8:30 am – Montgomery Alabama.
The campaign forges on into a gloomy, overcast morning, but it would clear up by Selma. It has always been a campaign tethered to the courthouse. Reach as many people as you can, go as far as you can go in the evenings or on the weekends. Just make sure to get back on Monday, get back to the defense table, to the lawyers, to the objections, to the motions, to the guys who want to put you in jail. And it could all end Tuesday, so the bus noses out of town. On the way to Selma, Siegelman tapes an interview and he’ll do another one for the Birmingham News later. He’s asked what it’s like to run a campaign from the courthouse; it’s hard to talk about the State of Alabama or the Lottery or anything else with this cloud hanging over the whole thing. I can’t help but thinking of epic populist movements, and wondering if the bus is bound for glory, or it is just wistful, or delusional or a vision that is hard to kill. But it all heads west, forging on.
I saw the first Don Siegelman for Governor campaign signs on this trip. When I asked about this, a couple of weeks ago, I was told that some exist, but they are used sparingly. Before the day was over, there would be a Hansel and Greta trail of them across South-Central Alabama. This Bus.
9:45 Mosses, Alabama
After stopping to shake the hands of a few people, gathered along the roadside, we head to Mosses. The sheriff of Lowndes County, Willie Vaughner, who is running for re-election, met us and escorted the bus to a rally. There are lots of people here and they are happy to meet the governor. It is a charity event: I believe Walk with Jesus for Cancer. And eventually the march forms, and they walk off while the bus heads westward.
10:00 Between Mosses and Selma
Riding on the bus is Gwendolyn Thomas Kennedy, a candidate for Place 2 on the Alabama Supreme Court. She’s unopposed in the primary so she can devote some time to the Governor’s campaign. At various places along the way, she does an uplink by cell phone to a live radio feed that is going out to twenty counties. It is a Rock the Vote campaign to get people to come out and vote on Tuesday. She is a compelling orator who speaks with an urgency that makes you want to listen to her, to see what she is saying and perhaps to do what she is asking. As the trip wears on and the bus cleaves the state, it will become apparent that people have heard the radio spots and they’re waiting to meet Governor Don Siegelman. In the governor’s interview, he says helping Alabama is the issue, “Whether we are going to turn the Black Belt into the Green Belt.”
10:45 Just east of Selma.
The Governor’s bus stops at a barbeque in Selma. It’s just setting up. Selma has been in and out of Alabama history, from a presence in the civil war to one of the defining events of the civil rights era, and it is the town that Richard Scrushy grew up in. And now Siegelman’s in town. They embrace the governor and sing some gospel and we all kind of regret that there’s a campaign to run, and that we couldn’t just hang around Selma and listen to the gospel music. Lori Allen Siegelman was dancing. It was a nice moment in a long year. At the barbeque, there was no Lanny, no Feaga, no Nick, no gang of lawyers, none of it. Just some music and some faith. And a bus in the background.
11:30 Selma flea market.
If there’s a lot of people out there, then that means the bus stops. This is not the kind of campaign where you hold a rally and the voters come to you, but rather the campaign comes to the voters. Siegelman is very comfortable walking amongst the people, shaking their hands, getting hugs, talking up the Lottery or the State. And they are very comfortable with him. Many of them are surprised to find a candidate for Governor of Alabama so far off the beaten path. “These kinds-a things don’t happen much ‘round these parts. No how.” In the flea market, one of the vendors says, “You gotta buy something,” and later, “I’ll vote for you if you buy something.” Not again! Sounds quid pro quo-ish. It’s the spirit of Lanny Young in the guise of a vendor at the flea market. The vendor’s kidding and she later says so, but it does underscore a campaign reality. Don Siegelman is there to get votes, to get support, and it would be the same if it was Lucy Baxley or Bob Riley; but the vendor is there to make a few sales and put some food on her table, and hopefully feed her family. That is the reality of politics. The candidate can talk all they want about policies and programs, but the bottom line is will it put food on the table. And a good place to find out, to connect to that spirit, is at a barbeque or a flea market. Whether or not this thing works, the whole experience has to be good for the forgotten people of the state and it has to be good for Don Siegelman. Scrushy has always been trying to affirm or reaffirm his worth in the aftermath, with mixed success. Siegelman has only to stop the bus and walk into the countryside. Back on the bus, The Governor says it was a “good stop.” The people and the reception energized him.
