Alabamians, like myself, like to believe we are a good people. And most of us are.
The politicians whom we select to represent us, on the other hand, are of a different breed.
Gov. Robert Bentley is not the first embarrassing elected official in Alabama, and he won't be the last. Despite our conservative family values and high rates of pew occupation, we have a consistent track record of choosing unethical representatives.
We have a governor who is accused of sending a helicopter to pick up his wallet after a fight with his former wife, ditching his security detail to catch a Celine Dion concert and using state aircraft to consummate an affair.
But he ran on Republican family values. He was a deacon at his church. He taught Sunday school. He was a doctor.
He also bought thousands of dollars in burner cellphones and ordered the state's highest-ranking law enforcement officer not to cooperate with the attorney general's investigation into Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard.
We have a state government more accustomed to controversy than stability because we insist on electing our officials based on racially and religiously motivated stereotypes and party affiliation.
Former Gov. George Wallace — whom Alabamians selected to serve a record four terms as governor — spent his entire life literally standing in the doorway blocking progress, but he was a good 'ole boy, segregationist, devout Methodist and family man, or so they thought.
Wallace’s successor after his fourth term, former Gov. Guy Hunt was not much better. He was elected probate judge in Cullman as a Republican during a statewide Republican sweep based on a wave of racist support for then-presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
Hunt, a Primitive Baptist preacher, went on to be elected governor after painting Democrats as dirty politicians in 1986. He portrayed his Democratic competitor as pro-gay during his re-election campaign in 1990.
Hunt could be seen as a predecessor to today's "family values" candidates.
Pastor Hunt was forced to pay back thousands of dollars to the state after it was discovered that he used state aircraft to travel to religious conferences while in office.
He accepted love offerings for sermons he delivered during those trips — financed on the tax payers’ dime — and was later convicted of a felony during his second term in office for stealing $200,000 from his inaugural fund.
We sure know how to pick 'em.
Hunt was forced to resign, as a convicted felon can’t hold office in Alabama, which is kind of shocking considering our standards don’t seem that high. Then-Lt. Gov. “Little” Jim Folsom Jr. — son of “Big” Jim Folsom Sr. the promiscuous legend and former governor — was sworn in to succeed Hunt after his resignation.
Folsom Jr. was a short reprieve from Alabama’s crappy politicians, despite several faults of his own.
He beat out 30 other states to recruit a Mercedes Benz plant to Alabama — a plant which still employs thousands in Tuscaloosa County. Folsom Jr. also appointed numerous African Americans and women to the executive branch during his term of less than two years.
And he took the confederate flag down from atop the state capitol dome in 1993, less than a week after assuming office.
But Alabamians rejected him when he ran for his first elected term as governor in 1994. It should have been no surprise that he would lose, considering he wasn’t a preacher or a segregationist. Folsom Jr. was defeated by then-former Gov. Fob James, who had served a first term several years before from 1979–83 — between two of Wallace's terms.
While James wasn't indicted during his tenure as governor, he wasn't free from controversy.
When James returned to Goat Hill for the second time in 1995, he fought numerous battles with the federal government. He refused federal money for education, and he even "seceded" from the National Governors' Association.
In a case of uncanny foreshadowing, Chief Justice Roy Moore — when he was serving as Etowah County Circuit Judge during James' term — rose to prominence after he refused to remove a Ten Commandments plaque from his courtroom after a federal judge ordered him to. James supported him, even threatening to mobilize the national guard if the federal government tried to remove the plaque.
But it's not just governors we can't seem to pick.
Moore's plaque in Etowah County was wooden and much smaller than the granite one he had commissioned for the state judicial building after he was elected Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice in 2000. Moore's 5,000-pound granite monument got him removed from office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary on November 13, 2003 after he defied federal court orders to remove the monument.
It was removed the next day.
Despite his refusal to respect federal supremacy, the First Amendment and the rest of the constitution, for that matter, Alabamians resoundingly re-elected him in 2012 to the same position from which he was removed in 2003.
Moore has only gone on to further embarrass the state, leading a Supreme Court that has been a mockery, even by his own established standards. During his tenure, he has ordered probate judges, numerous times, to ignore the federal Supreme Court on the topic of marriage equality.
But it wasn't just gay marriage, his court has made several other rulings which have had to be overturned by federal courts due to their unconstitutional, hyper-conservative verdicts.
We just really, really can't seem to pick them.
To complete the triangle of governmental embarrassment, Auburn's own Hubbard will soon head to trial for 23 counts of felony counts of violating Alabama's ethics law.
Maybe we should start electing people based on accomplishment, intellect and vision, instead of deciding based on the color of their skin, which church they attend and to which political party they belong.
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