Best Races of the Year Have Been for Attorney General and Lt. Governor

By Steve Flowers, Guest Columnist

The best races of the year have been for Attorney General and Lt. Governor, as well as Agriculture Commissioner and for the 2nd Congressional district.

The Attorney General post is considered the best stepping stone to Governor and U.S. Senator.  It is very high profile and prosecutes bad guys who go to jail and cannot vote against you, and you look like a good guy to the rest of the law abiding voters in the state.  Therefore, in recent years it has attracted ambitious politicians rather than veteran dedicated prosecutors.  These aspirants were novices at being lawyers, much less prosecutors.  They sought the position for political posturing rather than the job as the state’s top law enforcer.  We have not had a tough former DA since the days of Bill Baxley and Charlie Graddick.

As the race began, there were three major candidates with prosecutorial experience.  Troy King had been Attorney General, Alice Martin had been the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama and had handled numerous major high-profile convictions.  Even the Bentley appointee, Steve Marshall, had been a district attorney.

Troy King had begun the race as the front runner simply because he had some name identification from having been Attorney General.  Early polls showed him with around 27 percent with Martin and Marshall at 10-12 and Chess Bedsole at 5-6.

The final results wound up mirroring the amount of money spent by the candidates.  There was an amazing correlation to money equals media equals name identification, which results in votes. “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”