious inroads with the Black vote, and I think it’s a serious mistake. In a bad year for us, all the Democrats in the state have to do is hold about a 40% bloc that they usually have and pick up disgruntled Whites who may be independents that favor the GOP and they can still win (as they did in the ‘98 Governor’s race). A good target for us is to have a serious 25% bloc of the Black vote, and that will guarantee the GOP will never lose any major offices in the state for the forseeable future. Strom Thurmond knew that, and when he became a Republican, he was able to get about that much of their support.
Were the handful of pre-Watergate in AL in the suburbs?
I’ve heard the refutation to the ‘racist Dixiecrats became Republicans’ that the GOP’s rise in the south actually started in the suburbs thanks in part to Yankee transplants.
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