Bid To Overturn Alabama Gay Candidate's Win Options

[JasonATexan]

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/07/073106alabama.htm

(Birmingham, Alabama) An openly lesbian candidate who won this month's Democratic primary is accused of misleading voters and should have her victory examined according to an appeal filed Monday.

LGBT activist Patricia Todd (pictured) is poised to become the first openly gay member of the Alabama House following her primary win over Gaynell Hendricks. There is no Republican challenger.

Todd won the primary by a slim 59 votes in the House District 54 runoff race in Birmingham.

But Hendricks' mother-in-law says the result should be reviewed.

In an appeal filed with the Democratic Party on Monday Mattie Childress claims Todd timed the filing of her campaign finance report shortly before the deadline to keep voters from learning she was supported by the Victory Fund, a Washington DC-based organization that helps the campaigns LGBT candidates.

Todd received $25,000 contribution from the Victory Fund.

Childress also wants the Democratic Party to investigate to payments made by Todd of nearly $13,000 to two primary opponents who later endorsed her in the runoff against Hendricks.

Childress also claims Todd "received illegal votes" and questions the way Jefferson County elections officials handled the returns.

The Alabama Democratic Party said a hearing will be held within 20 days.

Todd has never made a secret of the fact she is a lesbian. She is associate director of AIDS Alabama.

During the campaign she said being gay was not a part of her campaign, nor was the fact that she is white and was seeking election in a majority black district.

[TheRestofUs]

A large part of this is racial. This could get ugly.

[JasonATexan]

http://www.houstonvoice.com/thelatest/thel...fm?blog_id=8472

The mother-in-law of a defeated legislative candidate challenged the outcome of a Democratic runoff election, claiming the winner timed the filing of a campaign finance report to keep voters from learning she was supported by a pro-gay campaign fund.

Retired beautician Mattie Childress asked the Democratic Party to review Patricia Todd's slim victory over Gaynell Hendricks, who is married to Childress' son.

Todd, who would be the first openly gay member of the Alabama Legislature if elected, did not immediately return a telephone message Monday seeking comment. The challenge was filed late Thursday.

Todd led Hendricks by 59 votes in the July 18 Democratic runoff for House District 54, which includes much of Birmingham. Winning the runoff was tantamount to election since no Republican ran for the seat.

In the election challenge, Childress claimed that the release of a campaign finance report by Todd was timed to prevent voters from knowing that Todd received a $25,000 contribution from the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

Voters also didn't know that Todd made payments of $12,750 to two primary opponents who endorsed her, according to the challenge.

The contest claims Todd received illegal votes, and it challenged the way Jefferson County elections officials handled the returns.

"I want this controversy settled," Childress told the Birmingham News. "This is happening like when Bush and Gore were running for president. I don't like it."

Todd campaign manager Mark Kelly said the voters had spoken.

"If someone wants to try to steal the election, it's up to them," he said. "But we don't feel like they will be successful in doing so."

Jim Spearman, executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party, said a contest hearing will be held within 20 days by a five-member committee appointed by party chair Joe Turnham. The committee will investigate the allegations and make a decision, Spearman said.

[JasonATexan]

http://www.bhamweekly.com/archived/pages/2...20on%20dumb.php

Gaynell Hendricks doesn’t understand why she lost her race for Alabama House District 54. If you ask her, or any of her campaign faithful, you’ll be told that Hendricks was robbed on election night. She was robbed all right, but it happened long before the polls closed Tuesday and she let the thieves through the door herself.

Hendricks could have won. But she listened to bad advice from people — including the mayor of Birmingham — whose understanding of Birmingham’s political landscape is defective. Someone told Hendricks that bigotry was still a shortcut to public office. She took that shortcut, only to end up farther from where she wanted to be. As of the last tally Tuesday night, Patricia Todd nudged past her with 59 more votes.

The race for District 54 was ugly and divisive. Hendricks is a black businesswoman who, before moving to the building she and her husband own downtown, claimed a Mountain Brook address. Todd is a white, openly gay administrator who received campaign financing from gay and lesbian groups who wanted her to win.

Most legislative districts in the county are gerrymandered to skew toward one racial/political majority or the other, but District 54 has become a mix of demographics — a virtual fault line of black and white.

Two weeks ago, Joe Reed, the head of the Alabama legislative black caucus, sent a letter to community leaders in the district asking them to support Hendricks because she was black. It was the first of many racially divisive scare tactics used during the campaign.

“Moreover, if we start electing whites in majority black districts, the chances are great that these districts will be redrawn as majority white districts after the 2010 census, and will remain so thereafter,” Reed wrote.

By arguing that the majority black district should be represented by a black legislator, Hendricks all but told white voters to go to hell: You are good enough to vote for me, but you’re the wrong color to ever hold this office. It was the equivalent of telling a black person “You’re good enough to cook in my kitchen, but you can’t eat at my table.”

