AL-03: Josh Segall Nipping at Rogers’ Heels — GOP Calls In Cheney

Josh Segall is a great young progressive Democrat running for Congress in Alabama's third district.  He's young, smart, enthusiastic and hard working, convinced that his district can and should be more prosperous than it's been under incumbent Mike Rogers, and he's raised enough money to be a threat.  The district is a favorable one for a Democrat too — it's the second most Democratic district in Alabama with 33% African American population and a high proportion of young voters.  Segall has outraised Rogers in the first and second quarters of this year and the incumbent is worried enough to have already started running television ads attacking him — so Josh is on the right track.  The problem is, he's not just running against Mike Rogers anymore — the Republicans have brought in their big gun, Dick Cheney himself, to raise money for Rogers and other Alabama Republicans.  Josh Segall needs grassroots help to cancel out the big donations Cheney will rake in at the Shoal Creek Country Club from the have-mores — the people George W. Bush likes to call "my base."   

Yeah, Cheney's popularity is hovering somewhere around "dirt" with average Americans but he's still one of the Republican party's most effective fundraisers.  "The base" loves this guy no matter what he's done to the Constitution.  For the Birmingham event, those who still like Dick Cheney will pay $500 for lunch and pony up $2000 for a photo op with Cheney, gun not included.  A photo op with the gun will cost you extra, but I'm sure they're willing to oblige if the monied elite demand it.   Alabama GOP Chairman Mike Hubbard expects 100 to 150 to attend the luncheon which some are predicting will raise $250,000 — as much as Michelle Obama raised on her Alabama visit last month.  Is that crazy or what???

And where are they holding this event?  Shoal Creek Country Club, an extremely posh place with it's own little piece of civil rights history.

Up until 1990, there were no African-American members of the club. Pressure from various groups prior to the 1990 PGA Championship led the club to integrate just nine days before the tournament. This happened in spite of founder Hall Thompson, who said "This is our home, and we pick and choose who we want. We have the right to associate or not associate with whomever we choose."

Very inclusive now, I'm sure, if you can afford the price of entry.

About Josh Segall:  

Segall is a 4th generation Alabamian and a 2001 graduate of Brown University (where he was active with the College Democrats) and the University of Alabama School of Law.  While at Alabama he founded an organization called "Homegrown Alabama" which worked with the university to buy its food from local Alabama farmers.  He worked on Mark Warner's successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign, Russ Feingold's Senate campaign and worked for the late Senator Paul Wellstone in his Washington office. He is currently with the Memory and Day law firm in Montgomery. Josh's father, Bobby Segall, is a past president of the Alabama Bar Association and is on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Alabama, so you know he comes from good folks.  

Just how progressive is Josh Segall?  I've listed his position on several issues below so you can judge for yourself.  As a longtime Alabama Democrat accustomed to Republican-lite congressional candidates, I just can't tell you how exciting it is to see Segall running as a bona fide Democrat.   Notice I don't call him liberal.  He's to the right of me and might not pass muster as the "best" Democrat in a lot of districts on either coast, but he is in step with his district, progressive in a forward looking way and he's easily the "best" Democrat running for Congress from Alabama this cycle — the best in several cycles, actually.  He's the sort of new Southern Democrat we need to cultivate to replace some of our Blue Dogs who are too often just a pale shade of Republican.  Segall does not expect to get an endorsement from the Blue Dog Coalition — which elevates him considerably in my opinion.

Josh Segall supports:

• Network neutrality legislation and bringing affordable broadband internet access to every household in Alabama,
• Health care benefits for national guardsmen and reservists,
• The GI BIll for the 21st Century,
• A moratorium on unfair trade deals such as CAFTA
• Investing in renewable energy and alternative fuels.
• The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

And he's pro choice, recently telling a reporter "We should have fewer abortions, and I wouldn't advise it for a family member, but I don't think the federal government should decide that for you."  

Unlike incumbent Mike Rogers, Segall also believes a Congressman should listen to his constituents and put his district above everything else—including his political party.  Voting with his party 92% of the time, Rogers has been little more than a rubberstamp for the Bush/Cheney agenda since he got to Washington 6 years ago.  He hasn't built much of a name for himself in Washington either, with a power ranking of 403 out of 435 — he's 44th of the 46 members remaining from the class of 2002.

If you want to know more about him, here's Josh Segall liveblogging at Future Majority, an interview with Segall by Nathaniel Bach, and a Heading Left blogtalk radio interview by Adam Lambert and David Atkins.   There is also an online video called Alabama Roots.

