Mobile City Councilwoman Connie Hudson had won the Republican nomination for the open District 2 seat on the Mobile County Commission, and in the aftermath she gathered the support of the very rivals she had just defeated.
Former foes offer support
Hudson could claim the backing of her District 2 GOP runoff opponent, sheriff’s office administrator Ralph Buffkin, and of Buffkin’s leading ally, Mobile County Sheriff Sam Cochran. It was hardly stunning news that Hudson would win the endorsement of her fellow Republicans, but she received it plainly, in advance of her Aug. 24 showdown with Democratic nominee Tommy Thompson. Cochran and his aide pledged their support to Hudson in written statements to her campaign.
Buffkin, meanwhile, had returned to his supervisory position with the sheriff’s office in the wake of his second consecutive runner-up finish in a bid for the county commission seat. In 2004, he lost a runoff for the same office to Stephen Nodine.
A seat marked by turmoil
The District 2 seat had come open under extraordinary circumstances. Nodine won a second term in 2008 but resigned about 10 weeks earlier amid impeachment charges. He had since become the subject of both federal and state indictments, the former accusing him of being a drug abuser in possession of a firearm, the latter charging him with murder in connection with the shooting death of his paramour in the spring.
The scandal and resignation had triggered the special election that Hudson now stood to win, and the contrast between the seat’s troubled recent history and the campaign’s orderly close was hard to miss. With the Republican field settled behind her, Hudson turned to the general election and the task of introducing herself to voters across the district as its would-be commissioner.
A forum ahead
Hudson and Thompson were scheduled to meet in a candidates’ forum on Thursday, Aug. 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Forest Hill Elementary School, 4051 Moffett Road. Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson was sponsoring the forum in conjunction with his Beat 41 Community Meeting, giving residents a chance to hear both candidates before the Aug. 24 vote.
For Hudson, the path from the crowded Republican primary field to the nomination had run through a special election set in motion by Nodine’s downfall. She had campaigned as a sitting city councilwoman with experience in local government, and the endorsements from Buffkin and Cochran signaled that the county’s Republican establishment had consolidated behind her candidacy.
The general election would test whether that unity translated into votes in a district that still had to choose between the Republican nominee and Thompson, the Democrat. The Aug. 19 forum offered the clearest side-by-side look at the two before ballots were cast, and Richardson’s community meeting provided a familiar venue for residents to raise the issues that mattered most to them.
Whatever the outcome, the race represented a turning of the page for District 2, a chance for the commission to fill a seat that had been empty since Nodine stepped down and to move past one of the more tumultuous chapters in recent Mobile County government. Hudson entered the final stretch with momentum and the backing of her former competitors, while Thompson prepared to make his own case to voters.