When I woke up this morning, I blogged at CFIF about Newt
Gingrich’s appearance in Mobile last night. Read
it here. Gingrich had lot of good lines.
That said, I think it is time to update the “lay of the land”
blog I did
earlier in the week. What I am seeing is an incredibly fluid
race in Alabama. Since I wrote that blog post, Romney and/or his
SuperPAC have been carpet-bombing Santorum with so many negative
ads it boggles the mind. The Gingrich forces also have been
attacking Santorum. Santorum’s ads, less numerous, are the ones
from a few weeks ago that merely feature news headlines on a black
background that say things bad about or embarrassing to Romney. The
other two candidates’ ads seem to be coordinated to time with their
campaign’s messages of the week, but Santorum’s so far do not. As
for Romney’s forces, they attack Gingrich not at all. They seem to
recognize that a vote for Gingrich helps Romney, because otherwise
nearly two of every three of those votes would likely go to
Santorum — so they are happy to tear down Santorum while leaving
Gingrich alone.
In southern Alabama at least, Santorum also suffers from having
no connections to the GOP party hierarchy at all. They’re all
either Romney people or Gingrich people. The Mobile County GOP
chair, the impressively energetic Terry Lathan, is on the Gingrich
delegate list. Former U.S. Rep. Sonny Callahan is Gingrich’s chair
for the southern half of the state. Longtime state Sen. Jabbo
Waggoner is the state chair. As for Romney, he’s been endorsed by
former Gov. Bob Riley, and a large number (too many to list) of
party poo-bahs or elected officials are also withthe Michigander.
Santorum, for his part, relied on local Tea Party activists to put
together his public rally.
Here’s another odd factor. Unlike in Ohio, where blue-collar
Democrats (Reagan Democrats) crossed over more fo Santorum than for
Romney, the Alabama system of having no party registration may
actually hurt Santorum. Why? Because, at least in the southern
third of the state, it might actually cost him a lot of the rural
voters he has been attracting in other states. Here’s how it works:
In rural areas down here, there still are vestiges of the “yellow
dog Democrat” syndrome among some white conservatives, so that in
local races the conservatives still run as Democrats. Meanwhile, in
the “Black Belt” counties across the south-central part of the
state (so named both for its black, loomy soil and for its black
majorities), Santorum seems popular both with whites (who may be a
minority of the population, but still have significant percentages)
and with a fair number of culturally conservative blacks. But he
won’t get their votes. Why not? Because in both the white-majority
and black-majority rural counties just north or northeast of
Mobile, there are a lot of local races on the ballot, especially
judgeships. The local judge is a particularly important person in
those communities. And in those communities, all the action for the
judgeships is in the Democratic primaries. People can vote
in either party’s primary, but they must choose one; they can’t
vote in both. In this case, a whole lot of them see the local race
as the more important, because victory in the primary Tuesday is
tantamount to final victory (because in lots of cases nobody has
even qualified as a Republican for the fall ballot). So if they
vote for judges in the local Democratic primaries, they can’t vote
for Santorum at the same time, because you can’t vote in both
party’s events on the same day.
Remember how all the rural counties in Ohio went for Santorum?
Well, he may not rack up those same sorts of numbers in Bama, for
the reasons above.
On the other hand, Santorum really impressed
people Thursday night at the dinner for the Alabama Policy
Institute. I know several community leaders who went into the
evening completely unsure of their leanings but who the next day
told me they are now firmly with Santorum. Likewise, Gingrich had a
good outing on Friday; I overheard a couple of people leaving the
event saying they had entered only leaning to Gingrich but now they
were decided in his favor.
As mentioned in an earlier post, Gingrich also has been laying
the groundwork here for a while. While Santorum and Romney battled
in the Rust Belt, Gingrich concentrated in the South. He was up
with commercials here about five days before anybody else was.
Where all this leads is anybody’s guess. Polls are all over the
map. It’s hard to tell what effect Santorum’s huge win in Kansas
today will have on voters’ choices: Will it move Gingrich leaners
back to Santorum? Will it halt Romney’s march to supposed
inevitability, and thus stop the bandwagon followers from climbing
on?
And will Romney’s failure to appear here (so far) hurt him,
since Gingrich and Santorum both did multiple events in southern
Alabama?
And I really don’t have a good feel for what’s going on in the
rest of the state.
The sense I get is that a very large percentage of voters are
still jumping back and forth in their own minds between candidates.
Any of the three (but not Ron Paul) could win Alabama. It’s going
to be a heck of a ride.
