Alabama is not a serious state.
We prove this over and over with each election that comes and goes. We care little for competency. We care even less about decency. Many of our voters care nothing at all about their own interests.
Instead, our voters are enamored by the dumbest of things. By party affiliation. By hateful, offensive attacks on those who are different. And, God help us, by sports affiliations.
That latter one is becoming absurd.
We are currently on the verge of electing for governor of this state a man who we elected U.S. senator despite the fact his only qualification was that everyone knew his name from when he was a football coach in this state. And six years later, despite not living in this state and failing to sponsor a single bill that ever passed, we’re on the verge of electing him governor.
At the same time, we’re toying with the idea of a sports radio talk show host running to fill that guy’s empty senate seat. And the new frontrunning challenger to be lieutenant governor of the state is a guy who once played quarterback at Alabama and literally registered to vote for the first time two days before he announced he was running for office.
I’ll say again: We are not a serious state.
Look, AJ McCarron is likely a fine guy. I bet he’s probably a great father and husband. I’ve listened to him on various sports podcasts and found him engaging and funny. And I have a soft spot for him because he’s part of my favorite sports highlight of all time—the one where he kissed his future wife on his way off the field at Auburn following the “Kick 6.”
But, well, the lieutenant governor of the state runs the state senate. He would be, assuming Tuberville survives the residency challenges awaiting him and the Democratic challenger, a 72-year-old’s heartbeat away from the governor’s mansion. It would be swell if the guy in the LG job had just a smidgen of experience at some level of government.
Or had just voted once for someone.
All of that said, this isn’t about McCarron. Not really. This is a free country, after all, and he’s as entitled to run for office as anyone else. And to be honest, I sort of admire the confidence he has in himself to do it.
But ultimately, this is about us. The voters of this state.
The voters who continue to exhibit, with each election, the very definition of insanity. We whine and moan—all of us—about the state of our government, about the failures of our politicians, about the stupid things that occur in Montgomery, about the rampant corruption that plagues our government, about the way our government continuously fails this state’s working class.
Don’t deny it. You know it’s true.
But here’s the dirty secret: It’s your fault.
You keep voting for people who don’t hold your interests, who don’t know what they’re doing, who don’t take the job seriously, who have no idea about your troubles and struggles. Over and over and over again, you vote for people who we all know aren’t good at the job, or people—like a guy who just played quarterback one time—who we have absolutely no reason to expect that they would be good at the job.
Just look at the last legislative session.
You wanted gambling. It failed.
You wanted to keep the overtime tax repeal for working folks. It failed.
You wanted medical marijuana to finally start rolling out to patients. It failed.
You wanted hemp stores to be left alone. They closed all of them.
You didn’t want public school dollars going to private schools. They sent $530 million.
That’s in one session.
And you’re going to vote for almost all of those people again. Because of party affiliation or something about a bathroom or because of some irrational fear or because of football or some other such nonsense—all of which boils down to shallow fluff that leaves you with a representative who doesn’t represent anything about you.
This has to stop.
At least, it has to stop if you ever want a decent government to operate in this state. You can’t have a whole legislature filled with bumbling goobers who got into office by making you afraid of your neighbors. We’ll never improve the quality of life for working families and the poor by electing lazy and/or dumb people simply because they have the right party affiliation.
And we can never, ever be so devoted to one party—and it doesn’t matter which party it is—that we ignore things like experience, intelligence and basic decency.
Because when that happens, it removes the only recourse voters have for holding our elected officials accountable. If they know that you’ll vote for them because of their party affiliation, and that the party wouldn’t dare allow a primary challenge, it makes them all but untouchable.
And it leaves your government uninterested in you.
