Former U.S. Attorney Don Foster qualified just under Friday’s deadline to run for Mobile County district attorney, giving the Mobile County Democratic Party a candidate for an office it has held for more than 30 years.
The late filing ends weeks of uncertainty for local Democrats, who watched the calendar run down without a name on the ballot for one of the most visible jobs in county government.
A scramble for a candidate
Former District Attorney Chris Galanos took a hard look at returning to the prosecutor’s office he once ran, but ultimately backed away. With Galanos out, party leaders cast about for an alternative, and Foster emerged as their principal focus.
The seat is open. Incumbent District Attorney John Tyson Jr., a Democrat who has held the office since 1994, decided against seeking re-election. Two Republicans, former Mobile County GOP chairman and Saraland municipal judge Mark Erwin and assistant district attorney Ashley Rich, are locked in a hot contest for their party’s nomination in the June 1 primary. The winner will meet Foster in November.
Six years as the region’s top federal prosecutor
Foster served six years as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, appointed during the administration of President Bill Clinton. In a press release issued Friday, he made the case that the two jobs are more alike than they are different — and that he has already done the harder version of one of them.
Both the county and federal prosecutor posts are primarily management jobs, Foster noted. But as U.S. Attorney he did not confine himself to administration. He said he used his trial experience to join his assistants in the courtroom, including on “the more difficult and controversial cases,” citing the prosecution of Leroy Hill, the Little River church fire case and the rare capital murder cases that reach federal court.
That is the argument Foster is likely to press through the fall: that a district attorney should be a trial lawyer who has carried the weight of a serious case personally, not simply a supervisor of other people’s dockets.
Local roots, out-of-state training
Foster is a native of Foley in Baldwin County. He earned a degree in industrial management from Georgia Tech before taking his law degree at the University of Alabama School of Law.
At 63, he would be substantially the senior of whichever Republican emerges from the June primary — a contrast his campaign appears content to draw, and one his opponents will surely test.
Why the office matters
The Mobile County district attorney supervises the prosecution of felonies and serious misdemeanors across the county, from downtown Mobile to Bayou La Batre, and the officeholder sets priorities that shape everything from violent crime cases to public corruption investigations. It is also one of the last non-judicial countywide elective offices in Mobile County that a Democrat has managed to hold.
Over the years, a series of controversial investigations and prosecutions with political implications appeared to erode Tyson’s standing, both with his Democratic base and with the independent voters who had kept him in office. Three local circuit judges still hold their positions as Democrats, but beyond the bench, the party’s countywide presence has thinned considerably.
Whether Foster can hold the seat for the Democrats — running against a Republican nominee in a midterm year with an energized conservative electorate in south Alabama — will be one of the more closely watched local questions on the November ballot.
What happens next
Foster will not face a primary contest, leaving him free to raise money and organize through the spring while Erwin and Rich spend theirs against each other. Republicans, for their part, will emerge from June 1 with a nominee who has been tested by a competitive race and, in all likelihood, a depleted campaign account.
The general election is set for November.