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(CQ.com, March 26, 2008, CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS, Top-Tier Recruit Rates a Rare Dem Challenge for Open Alabama Seat, By Annie Johnson, CQ Staff)

Even with a well-known candidate, the Democratic takeover bid faces formidable obstacles. The 2nd, located in the southeastern corner of Alabama, was in the vanguard of the traditionally Democratic but strongly conservative districts that shifted toward Republican allegiances beginning in the early 1960s. Republican Bill Dickinson easily unseated Democratic incumbent George S. Grant in 1964 — a year in which Alabama was one of just seven states that favored Republican Barry Goldwater for president over Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson — and faced competitive contests in only two of his subsequent 13 House elections.

The most recent close race in the 2nd was the open-seat contest back in 1992 to succeed the retiring Dickinson, in which Everett, then a 55-year-old self-made millionaire, won by a margin of less than 2 percentage points over Democrat George C. Wallace III, then the state treasurer and son of a famed longtime conservative Democratic governor. Everett settled in, though, and received no less than 63 percent in any of his seven re-election contests, taking nearly 70 percent in 2006. Reinforcing the image of Republican strength in the district is the fact that President Bush took 63 percent of its vote when he ran for re-election in 2004.

But Everett’s decision to retire, announced last September, coupled with more recent decision by Bright to pursue the Democratic nomination appear to have put the Democrats back in a game that they have essentially sat out for several election cycles.

The 2nd District takes in about 128,000 residents of Montgomery (roughly two-thirds of the city’s population) and industrial Dothan. It has a sizable military sector as home to Fort Rucker in Dothan and Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery. The district also includes numerous small towns that dot the rural southern Alabama coastal plain — known locally as “the wiregrass,” for the area’s perennial bunch grass can grow up to three feet tall.

“Someone with big name ID that can pull in the large vote area of Montgomery and has roots down into the wiregrass . . . I think will be a winning ticket,” said Jim Spearman, executive director of the Alabama Democratic Party.
Enter Bright, a conservative Democrat who was born and raised in the wiregrass region and who has built strong support in Montgomery, where he has been mayor since 1999, around his image as a conservative Democrat. 
An Associated Press story published in late February, as Bright made his candidacy official, identified him as one of 14 children in a family that lived on a cotton farm in a rural part of the district. It quoted Bright as saying, “When a sharecropper’s son can become a congressman and help improve the everyday lives of the people who need a voice in Washington, you know that America is still the greatest, most blessed country in the world.”

Bright does not have a clear path to the Democratic nomination but almost certainly will emerge from the state’s April 4 candidate filing deadline as the strong favorite for the June 3 primary in the 2nd District. He is opposed by Cheryl Sabel. The president of the Alabama chapter of the National Organization for Women, a traditionally liberal organization, Sabel announced her entry into the Democratic primary March 13.

Sabel has told newspapers in Alabama she doesn’t plan to spend much money campaigning. 

The identity of the Republican candidate for the general election is much less clear, as the district’s typical GOP leanings have drawn a bigger field into the party’s June primary. Announced Republican candidates include state Sen. Harri Anne Smith, state Reps. David Grimes and Jay Love; David Woods, a broadcasting executive in Montgomery; and two candidates from Dothan, oral surgeon Craig Scmidtke and businessman John Martin. The list potentially could grow with more than a week left before the filing deadline.

“I’m very comfortable with the base that we have in Congressional District 2 and feel like that district represents [Republican] values,” said Philip Bryan, director of communications for the Alabama Republican Party, who added his opinion that the politics of national Democratic figures such as presidential contenders Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California do not play in the district. 
But officials concede that party unity, in a field where dozens have shown interest, is the number one priority. “No matter what happens in June,” Bryan said, “we have to come together.” 


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