Beware political process that alienates electorate
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
His controversial and uproarious ouster as the Democratic Party's nominee for governor is long ago and far away.
Charlie Graddick has no hard feelings. In fact, he now believes his former party did him a favor, inadvertent though it was and a decision that even 22 years later, he remains convinced, was flawed and intended to reach an end supported more by desire than reason.
The benefactor, Bill Baxley, ultimately became political roadkill himself when the backlash led to his defeat at the unlikely hands of GOP nominee Guy Hunt, a minor figure in a minor party at the time in Alabama.
As with Graddick, time has not changed Baxley's mind. Baxley maintains that he, his campaign and Alabama's Democratic Party were guilty of a failure to communicate. The party was in the right in disallowing Republican crossover votes, but failed to effectively explain the sound reasoning behind it, he said.
Now the presiding judge over Mobile County Circuit Court, Graddick oddly enough could serve as an historical counterpart to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who could find himself on the wrong end of the Democratic Party's "superdelegate" rules, though it appears less likely with each passing primary.
"I really don't understand the superdelegate thing too well," Graddick said. "When I experienced what I experienced back in 1986 most of the individuals that had thought it through advised the Democratic hierarchy in the state that it would be a huge mistake to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people who voted and hand-pick a candidate. Frankly, they ignored it and I think people actually became angry about it. As a result there was the birth of a statewide Republican Party. When you ignore the will of the people, you are getting yourself in a jam, putting your party in a very tenuous position."
Baxley supporters within the Democratic Party machinery expected an outcry, but also expected that the furor would pass, certainly well enough that voters would draw line at actually voting for Hunt, according to Graddick.
"They certainly didn't anticipate that (a Hunt win)," said Graddick. "In fact, some of the higher ups in the Democratic hierarchy thought Alabama voters would have a very short memory. I knew that wasn't true. And everybody who thought it through knew it wasn't true."
Voters have to believe an election was fairly decided or they will rebel, given an opportunity, said Graddick.
"If there was an issue regarding the vote, they should have had another election," said Graddick. "You never hand-pick a candidate. I would think that the political parties in Alabama now as a result of that election would certainly be aware of that. Who knows what the national parties understand?"
Graddick said he has been told that an examination of the records from 1986 in the Secretary of State's office shows that the results of the Democratic primary runoff were never certified.
"It was just a pure hand-picking and the people of Alabama revolted," Graddick said. "We told them that was likely to happen but they ignored us."
Had their roles been reversed, his and Baxley's, Graddick believes the party's interpretation of the rules would've gone Baxley's way.
"Frankly, I wasn't the fair-haired boy of the Democratic hierarchy and they knew I represented change that did not suit them," he said. "They knew change was coming if I got the nomination and they didn't want any change."
"They had so much invested, I guess, in the process and they knew that I wasn't their 'yes man,'" Graddick said. "And I'm not suggesting my opponent would've been."
Then and now, personal animosity never figured in the dispute, according to Graddick who said he and Baxley have "briefly" discussed the matter but not in any great detail.
"I consider Bill a friend and I hope he considers me a friend," Graddick said. "We were friends before that. I doubt he invites me over for dinner tonight, but I get along with Bill. People who take politics personally, they're in it for the wrong reason."
"Frankly, the outcome of that situation was a blessing in disguise for me," Graddick said. "I had a young family at the time. I was able to spend an enormous amount of time helping my wife raise three young children. I could attend everything they did. I began to establish a good (law) practice and make a good living. And look where I ended up, back home in the best job I've ever had in my life. Really and truly, if I had been allowed to serve who knows what the future might have been? I would not have been able to be the kind of father I was able to be. When you serve at that level (the governorship), you sacrifice so much and your family has to sacrifice so much. Not that I didn't want to be governor. I thought we had some good people, some good ideas and would've been able to make a difference in how the state was perceived around the country.
"It was a blessing in disguise, as much as it offended me at the time and it offends me today that anybody would ignore the will of the people," Graddick said. "Why have elections if the party is going to hand-pick? That I encouraged anybody to vote in the Democratic primary to me is what the Democratic Party or the Republican Party for that matter should want -- have more people participate in your party. I didn't just ask Republican voters to vote for me. I asked all voters to vote for me. We aren't a party registration state. We weren't then and we aren't now. There was a party rule apparently on the books that had never been enforced ever. They pulled it out and used it and it backfired and probably, looking back, to my benefit."
Naturally, Baxley has a different take. While Alabama doesn't require party registration, a voter has to choose which primary to participate in, said Baxley, noting that just a few weeks ago an Alabama voter, for instance, couldn't vote for Obama over Clinton and Huckabee over McCain. They could do one or the other, but not both. So voters in 1986 who participated in the GOP primary made a choice that prohibited their participation in the Democratic runoff between he and Graddick, said Baxley.
"We tried to explain to people why we were right," he said. "But the perception or misperception greatly out weighed the reality. In Alabama, we are not a party registration state. You could then and can now vote to nominate a gubernatorial candidate for either party. But just like today, a couple of weeks ago, we voted. You could pick either party. You could vote for McCain or Huckabee or Clinton or Obama but you couldn't vote in both primaries. Just like you can't be a delegate to the Democratic convention and a delegate to the Republican convention. You have to select one or the other. We were never able to explain that."
The current situation with the National Democratic Party has too many different dynamics to serve as a possible parallel with the Alabama Democratic Party in 1986, said Baxley.
"I just don't think the superdelegate thing is going to be an issue," he said. "The nominee will be decided without them. If it is close enough that they do make the call, I can't imagine a majority of them going against the wishes of the voters."
Another reason to doubt that superdelegates would brook popular support for Obama in favor of Clinton might be gleaned from a study recently released by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics which found that over the last three years, Obama doled out about $698,000 in donations to elected officials who are superdelegates, while Clinton gave about $206,000.
