This is an opinion column.
Mike Hubbard still hasn’t gone to prison, and I’m going to make a prediction.
He ain’t ever.
Three years ago, a jury in Lee County found the Alabama House speaker — the most politically powerful person in this state — guilty of using the color of his office to enrich himself. Specifically, those jurors said Hubbard broke Alabama’s ethics laws — tough reforms Hubbard himself pushed through the Legislature in 2010.
That’s right, Alabama’s top lawmaker broke a law he got passed.
And he did so almost gleefully, writing in an email to former Alabama governor Bob Riley, "Who proposed those things?! What were we thinking?"
Since then, Hubbard has been free while his case has run its course through the appellate courts. Or should I say, crawled its course, because it’s been three years. Hubbard’s lawyers have argued that the law is too vague to be enforceable.
The courts — all elected judges from the same party — have been prolonging Hubbard’s freedom until they can find a way to extend it indefinitely. They’re shuffling and reshuffling the deck until Hubbard’s Get-Out-of-Jail card magically floats to the surface.
I suspect they’ll find it.
I have a few friends who believe I’m being cynical and I should come down off the ledge. And I’d probably do well to wait until the worst happens before writing about the worst-case scenarios.
But there’s a more important point I wish to make here.
If there was a moment for Alabama Democrats to reverse the fortunes of their party, this is it. It’s a moment of maximum vulnerability for the Alabama Republican Party.
However, as fearful I am that the Alabama Supreme Court will let Mike Hubbard go free, I’m just as sure Alabama Democrats aren’t prepared to leverage this mistake to their benefit.
They should be cutting TV ads. They should be preparing a social media assault. They should be giving local party members guidance on how best to shift even the smallest conversations with friends they bump into at the grocery store toward the Alabama GOP’s corruption necrosis.
But that ain’t happening, either.
Strategy? Messaging? The state party’s Twitter account has tweeted three times this year.
Perhaps, the state chairwoman, Nancy Worley, is shy of making public pronouncements after she sent that holiday letter to party faithful in which she described getting stuck on the toilet. (Sorry, I can’t let a mention of the Alabama Democratic Party go by without reminding folks that actually happened.)
It’s not a problem of time or resources.
On Tuesday, Alabama Democratic Chairwoman Nancy Worley traveled to Washington, where she and her attorney, Bobby Segall, fought and fussed with the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee. The state party and the national party are at odds over how the state picks its executive officers, like Worley.
Earlier this year, the DNC ordered the state party to start its process over again under new rules. Since then, the state party officials have blown off the DNC’s deadline and instead fought with the DNC over what those new rules should be.
Worley and Segall argued that they want a process that’s fair and inclusive. But the DNC committee members rejected their arguments.
DNC committeeman and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes said the Alabama party elections last year “makes the Keystone Cops look organized,” and he warned his colleagues on the committee that Worley and her allies were feigning racial inclusion as a ruse to hold on to power.
“This is plain and simple,” he said. “This is not about race. This is about power.”
But for two abstentions, the DNC committee voted unanimously to reject Worley’s latest proposed rewrite of the Alabama party’s bylaws.
Maybe all this seems like a bunch of petty sniping back and forth, or a pathetic last-ditch effort by Worley to hold on to power.
Yes. And yes.
And because of it all, the Alabama Republican Party and folks like Hubbard can do as they please. Because no matter how corrupt they become, no matter how brazen they are to show it, there’s no better choice for an Alabama voter to make.
They might be corrupt, but next to Worley’s Democratic Party, they still seem competent.
Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.
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