MOBILE, Alabama — Here in Alabama, in a unique race in a bizarre district mandated by misguided judges, one Republican congressional candidate is trying to prove politics can be conducted without vitriol.
In the “Age of Trump,” a gentlemanly race is a big risk. Dick Brewbaker, though, is trying it.
Brewbaker, a third-generation automotive dealer and former teacher, served one term in the state House and two in the state Senate, refusing to run for easy reelection in 2018 because he insisted on honoring a self-term-limit pledge.
Alabama’s new 2nd District was drawn by a special master under orders from federal courts after the state legislature fouled up a redraw mandated by a confused and confusing Supreme Court decision. The district now stretches ludicrously from the Mississippi state line to the Georgia state line, breaking up counties, geographical features, and historical communities of interest in the name of creating a black-plurality voting bloc. Past voting history suggests Democrats will have an edge in the November election but that Republicans maintain an almost-even chance of victory.
Both party primaries in March featured multicandidate fields in which no candidate won a clear-cut majority, thus necessitating primary runoffs on April 16. In the Democratic race, candidates Anthony Daniels and Shomari Figures are running attack ads against each other, and on the Republican side, lawyer Caroleene Dobson is attacking Brewbaker unmercifully. Brewbaker, though, is not responding in kind. When pressed, the most he does is lightly dismiss Dobson’s attacks as “lies” and concisely explain his position but otherwise says nothing bad about his opponent.
Indeed, his latest ad begins by noting, “I’ve never attacked another Republican. If that’s what you’re looking for, there’s another candidate in this race.” The commercial then turns positive for the duration, ending with his tagline of “liberty, security, and limited government.”
Earlier this week, at a televised debate sponsored by local Fox-10 News, Dobson managed to work the name “Trump” into every answer, often two or three times each, while Brewbaker mentioned the former president only in passing. And she repeatedly blasted his legislative record, trying to portray the conservative Brewbaker — endorsed by the conservative Eagle Forum PAC, Veterans for Trump, the National Right to Life Committee, and “Proud to be an American” singer Lee Greenwood — as some sort of closet liberal.
One Dobson attack hit close to home for me. She blasted Brewbaker for having worked to “allow parole for people serving life sentences.” She made it sound as if he isn’t tough on crime. He answered that he was merely trying to correct a flaw whereby some convicts were serving life sentences not for violent crimes but merely for “three Class C misdemeanors.”
This subject animates me. I served as press secretary for former Louisiana Republican Rep. Bob Livingston in the early 1990s when he wrote, introduced, and passed the first federal “three strikes” law. The idea was that a three-time offender who committed a heinous federal crime should serve a life sentence without parole. Our law made clear that it did not and should not apply to three minor offenses, for which the convicts could atone and seek rehabilitation.
I spent copious time publicizing the effort nationally, which resulted in copycat legislation in dozens of states. Unfortunately, a large number of those states overshot the target, ignoring Livingston’s stricture that the no-mercy penalty should apply only to violent recidivists. The resulting over-incarceration that filled state prisons beyond capacity, often for people who committed minor drug crimes, led to its own overreaction in which leftists pushed through extremely lenient practices that spurred a sudden national spike in crime.
What Brewbaker did legislatively was to try restoring to Alabama’s laws the original, wise focus that Livingston put into federal law. Rather than seesawing between absurd overpunishment and absurd leniency, Brewbaker was hitting the original sweet spot.
In the debate, though, Brewbaker explained the “Class C misdemeanor” distinction in two quick sentences and then moved on — and, again, never said anything else negative about Dobson.
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It seems like a point of pride to Brewbaker, this insistence that he is giving Alabamans reasons to vote for what he offers, not against anybody else.
In today’s political climate of anger and resentment, Brewbaker’s approach may or may not work. Either way, it’s a zephyr of fresh spring air.