Insurance Costs, Medicaid Divide Hightower and Doolittle in Senate District 35

South Mobile County voters weighed a contest between two University of South Alabama graduates with sharply different backgrounds for the Alabama Senate District 35 seat: incumbent Republican Bill Hightower, a businessman and real estate investor who won the post in a special election after predecessor Ben Brooks left for a judicial seat, and Democratic challenger Beau Doolittle, who works at a state food-stamp office and pitched himself as a champion for working families.

The two clashed most directly on skyrocketing homeowners insurance, an issue Hightower called the one he hears about most from constituents still feeling the effects of Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina on the coverage market. He floated looking at reforms used in Florida, creating a state fund to help homeowners harden their houses against storms using BP oil-spill settlement money, and exploring joint reinsurance purchasing with other coastal states. Doolittle framed his campaign instead around helping the middle class, saying he financed his own candidate filing fee out of a $1,200 emergency fund. He called for scrapping the state sales tax on groceries and ending Alabama’s income-tax deduction for federal taxes paid, arguing the swap would generate thousands more in net revenue for schools while easing the burden on working families.

The candidates also split over Medicaid expansion, which Doolittle supports and Hightower argues the state cannot afford, and over the Alabama Accountability Act, the school-choice law that lets families leave schools rated as failing. Doolittle called the law a drain on public education funding and “nothing more than a tax evasion tactic,” while Hightower said it was too new to judge and noted hundreds of students were already using it to change schools.

On the state’s overcrowded prison system, neither candidate backed a tax increase to pay for reform. Hightower warned that failing to address prison crowding could invite a federal takeover of the system, partly a byproduct, he said, of the state closing mental hospitals and shifting that burden onto jails. Doolittle said more bed space might help but called it a Band-Aid, arguing the deeper fix is addressing the economic distress that drives incarceration in the first place.

Both candidates agreed that RESTORE Act money tied to the 2010 Gulf oil spill should stay in Mobile and Baldwin counties rather than being spent elsewhere in the state. Hightower pointed to dredging needs on Fowl River, which he said has silted in to a depth of only about three feet, and to rebuilding oyster beds as priorities. Doolittle likewise backed putting out-of-work seafood industry residents to work re-seeding oyster beds, saying it would restore habitat while putting money directly into local pockets. The two also agreed in opposing Gov. Robert Bentley’s suggestion to tap an Education Trust Fund reserve account to help pay for business incentives, with both warning against blending education and general fund budgets.

Background on Medicaid expansion

The Affordable Care Act originally required states to expand Medicaid to most adults earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, but the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius made expansion optional for each state. For states that expand, the federal government pays the full cost of newly eligible enrollees from 2014 through 2016, with its share phasing down to 90 percent by 2020. Alabama had not expanded Medicaid at the time of this race.