Riley eyes ousting Democrats from legislature

By Staff
Bob Martin, The Alabama Scene
Gov. Bob Riley wants to rid the state legislative halls of Democrats and he’s leading the charge to raise $7 million to start the job in the 2010 elections.
Last Wednesday, Riley announced he will chair the fundraising campaign and has already secured the pledges of 68 people to contribute $10,000-a-year over the next four years to eradicate all those pesky “yellow dawgs” from the House and Senate chambers in Montgomery.
But Democratic Chairman Joe Turnham says that money can’t buy Alabama voters and wonders what kind of favors those who pony up the huge amounts of cash will get from the governor.
And Sen. Wendell Mitchell, D-Luverne, the Senate’s deputy pro-tem, told a group of newspaper editors and publishers in Greenville on Friday he was dismayed by the governor’s action.
The sad demise of Roy Johnson
In May 2005 Roy Johnson, then the chancellor of Alabama’s two-year-college system, was on top of the mountain. The State Board of Education had just voted him an annual pay and benefit package worth $241,600. Johnson had truly come a long way from the time he was a schoolteacher in Tuscaloosa.
Johnson served in the legislature from 1974-90 and was speaker pro-tem during his first term. He and Rep. Jimmy Holley, now a state senator, became powerful legislators by “carrying the water” in the House of Representatives for Dr. Paul Hubbert and the AEA.
But things now look bleak for Johnson, who has been the target of a federal criminal investigation, which started at the State Fire College in Tuscaloosa. Just after Christmas Winston Hayes, 64, who owned a software company that did business with the two-year system, agreed to plead guilty to bribery and conspiracy to commit money laundering and will cooperate with federal prosecutors in their investigation of the two-year system in return for their recommendation of a lighter sentence.
Hayes admitted giving Johnson $124,000 to help build a house in Opelika and disguising the payments by paying Johnson's driver for nonexistent consulting work. And the former driver, Robert Higgins, has agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice and also is cooperating with prosecutors.
Higgins told prosecutors that he received cash from Hayes and an Auburn contractor, who has admitted paying kickbacks to Johnson and his family, and then gave the cash to Johnson or paid bills for the new house.
Siegelman update
Don’t bet the farm on this, but I hear from reliable sources that next Sunday "60 Minutes" will air its first segment on the Don Siegelman, prosecution, trial and conviction. It will be a blockbuster, I am told, exposing questionable prosecution tactics, jury misconduct, the way the judge was chosen and ties to Karl Rove and others.
The CBS website says that the Jan. 27 show will be an “all new edition.” I am also told by my New York sources that there could be a second segment if an interview with Siegelman is ever permitted.
Clinton leads in poll
Sen. Hillary Clinton gets 31 percent, Sen. Barack Obama gets 28 percent and former Sen. John Edwards gets 8 percent in a recent Press-Register/University of South Alabama survey of likely Democratic voters conducted Jan. 7-15.
Thirty-nine percent of white Democrats favored Clinton, while Obama and Edwards each received 13 percent. Thirty-five percent were undecided. Obama led among black Democrats, with 49 percent to Clinton's 18 percent. Edwards gets one percent. Thirty-two percent of black voters were undecided.
Party primaries will take place Feb. 5, which is also Fat Tuesday. Because of the holiday, voters in Mobile and Baldwin counties will be able to vote either Jan. 30 or Feb. 5 to avoid potential conflicts with the annual Mardi Gras celebration.