1:00 West of Demopolis
I had kind of expected the mood on the bus to be somber. The polls weren’t looking good, with the trend going the wrong way in just about every poll available, and Baxley having a big lead in the Post-Register poll; and the trial will still be going on primary day, and although everyone is confident about the trial’s outcome, it is not unthinkable that the jury will not convict. But I was surprised to find a very upbeat mood. There is a certain point in most political campaigns where the victor knows he will be the likely winner and the loser also knows the outcome. But both campaigns will always push forward, the winner to keep momentum and avoid complacency, and the losing side to make sure that people still vote to make sure that at least the strength of the minority is accurately counted. But as if energized by people emerging from the fields of west and south Alabama, this was a campaign on a roll, a bus full of people confident they will not only avoid losing on primary Tuesday, but they will win without the benefit of a runoff. Considering that Siegelman is indeed running his campaign from the courthouse and has been under indictment for the bulk of this campaign cycle, and the Lucy Baxley picked up sixteen of the seventeen endorsements that I listed, and that his life and livelihood will hang in the balance on primary Tuesday, the spirits in the bus were rather amazing. In the talks on the bus, there were not many topics about the trial or about the “political motivation” of the opposition, but instead, it was mostly about how to make a better Alabama. We talked about education, we talked about the arts, we talked about jobs, we talked about how improving the quality of life in Alabama could be improved. And at Demopolis, under now clear and sunny skies, we headed south.
1:15 Lindley.
We stop at a Piggly Wiggly. That is one of the tour’s themes. We drive along looking for events, and places where people have gathered. Some of these have been assembled and scheduled by the campaign staff, but at other times, Siegelman’s bus just looks for people. One time, we stopped by some people doing a road side carwash, and they all got to shake the Governor’s hand. And other times, if there was no event around, we would just point the bus at the nearest Piggly Wiggly. Park the bus out in the lot, sideways so the big Siegelman 2006 would be displayed across the bus, and he’d work the parking lot. Sometimes people were excited, seeing Don Siegelman in the parking lot and they’d come right over to meet him; sometimes they would tell him how things weren’t going well for them, how they’d been lost in this world, in this state. The state thing is that many of these people may not vote (although some definitely promised they would) but they were happy to seem him anyway. And if things don’t go the way he wants them to, in the primary, maybe Siegelman will remember that.
2:35 Camden
There are half a dozen people between a Piggly Wiggly and a dollar store. Don Siegelman talks to people in both stores. There is a guy who tells him that he has fallen on hard times, and that his car wasn’t working, and that he got the one he’s driving from his brother and Siegelman tells him that at least this one seems to work OK. He wants a bumper sticker on both the front and back bumpers. They are put on by the Governor himself.
4:00 Thomasville
We couldn’t find the Piggly Wiggly, so we had to settle for the Walmart. The story about Walmart is that it is not generally as good as a Piggly Wiggly because they have a tendency of kicking them out of their lot after a little while. But this one didn’t have any problem with it. Someone came to the Walmart because they heard one of the radio spots, earlier in the day, that said the campaign would be going through Thomasville around 4:00.
4:45 Whatley
Beautiful area out here. It is very rural with few houses, and the road going up and down the hilly countryside. There wasn’t much in this stretch, but like a mirage in the desert we went past a couple of houses nestled between the pasture and a large church, where there was a large gathering. We are less than a half of a mile down the road, and Don Siegelman said “Lets go there,” so the bus turns around. Gwendolyn Thomas Kennedy does one of her uplinks for the radio show, and while she is introducing Governor Don Siegelman, she says, “We’re crashing a party.” That’s apparently what we’re doing, but they seem glad to see us. It turns out that this gathering was part of the preliminary events leading up to a political rally. One of the men is running for the local school board. The Governor is well received as always—he works the crowd while I watch a pretty good softball game that’s going on—but there are a few people who don’t seem to warm up to him. The thought is that at least some of the crowd may be pleased with some of the things Bob Riley has done. But everyone’s hand is shook as you never really know. And we keep going south.
7:30 Greenville
The bus noses its way north again, coming off the back roads, and ending up at Greenville. We get a snack there and Governor Don Siegelman meets all of the people at Arby’s, and reminds them to vote on Tuesday. We pick up a county commissioner there, and he mentions the Hank Williams Festival is going on down around Georgianna.
8:10 Georgianna
We would have to backtrack but there are supposed to be about 4,000 people there. Siegelman’s worried because the hour is getting late, and the people will be listening to the music, so he doesn’t want to annoy them, and for whatever reason, they may not be in the mood for politics. Siegelman’s contingent disembarked from the bus and headed to where the people are. In the meantime, the police escorted the bus over next to where the George Wallace Jr. bus was parked. The Siegelman’s met up with a the crowds of people and talked to them for awhile, but it wasn’t clear if this was going to lead to any votes. But that was the spirit of the Piggly Wiggly tour, to get out and let people see the candidate, to take the campaign to the people, no matter how hard they would be to find, and see if this populist movement will have enough to win on Tuesday. Chip Hill, Siegelman’s media consultant, his courthouse operative, felt good about what he had seen in the countryside, felt good about their chances of winning the primary without a runoff. And everyone felt good about ultimately walking away from the courthouse with an acquittal. It remains to be seen if Chip Hill and Don Siegelman are nestled too far into that comfort zone, I wrote about at the beginning of this entry, of if this bus is really bound for glory.
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Back in Montgomery, like the pleasant memories of “The green green grass of home,” we wake up to marble rooms and a guy in a long black robe. By the time the clerk says “God save this honorable court and the State of Alabama,” for the twenty-fourth time, the people who materialize along the byways and the hamlets and the countryside of a southern state is a fading memory.