 

About Alabama's 3rd District:  

This seat has only been in Republican hands since 1997 and the white Democrats here tend to be of the populist flavor.  Democrats are not out of favor in the 3rd district — they hold 75% of the locally elected offices.  Manufacturing, agriculture and the military are important industries in the 3rd district which is home to the Anniston Army Depot and has a large number of National Guard members and Reservists.  

Although the often quoted partisan voting index rates AL-03 as just R+4, the district actually has a very Democratic voting history.  The PVI only takes into account presidential voting and it skews Republican in states like Alabama, that have not seen a Democratic presidential campaign in a decade or so.  Let me quote PubliusIX who has made a study of the voting patterns in the 3rd district:

In terms of aggregate Democratic vote, this is the most Democratic district in Alabama outside Artur Davis’s African-American-majority Seventh District.  For only one precise metric, let’s look at the Alabama House of Representative districts nested in the Third.  There are 14 with a majority of the state districts within the congressional.  Of those 14, ten are held by Democrats, and in five of those ten, the GOP didn’t even bother running a candidate in 2006.  The aggregate Democratic vote in those State House seats in 2006 was 65.5%, compared to an aggregate Republican vote of 34.5%.  If you eyeball the courthouse offices, and count sheriffs, circuit clerks and probate judges, the results aren’t going to change much, if any.  Clearly, the majority of the voters in this district tend to vote Democratic most of the time.

Now, about that youth vote.  There are 4 colleges in the 3rd district:  Alabama State University (5500), Jacksonville State University (9000), Auburn University (24,000), and Tuskegee University (3000) with a total student population of about 38,000.  The Segall campaign will have a coordinator on every campus and Segall will be doing a college tour, visiting those campuses, starting in September.  I fully expect there will be an Obama coordinator (probably unpaid) doing voter registration and GOTV for each of those colleges as well.  So look for a big turnout of young voters in AL-03 November 4th. 

What about the "Obama effect" in AL-03?  PubliusIX has some numbers to shed light on that, too:

The presidential race is something of a wild card here.  Will white Democrats deserting Obama impact the congressional race?  Probably not.  First off, Obama did surprisingly well in this district.  Although Obama tanked in a couple of counties with low minority populations (18% in Cherokee County, 20% in Cleburne), he carried some other counties that don’t have African-American majorities (56% Obama in 57% white Talladega County; 61% Obama in 61% white Chambers County).  And to accept that Segall will be hurt by deserting white Democratic primary voters, you have to accept that someone who would vote in a primary for Hillary Clinton would vote for a congressman with a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition.  Yeah, I got a laugh out of that, too.  Even if some of these voters do defect, the downballot domination of Democrats shows they know how to split their tickets.

And that presidential race is a two-edged sword of which Mike Rogers should be very, very afraid.  The district is overall 30% African-American, and anyone who thinks turnout won’t be mind boggling in Macon County (which is in this district) wasn’t paying attention on February 5.  (If you weren’t, Macon County outvoted DeKalb County, a predominantly white, Democratic county with roughly three times its population, that day.)  The further into the 30’s the African-American percentage of the vote goes, the more heavily Rogers has to take a white vote that tends to vote Democratic anyway.  Alabama has enough residual racism to nauseate, but I doubt it has enough to neutralize that kind of turnout.

As you can see, this district is much more Democratic than "R+4" and is actually a very promising district for a Democratic candidate.  

The Bottom Line:

AL-03 is a real opportunity for Democrats — something that would have been unheard of 2 or 4 years ago when we didn't even field an active candidate.  The DCCC has taken notice and put it on their Emerging Races list for possible inclusion in the Red to Blue program.  Meanwhile, Segall has been successfully raising money on his own.  As of June 30 he had raised $552,000 and had $410,000 cash on hand, the most of any Democrat in Alabama.  Incumbent Mike Rogers' fundraising has tanked this year, but he still has a warchest of $1.1 million built up over 3 terms in Washington.  Now Dick Cheney is coming to raise money for Rogers and Josh Segall needs grassroots and netroots help to make sure Cheney's visit isn't the deciding factor in this election. 

The folks at Progressive Electorate have set up a Chase Cheney page for Josh Segall at ActBlue.   I'm asking you to please give whatever you can to cancel out some of the tens of thousands Dick Cheney will raise in Birmingham this Friday.  Help send a good Democrat, Josh Segall, to Congress from Alabama!  Do it for the progressive cause and, almost as important, DO IT BECAUSE THIS IS A RARE CHANCE TO STICK IT TO DICK CHENEY!  In a small way, of course, but you take your opportunities where you find them.