From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
Alabama Lazarus Act
A Republican success in a Democratic year.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--In Birmingham they love the governor. And in Mobile and Huntsville, too.
As Republicans coast to coast were burying their many political dead, a Republican governor once given up for dead was enjoying a landslide victory. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley was re-elected last week, beating long-popular Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley with more than 58% of the vote, including an impressive 20% of the black vote. His victory was not simply the result of Alabama being a Republican state: Democrats won the two next most prominent statewide races, those for lieutenant governor and Supreme Court chief justice. In Alabama as elsewhere, this was a Democratic year--with the notable exception of Mr. Riley, a conservative reformer in cowboy boots, with a cheerful, Reagan-like demeanor.
Three years ago, few observers believed that he could ever win again. A businessman who began his post-college career by selling eggs door-to-door (literally), later to sell his hens and build a business of car dealerships and a trucking company, Mr. Riley was a relatively obscure three-term congressman when he ran for governor in 2002. In that race, he barely squeaked past scandal-plagued Democratic incumbent Don Siegelman by a lawsuit-challenged 3,120 votes.
During his first year in office, Mr. Riley pushed an ambitious, complicated tax-reform proposal that was part of a multiyear plan to shift revenues to under-funded departments such as law enforcement while relieving the tax burden on low-income workers. Derided (a bit misleadingly) by opponents as a huge tax increase--although far more people would have enjoyed a tax cut than endured a tax hike under the proposal--the initiative was destroyed in a statewide referendum, receiving only 32.5% of the vote. Pundits immediately pronounced the governor a total goner.
How, then, did Mr. Riley recover from such political disaster to win re-election so resoundingly? Not just Mr. Riley but editorial writers across the state will readily identify his successes in the "Three Es": economic development, education and, not least, ethics. Consider the statistics: An unemployment rate that dropped to an astonishingly low (especially for Alabama) 3.3% from 5.3%; school test scores rising, especially in reading proficiency in at-risk schools blessed with the Riley-backed (and nationally copied) Alabama Reading Initiative; and public standards of ethics combined with radically open government records, along with measurable performance standards imposed on every department of state government.
These accomplishments stand in marked contrast to the record of Mr. Siegelman, who presided over a budget crisis and now stands convicted of bribery and other infractions.
In his Birmingham hotel suite an hour before the polls closed Nov. 7, during a lengthy conversation sandwiched around a friendly phone call from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Mr. Riley explained with great depth and detail--not to mention a guileless enthusiasm--how it was that his administration so impressed the voters.
"I think people appreciated that after [the tax reform initiative] failed, we turned around and did exactly what the people told us to do. We cut half a billion dollars out of [an already tight] budget . . . We put a new economic model together for Alabama, and it has been remarkably successful . . . We found a way to cut taxes anyway [chiefly by raising the earnings threshold below which workers pay no income tax], and we got really good grades when the hurricanes came through."
Alabama has been ravaged by three hurricanes during Mr. Riley's tenure, and the state's response each time was a model of effectiveness. Listen to Howard Shell, since 1986 the mayor of Atmore (pop. 8,000): "Ivan and Dennis both hit us hard. . . . For the city of Atmore, Gov. Riley was really responsive when we really needed it. Just one phone call to him, and he began to make things happen. He got us extra law enforcement right away, he got forestry experts [to clear fallen trees], he got all the state agencies to help in every way. . . . He's one of the most proactive governors we have had, the best we've had since I've been here."
Mr. Riley's particular genius, meanwhile, has been evident in his efforts at business development. He consolidated nine different state agencies charged with economic development into just one, hired top-notch administrators and used federal grants more wisely by paying attention to small details such as re-routing small roads, building water tanks and improving the state's job-training agencies so that they provide what he calls "job-specific, product-specific, even company-specific training."
For four years running, Southern Business and Development Magazine has named Alabama its "state of the year." Site Selection magazine ranked the Alabama Development Office as the top such agency in the nation. And even in the state's rural, long-impoverished "Black Belt" (so named for the color of its loamy soil), unemployment has dropped to 7.7% from many years in the double digits, largely due to initiatives by the Riley-created Black Belt Action Commission.
Elsewhere, Mayor Harold Crouch of Chatom (pop. 1,204), a self-described political ticket-splitter, tells of how Mr. Riley has made the state capitol "acceptable to rural Alabama again." Just by helping with infrastructure such as water service and a little paving and earth-moving, Mr. Riley's team made it possible for Chatom to land a plant of A.C. Manufacturing, a garment company, with 152 jobs. "It would not have occurred if the governor had not personally stepped in to help," Mr. Crouch said.
Thus did Mr. Riley run for re-election as a genial, tax-cutting, budget-cutting, crisis-handling, job-creating, education-boosting, utterly scandal-free reformer. Every major newspaper in the state--conservative, moderate and liberal alike--endorsed him for another term. Interesting how that works.
In his victory speech on election night, Bob Riley put himself on the line by urging the people of the state to "demand a higher level of excellence from state government than you have ever demanded before." Judging from the election results, Alabamians think that type of excellence already is housed in their governor's mansion.
Mr. Hillyer is a senior editor of the American Spectator.
