MOBILE — Two of the more closely watched endorsement decisions in Mobile’s 2005 mayoral race were resolved in mid-June, and they went in opposite directions: one prominent figure declined to choose at all, and another chose, with an unusually candid explanation of why.
Figures: "I am remaining neutral"
State Sen. Vivian Figures, D-Mobile, who represented as many Black Mobilians as any other locally elected official, faced a genuinely difficult choice. The field included Ann Bedsole, a white Republican and former state senator, and Sam Jones, a Black Democrat and longtime county commissioner. The conventional expectation pointed one way. Figures’s personal history pointed another.
She chose neither.
"I am remaining neutral in the mayor’s race," Figures said. "Ann is a very, very dear friend. Sam Jones is a good friend as well."
She explained the arithmetic of loyalty that produced the decision. "Ann Bedsole supported me and raised money for me. I always try to treat people the way I would want to be treated. I encouraged Sam to run. I thought it was a great idea. But when Ann Bedsole got in, I could not favor someone over her."
Figures had represented District 2 on the Mobile City Council until 1995, when her husband died and she won the special election to succeed him in the state Senate — defeating state Rep. James Buskey in a contest that divided Mobile’s Black political community. Jones had stayed neutral in that race. A decade later, Figures returned the courtesy to both sides.
Lathan: "Ann asked first"
Jerry Lathan, vice chairman of the Alabama Republican Party representing the southern third of the state, faced a different puzzle. Three of the four mayoral candidates had either held or sought office as Republicans, and Lathan’s impatience with what he called RINOs — Republicans In Name Only — was well known. Bedsole’s standing with party regulars had been debated ever since her loss in the 1994 GOP gubernatorial primary.
Lathan endorsed her anyway.
"Yes, I’m supporting Ann Bedsole," he said. "I think it’s important that someone who is identified as a Republican and a fiscal conservative be the next mayor of Mobile."
What made the endorsement unusual was how thoroughly he declined to weaponize it. Both Bedsole and City Councilman John Peavy, he said, had called him, espoused conservative principles and pledged to govern by them. He told each that they were welcome to claim him as a supporter if it helped.
"Ann asked first," Lathan said. "She has been a Republican her whole career. That gives her a slight lead in Republican credentials with no slight to John. That’s just the way it is."
He went further, pre-emptively defusing any suggestion that backing one man’s rival meant rebuking the other. "I don’t want any of them to think I’ve chosen one side as a sign that I do not think well of the other," he said. "I have good friends supporting both of them that are good Republicans and have been with me in many fights."
Lathan also volunteered a disclaimer that few endorsers offer: "I don’t even live in the city. To the degree that a non-resident’s opinion counts, so be it." He said he had not spoken with the fourth candidate, Bess Rich.
Lathan, then 48, was an industrial roofing contractor based in Theodore and a longtime Republican loyalist.
Why it mattered
Mobile’s municipal elections are formally nonpartisan, which in practice means party identity operates as an undercurrent rather than a ballot line. In a four-way race decided Aug. 23, 2005 — the first open mayoral contest since 1989 — the question of how the city’s Republican-leaning and Black Democratic voting blocs would sort themselves was the central strategic puzzle.
Figures’s neutrality withheld a significant asset from Jones. Lathan’s endorsement gave Bedsole a claim on party regulars she might otherwise have had to fight for.
In the end, Sam Jones won, becoming Mobile’s first Black mayor and serving two terms. But the endorsements of that June are a reminder that in local politics, friendship and sequence — who asked first — can matter as much as ideology.