Hey, this is Todd Stacy. Welcome to “In the Weeds” with Alabama Daily News.
My guest this episode is former Congressman Artur Davis, who is running for Mayor of Montgomery. The Capital City is in the midst of an intriguing race for the city’s top job, as Todd Strang, who has been mayor for more than ten years now, is set to retire. The open seat has invited interest from several serious candidates, including Davis, Probate Judge Steven Reed, County Commission Chairman Elton Dean, WCOV-TV owner David Woods, retired General Ed Crowell, local attorney JC Love, Pastor Ronald Davis, political newcomer Marcus McNeal, and local musician Bibby Simmons. That’s nine candidates, and there’s talk of even more getting into the race.
Of course, as with any race, there are tiers of candidates. I’ve seen some polling that indicates Steven Reed and Artur Davis are pretty solidly in the top tier, with David Woods, Elton Dean, JC Love and Ed Crowell being the middle tier. With so many candidates, it’s unlikely any one of them win the 50 percent plus one needed to seal the election on August 27th. That means the goal of any campaign is to make it into the runoff, which would feature the top two candidates.
August isn’t that far away, but this race is still very early. Not many voters are really tuned in yet. School is still in, the legislative session dominates a lot of the news, and there hasn’t been any significant campaign advertising yet. So, with candidates working to raise money and win support from local groups and factions, I think it’s fair to call it an open race. In fact, Mr. Davis goes through his polling in general terms toward the end.
I first interviewed Steven Reed a few weeks ago, and that interview is online at aldailynews.com. We didn’t make a podcast out of it because it was more or less impromptu and I didn’t have my microphone, but the text is all there and I encourage you to read it. In fact, Congressman Davis references that interview a handful of times during our discussion. Davis and Reed are clearly rivals. That goes a long way back in Montgomery and really state politics, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see more sparring going forward.
As with Judge Reed, I enjoyed my conversation with Mr. Davis. I’ve followed his political career for a long time, and what a career that has been. He spent four terms in Congress representing Alabama’s 7th district, and worked his way up to a position in his party’s leadership. He was close enough with former President Barack Obama that he famously introduced him at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. It’s hard to overstate that significance. Obama was about to give his acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, and Davis was the one introducing him. After that, he ran for governor of Alabama and came up short in the primary. There were many reasons for that, but the biggest could have been his opposition to the Affordable Care Act and how his opponents used that vote to undermine his support in the black community. Then, amazingly, two years later Davis switched parties, flirted with the idea of running for Congress as a Republican in Virginia, and was a featured speaker at the 2012 Republican National Convention. By 2015, Davis was back in Montgomery engaging in local affairs and ran unsuccessfully against Mayor Todd Strange. He told the Washington Post he was back in the Democratic Party but kept a respectful relationship with Republicans.
I asked Mr. Davis about the big questions in the race: how to fix education, what to do about crime and gun violence. We talked about his interesting political history and how the last mayor’s race ended a little chippy. He found that choice of words interesting, and you’ll hear that toward the end. He also made a point to specifically call out Steven Reed. By that I mean, I didn’t ask about it,