Politics is a game of numbers. Whoever gets 50 percent-plus-one wins. The racial split in the district is about 60 percent black to 40 percent white. By shunning white voters, Hendricks handed Todd most of the votes she needed to win. With 40 percent already in her basket, all Todd needed was 11 percent more to win. Meanwhile Hendricks needed 51 percent of that remaining 60. In baseball terms, Hendricks went to the World Series and forfeited the first three games.

Meanwhile, some black political leaders — most notably Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid — were helping make Hendricks’ bad decision worse. On the radio, Kincaid argued that District 54 needed a black legislator to preserve the racial stalemate in the county’s legislative delegation. The mayor would have you believe that once Todd got to Montgomery, the openly gay state legislator would turn into a right-wing Republican with the religious fervor of Gerald Allen and Hank Erwin.

Also, with other black political leaders, Kincaid put out the “Unity Ballot.” It was an uncharacteristically Orwellian tactic from the mayor — a “unity” ballot meant to divide voters along racial lines for racist reasons.

Somewhere in hell Bull Connor was popping wheelies in his little white tank, but George Wallace was shaking his head. There’s a reason Wallace started kissing up to black voters late in his career: Among a diverse electorate, monochromatic politics doesn’t work.

Racial politics is nothing new to Birmingham. It was practically invented here. But throughout this race I was astounded at just how dumb a campaign Hendricks was running. She was apparently blind to something any good political strategist could have told her: Those white voters in Forest Park, Crestwood and Avondale could have been her voters. It’s not as though Hendricks is the first black candidate they have ever seen.

No one should know this better than Mayor Kincaid. After all, it was those voters who propelled him to office seven years ago.

Again, Mayor Kincaid should know, but apparently he doesn’t.

At the end of a press conference Tuesday, I asked the mayor his thoughts on the runoff elections that were underway. The mayor refused to answer questions about his previous comments on the radio, but he did say something that took me off guard: The mayor said he believes that white voters in Birmingham are conservative Republicans, particularly in Forest Park.

After the press conference, I asked Councilor Valerie Abbott, who represents those affluent Southside neighborhoods, which political party holds sway there. Without hesitating she said, “Democrats.” I told her that the mayor didn’t share her opinion.

“The mayor thinks that all white people are Republicans,” Abbott said. “What he doesn’t know is that all those people he’s thinking of moved to the suburbs about 20 years ago.”

Early in human history, mapmakers filled the gaps in their knowledge with erroneous warnings of sea beasts and supernatural savages: “Thar be Monsters here.” The mayor has a map of Birmingham’s political landscape in his head, but there is a blind spot in the predominantly white neighborhoods: Redmont, Highland Park, Forest Park and Crestwood. Past that line, Kincaid’s map reads: “Thar be Republicans here.” Hendricks navigated her campaign by the mayor’s atlas.

If only Hendricks had a better map, she might have found the voters she needed to give her the election. If only Hendricks had a better map, here is what I believe she would have found.

Neither Kincaid nor Abbott’s political prognosis is completely accurate, although Abbott’s is the better of the two. Rather, the voters that live in Redmont, Forest Park, Highland Park and increasingly Crestwood are what New York Times columnist David Brooks calls Bobos — shorthand for bourgeois bohemians. They struggle to reconcile their economic privilege income with their egalitarian values.

These Birmingham Bobos are loft-dwellers with vertigo. They live in upscale urban neighborhoods because they find there the texture that’s missing in the suburbs. They prefer the authenticity of a neighborhood with sidewalks and real trees over the cookie-cutter McMansions and Bradford pears of Greystone and Liberty Park. They lament that Birmingham doesn’t have better organic grocers and they’re trading in their gas-guzzling SUVs for energy-efficient hybrids, even though they live only five minutes from work. More than anything, they want to support Birmingham, even if it means putting their children in private schools.

As for political habits, Bobos are the mirror-opposite of the blue-collar red-state Republicans. They are people who have Republican money but vote with liberal values. Twenty years ago, we called these people Reagan Democrats, but in 2006 they’re absolutely crazy about Bob Riley. They supported the governor’s tax package three years ago, and they’ll vote for him again this fall. They’re not afraid to vote for a Republican, but many of them think Barack Obama would make a pretty nifty president.

They are wealthy, well educated, cultured and politically active — what Mayor Kincaid used to call “elitist.” The irony is that, among these voters, Gaynell Hendricks fit right in.

[TheRestofUs]

Ironic isn't it? Todd said that the seat was not doing anything for the vast majority and that's why she ran.

[dggfwtx]

Boy, not only does this have racial overtones, but serious homophobic ones as well. Of course, you would realistically expect some kind of challenge in a 59-vote race, but hopefully it won't get *too* nasty.

[Arneoker]

This seems ripe for exploitation by the Right-wing.

If any of the right-wing talkmeisters, especially the riper ones, make hay about this I will not be in the least surprised. In fact I would be surprised if none of them do.

This could get super-ugly.