It is good to have ambition, and the Tommy Tuberville for Governor folks have a lot of it.
Tuberville and his staff on Thursday released a policy manual that will guide the administration should Tuberville be elected governor in 10 days. It outlines his priorities and goals and provides the best insight to date on just what the former Auburn coach will focus on as governor.
It is almost comically ambitious.
I don’t say that critically. I say it skeptically, and not necessarily skeptically in regard to Tuberville and his staff.
Let me put it like this: Tuberville and his team want to clean up, reshape, refocus and in some cases repurpose the entirety of state government, and do the majority of that work within one calendar year, and they hope to do this with a state government that has failed to issue a single integrated medical marijuana license in almost six years.
You see what I’m saying?
Our state government has been molded over many decades into a dysfunctional, clunky beast that far too often resists common sense and practicality in favor of corruption and general laziness. Obtaining the cooperation and buy-in that would be required to accomplish many of these policy goals would take maximum effort, countless threats, some bonuses and a dash of magic.
But look, the beauty of political campaigns is that we often allow candidates to ignore reality in order to get a glimpse of their character. Because few things tell you more about a person’s character than what it is they’d do if given a magic wand and a willing workforce. It’s where you can see their true priorities.
In that regard, it is hard to be anything other than surprised by Tuberville’s plan.
Because it is not stupid. It is not shallow. It is not page after page of right-wing conservative rhetoric built around solutions for nonexistent problems.
The Playbook is overly ambitious and unrealistic in some spots, but it also takes aim at a whole bunch of problems that we all know exist in this state. Like the problem with child care costs and working moms. Or the problem of ridiculously low wages. Or the sewer and water issues that exist in the Black Belt. Or why it is that we keep attracting lots of great companies to Alabama but never seem to up the average pay.
Are you telling me that you’re going to argue with legislation that would ensure pay raises don’t eliminate a working parent’s child care assistance?
Because that’s in the Playbook.
It’s also hard to argue with a number of the ideas for increasing job readiness through training and apprenticeship programs hosted by Alabama’s community colleges. And it’s especially hard to argue with tying those programs to specific companies that will help pay for the training programs and have guaranteed jobs waiting for the graduates.
Tuberville also wants to fully fund pre-K for all Alabama kids, instead of the four in 10 that now get into the programs. And he wants to implement something called the “middle school push” that will be, I suppose, a focus on catching the many kids who begin to slip once they enter sixth grade.
Those are good things.
Not so good is this continued punitive mindset when it comes to “failing” schools and this ridiculous insistence that “school choice” is an answer to anything other than how to steal tax dollars from quality schools and give them to shady private businesses.
Tuberville’s Playbook pushes both, though.
I also have to point out that I’m just not sure how the math works out. Tuberville’s plan is to do a LOT of stuff. Auditing every board and agency, for example. That takes time, employees and money, and yet he also wants to cut taxes—freeze the property tax for seniors, cut the state income tax and provide small businesses with a tax cut—and significantly cut state employees (although they say layoffs will be a “last resort”).
I don’t think that math all maths out. There’s going to have to be an influx of money from somewhere, and a whole bunch of people are going to have to do all of this work he’s promising.
I hope there are both. Because assuming Tuberville becomes governor, I want a lot of this stuff. I want every foster home to be inspected and monitored. I want a six-lane I-65. I want to expand the agencies that hunt child predators. I want to hire more correctional officers and stop the flow of drugs into prisons. I want all 450 state boards to be audited. I want our community colleges to have state-of-the-art training facilities. I want top-level career tech programs in every high school. I want our teachers, especially middle school teachers, to get significant pay raises. I want larger child care tax credits for working parents. I want to pay less for homeowners insurance. And I really want better, more accessible, more affordable health care.
So, yeah, there are good things in the Playbook. But more importantly, maybe, is that there are not so many bad things. Because let’s be honest, for those of us with a more progressive mindset, we expected Tuberville’s goals and focus to be very Trumpian—hyperfocused on rewarding the wealthy, punishing minorities and leaning into unhelpful, divisive rhetoric.
Instead, we have a Playbook that mostly focuses on real issues and seems to indicate a desire to help struggling people.
Maybe that’s a true indication that Tuberville was serious when he said he’s running for governor to help people. Or maybe it’s an indication that the poll numbers and voter frustration are pushing him toward the center. Or maybe it’s all just empty campaign promises.
But here’s the thing: We’re going to know.
Tuberville and his team included scorecards in this Playbook—ways to measure their successes and failures. Those are the sorts of things that follow a politician. If Tuberville is elected, he can bet those scorecards will dog him for four years. But I hope he remembers that behind those scores and numbers are real people—people who are struggling, who are on their last leg, who are scared. Good people. Hardworking people. Of all races and backgrounds.
And I truly do hope that this Playbook is a real indication of his intentions to help them all.
