Running against incumbent isn’t easy task
By Staff
Bob Ingram, Capitol Scene
It was in 1901 that delegates to a Constitutional Convention recommended some major changes regarding the terms of office for constitutional officers, including governor.
Since the birth of the state in 1819, governors were elected every two years and they were limited to two consecutive terms. The convention writers in 1901, persuaded that the voters were weary of every-other-year gubernatorial elections, decided to change that. So, the Constitution of 1901 provided that the governor and other constitutional officers would serve terms of four years but would not be eligible to run for reelection.
Nothing in the Constitution prevented these officials from sitting out four years and then running for a second term. In fact, in the ensuing six-plus decades there were three governors who did just that — after their terms as governor expired they came back four years later to win the office a second time. Bibb Graves did it in 1926 and 1934; James E. “Big Jim” Folsom did it in 1946 and 1954; and George Wallace turned the same trick in 1962 and 1970.
In 1965 Gov. Wallace made a determined effort to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for reelection. In one of the most heated special sessions of the Legislature in history, he was rebuffed. It was then that he persuaded his wife, Lurleen, to run for the office and she won by a landslide.
Only a couple of years later, during the abbreviated term of Gov. Albert Brewer and with little fanfare, the Legislature passed and the voters approved an amendment to the Constitution that allowed back-to-back terms for constitutional offices.
Oddly, the first incumbent governor to benefit from this change was the same Gov. George Wallace. He had been elected in 1970 and he was re-elected in 1974.
Since then, only three incumbent governors have sought back-to-back terms, and only one of them was successful. Gov. Guy Hunt was reelected to a second term in 1990. Unsuccessful were Gov. Fob James in 1998 and Gov. Don Siegelman in 2002.
I share this history with you because now comes Gov. Bob Riley seeking to do what govs. Wallace and Hunt did before him — win a second consecutive term in office.
And Riley's opponent, Democrat nominee Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley, is finding out the hard way the enormous disadvantage she has in running against an incumbent governor, most especially in press coverage.
The print and broadcast media does its best to give separate but equal coverage of the campaign events of the two candidates, but at the same time they cannot ignore what might be called the “gubernatorial events” held by Riley.
If he flies into a city to announce a new industry, if he releases a grant for some major project, the press must cover it. It's news. But it is also good politics.
It is a fact that more TV cameras and print reporters show up for Riley when he is playing the role of governor than when he is playing the role of the candidate.
Is it an unfair advantage? No question about it. But nobody ever said politics was fair.
A formal induction program will be held next March at Judson College, where the Hall of Fame is housed, for Dr. Martha Myers of Montgomery and Rear Admiral Fran McKee of Florence.
Dr. Myers, the daughter of long-time state Health Officer Dr. Ira L. Myers, was murdered by a terrorist at a Baptist Hospital in Yemen in 2002. She was 57.
McKee was the first woman to achieve the rank of rear admiral in U. S. Navy history. She died in 2002 at the age of 75.
The Women's Hall of Fame was created by the Legislature to recognize distinguished women of this state. Nominees must have been deceased for two years prior to being considered for induction.
