The retired labor leader who had been the Mobile County Democratic Party’s most likely candidate for county treasurer took himself out of the running this week, scrambling the party’s plans with the qualifying deadline only days away.
Don Langham, 69, who stepped back from a long career in organized labor about nine months earlier, said he had reconsidered after talking it over at home.
“After more consideration and consultation with my family, I have made a decision not to be a candidate for Mobile County treasurer,” Langham said. “I am enjoying retirement and my involvement with the University (of South Alabama, where he serves on the Board of Trustees), (Mobile) Housing Authority (board of directors), Volunteers of America and outdoor activities.”
A candidacy tied to someone else’s
Langham’s earlier position had been conditional in an unusual way. He had said he would run for treasurer unless Ben Lodmell, the putative Democratic congressional contender, qualified as the party’s challenger to incumbent U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile.
Lodmell’s own standing was clouded: he faced charges of allegedly soliciting a prostitute on the Eastern Shore, and whether he would appear on the ballot at all remained uncertain. In the end, Langham did not wait for that question to resolve itself. He simply declined to run.
The office he passed on is held by Republican Al Sessions.
The chairman reconsiders
Langham’s withdrawal reopened a door that had already swung shut once. Mobile County Democratic Party Chairman Brad Warren had previously announced his own intention to run for treasurer, then backed off when Langham signaled interest. With Langham out, Warren was weighing the race again and expected to decide Thursday.
The deadline concentrated the minds of everyone involved: 5 p.m. Friday, April 4, was the last moment to qualify as a candidate in either party’s June primary. Whatever the party decided, it had to decide fast.
A thin bench in a shifting county
The episode illustrated the position Mobile County Democrats found themselves in during the 2008 cycle. Countywide constitutional offices — treasurer, license commissioner, revenue commissioner — had been trending Republican for years, and the party’s difficulty in fielding a candidate for a down-ballot office until the final week said as much about the local landscape as any single race.
Langham’s own résumé illustrated the other half of the picture. A figure of long standing in Mobile civic life, he sat on the University of South Alabama Board of Trustees, the Mobile Housing Authority board of directors and served with Volunteers of America. He was the kind of candidate a party recruits precisely because he does not need the job — and, as it turned out, the kind who can decide he would rather not have it.
Democrats to gather Saturday
Whoever ended up on the ballot, the party’s activists had a date on the calendar. The Mobile Area Democratic Association was set to meet Saturday, April 5, at 10 a.m. at the IBEW (Electrical Workers) Local 505 offices at 2244 Halls Mill Road, across from the old Farmer’s Market area.
Mobile Mayor Sam Jones, the city’s first Black mayor and by 2008 the most prominent Democrat in Mobile County, was scheduled to address the gathering — an appearance that would come less than 24 hours after the qualifying books closed, with the shape of the county’s Democratic ticket finally settled.
For the party faithful arriving at the union hall that Saturday morning, the practical question was simple enough: who, if anyone, would be carrying the Democratic banner into races that had lately produced more vacancies than victories.