Alabama Republicans have a problem. Voters don’t like them.
They don’t like their issues. They don’t like their hate. They don’t like their bigotry. They don’t like their catering to big business and ignoring real people.
That’s what the latest poll numbers published by the Alabama Poll, a polling of 600 likely Republican primary voters, tells us without coming right out and telling us.
When more than 80 percent of respondents indicate that they plan to vote, yet nearly 70 percent of them haven’t picked out a favorite in two of the most high-profile races, there’s an I-don’t-like-you problem.
Because it’s not like the candidates haven’t received exposure. You can’t turn on a ballgame in Alabama without being inundated with ads from Jay Mitchell, Katherine Robertson, Barry Moore and Steve Marshall. Yet, in the attorney general’s race, where Mitchell and Robertson are considered the favorite, more than 60 percent of respondents are undecided and more than half of them said they weren’t familiar with the two of them.
In the U.S. Senate race, where Moore and Marshall have spent buckets of cash, and national PACs have spent even more, a first-time, underfunded, who-the-heck-is-that-guy candidate in Jarrod Hudson is running neck and neck.
Pamela Casey is doing the same thing in the AG’s race—in a statistical tie with two opponents who have spent millions while she’s spent less than $50,000.
In the lieutenant governor’s race, it’s more of the same. More than 60 percent of respondents have no favorite between John Wahl, Wes Allen and Rick Pate.
Almost all of these candidates have been out campaigning for months. Most have spent a small fortune on ads and mailers and consultants.
And yet, the very people who are most likely to vote for any of them don’t really like any of them.
What does that say about the rest of the state?
Now, don’t think that I’m about to tell you that a Democratic blue wave is coming for Alabama. I am not saying that at all.
But one should be.
If voters in this state actually voted their interests. If they stopped the team voting nonsense and selected candidates based on issues and performance and substance.
A blue wave would come rolling in.
Just take a look at the issues that respondents to the Alabama Poll said were most important to them. These were Republican voters, mind you. And nearly 80 percent of them said the most important thing to them were wallet-related issues—the cost of groceries, the cost of energy, the cost of gas, the cost of healthcare and insurance.
Now, let’s take a look at the ads and recent media of the Republican candidates—almost exclusively nonsense about who they hate, who they want to remove from America, who they don’t pray like and who you should be afraid of.
Millions of dollars in ads. Not a single word about a serious plan to make things more affordable for you.
Across the aisle, things are different.
You can barely find a Democrat who doesn’t talk nonstop about ideas and plans to lower costs. Democrats in the Alabama Legislature have put forth a number of bills that would have made life easier for the working class of the state … had the Republican supermajority allowed any of them to see the light of day.
The Democrats literally had a plan of action titled “The Affordability Protection Plan.” It included a number of pieces of legislation, such as one that protected consumers from higher utility bills by mandating data centers cover the costs of energy consumption and another that that lowered food costs by offering incentives to local grocery stores to buy directly from local farmers. There were also plans to address the skyrocketing insurance premiums and overall health care costs. The Democrats have called on Governor Kay Ivey to suspend the gas tax to give Alabama workers a small break. And Alabama Democrats have offered a number of initiatives to boost pay and alleviate childcare expenses.
In the meantime, Republicans are busy passing bills to put the ten commandments into classrooms and closing primaries and announcing their hatred for Muslims and Mexicans.
I’d like to think that after the Democratic upsets in Florida, and around the country, where Dems scored surprising wins in districts that were recently dominated by Republicans, that it was possible that the country is waking up to the fact that Republicans cannot govern for the masses. They are built to cater to big business and wealthy donors. That’s who their policies favor. They don’t even try to hide it.
The polling shows that you realize it.
Now, if only you’d vote like it.
