MONTGOMERY — Alabama Democratic Party chairman Joe Turnham said Tuesday that thousands of Democrats felt betrayed by U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith’s decision to leave the party he was elected under and join the Republicans, and he asked Griffith to give the money back.
Griffith, a physician and former state senator from Huntsville, won Alabama’s 5th Congressional District in 2008 as a Democrat, narrowly, succeeding the retiring Bud Cramer. Barely more than a year into his first term, he announced he was switching parties.
The chairman’s statement
“Parker has been a friend for a number of years, but his announcement today, and the way in which he did it, deeply disappoints me,” Turnham said in a prepared statement. “Democrats of every stripe and philosophy sweated and bled for this man. He narrowly became a congressman through the hard work, votes and financial contributions of thousands of Democrats. Today, they feel betrayed.”
Turnham argued that Griffith had thrown away the very thing that made him useful to his district. “Congressman Griffith, like his successful predecessor, Bud Cramer, was well-positioned as a Blue Dog Democrat in the majority party in Washington to broker for his district and become the swing voice and vote for good public policy,” he said. “Yet he has left his old friends for his new friends, and will ultimately find that he has no political friends left at all at the end of the day.”
The party also called on Griffith to return the thousands of dollars in Democratic contributions he had raised.
The threat, and the promise
Turnham said he had already fielded numerous calls from leaders across the Tennessee Valley pledging to back a strong Democrat in the 5th District in 2010.
“Alabama Democrats have a deep political bench in the 5th District and we will nominate a formidable challenger to fill this seat next year,” he said. “If Congressman Griffith survives a Republican primary battle next year, he should be prepared to bring his lunch if he hopes to hold this seat in November of 2010. Our folks are motivated to right this wrong.”
Why it echoed on the coast
The 5th District lies at the opposite end of Alabama from Mobile Bay, but the switch registered immediately in South Alabama for two reasons.
The first was structural. Alabama Democrats in December 2009 were defending a legislative majority they had held for more than a century and preparing to contest a governor’s race they believed, with Artur Davis leading their ticket, they could win. A sitting congressman concluding that the Democratic label was no longer survivable in an Alabama swing district was not a data point party leaders could easily explain away — and every Democratic legislator in Mobile, Baldwin, Clarke and Washington counties would be asked about it.
The second was competitive. If Griffith’s calculation was correct — that the 2010 midterm environment would punish anyone carrying a Democratic label in Alabama — then it applied with equal force to Rep. Bobby Bright in the neighboring 2nd District, and to Democrats defending House and Senate seats across South Alabama. Republicans said as much, loudly.
What actually happened
Both Turnham’s warning and the Republicans’ celebration proved partly right. Griffith did face a serious Republican primary challenge, and he lost it — defeated in June 2010 by Mo Brooks, a Madison County commissioner, whose voters declined to forgive the party switch. Bright lost his seat that November.
And the broader prediction that hung over the whole episode came true as well. In November 2010, Republicans captured both chambers of the Alabama Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, ending the Democratic era that Turnham was, that December, still trying to defend.