Mobile City Councilman Ben Brooks scheduled a rally and barbecue for Tuesday, April 18, 2006, from 5 to 7 p.m. to formally kick off his campaign for the Alabama Senate seat representing District 35.
The event was set for his campaign headquarters at 5238-E Patmos Plaza on Highway 90 West, across from Mobile Lumber, with catering by Dick Russell’s Bar-B-Q. Those wanting more information were asked to call 661-0266.
The Race He Entered
Brooks faced former state Sen. George Callahan in the Republican primary set for June 6. The winner would go on to challenge Democratic incumbent state Sen. Gary Tanner in the general election on Nov. 7.
The decision resolved a question Brooks had been publicly weighing since the previous fall, when he acknowledged he was considering either the Senate seat or the Mobile County Circuit judgeship being vacated by the retirement of Judge Ferrill McRae. He chose the Legislature.
Under the rules governing his situation, Brooks would surrender his City Council seat only if he succeeded in becoming south Mobile County’s state senator, meaning he could run without giving up the office he already held.
A Coalition on Paper
The honorary host committee assembled for the kickoff read as a map of the coalition Brooks was building. It led with law enforcement and firefighter organizations, including the Mobile County Law Enforcement Association, Local #1349 Mobile Firefighters and the Alabama Police Benevolent Association, endorsements that carry particular weight in suburban legislative races.
Beyond the public safety groups, the committee ran to well over a hundred names drawn from the district’s civic and professional life: physicians, ministers, small business owners, engineers and neighborhood association figures, along with a community action group. Among the names on the list was Sandy Stimpson, a Mobile businessman who would himself be elected mayor of the city seven years later.
Host committee lists are not merely decorative. In a primary decided by a modest number of votes, a long list of local names functions as a signal of viability, a fundraising instrument and a volunteer roster all at once.
Where the Rally Was Held
The choice of venue said something too. Highway 90 West, running out toward Tillmans Corner and the western reaches of the district, is the commercial spine of that part of Mobile County. Holding the launch at a strip-center campaign headquarters across from a lumber yard, with barbecue served from a locally beloved pit, placed Brooks squarely in the world of the constituents he was courting.
The Candidate
Brooks was a Mobile attorney and chairman of the City Council’s finance committee. He was a 1976 graduate of Theodore High School, a 1980 graduate of the University of South Alabama and a 1983 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law. He joined the City Council in 2001 after defeating two-term incumbent Mabin Hicks.
He and his wife, Kathy, had three children: Megan, 20; Ben, 19; and Elizabeth, 15. Brooks had lived in the Dog River area of Mobile almost his entire life and was a member of Cypress Shores Baptist Church.
What Was at Stake
District 35 covered south Mobile County, a region encompassing the bayou communities, Tillmans Corner, Theodore and the Dauphin Island Parkway corridor. It was held by a Democrat in a part of the state moving steadily toward the Republican column, which made it one of the more consequential legislative contests on the Alabama coast that year.
For Brooks, a Theodore High graduate running to represent the area where he grew up, the appeal was direct. For the Republican Party, the seat represented an opportunity. And for the voters gathering over barbecue on Highway 90 that April evening, the campaign that began there would run through a contested primary and into a fall general election, with south Mobile County’s voice in Montgomery on the line.