Mobile Mayor Mike Dow had won four straight elections. He was, by any conventional measure, the most successful politician in the city’s modern history. And in June 2004, as Ralph Buffkin and Stephen Nodine sprinted toward a June 29 Republican runoff for Mobile County Commission District 2, both men were doing everything in their power to be seen standing as far away from him as possible.
The question the campaign posed, only half in jest, was whether Mobile’s mayor had somehow become politically contagious.
A fundraiser at Mrs. Outlaw’s house
The strangeness of the moment was captured by a single invitation. The widow of former Mayor Arthur Outlaw agreed to host a fundraiser for Buffkin at her home in Spring Hill on Tuesday, June 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. The Buffkin camp hoped to raise $30,000 — and, just as importantly, to quash the persistent talk that Buffkin was a political cut-out for Dow and his circle.
The symbolism was thick. Dow had ousted Arthur Outlaw from City Hall in 1989, toppling a Republican icon and state party heavyweight in what remains one of the most spectacular upsets in Mobile’s modern political history. Dow’s first term was rocky, spent contending with a City Council whose members largely resented his victory. Fifteen years later, a Buffkin fundraiser at the Outlaw home was a way of saying: whatever they tell you, I am not the mayor’s man.
Buffkin had reason to need the message. He had been paid $2,000 a month to manage Dow’s successful 2001 campaign for a fourth term. His answer was to point out that Nodine, in his 30 months on the City Council, had voted with Dow about as often as not.
Dow, for his part, disavowed any involvement in the county race, and when asked about it he clipped his usual expansiveness down to a few sentences. “I have no comment,” he said. “I do my job and don’t worry about the small stuff. I want somebody to win who will be serious about moving this city forward and let the politics lie to the side. I’m good at running my own race. My heart’s in the city. When the chips fly on that one, I’ll still be here to do my job.”
The numbers behind the allergy
Why would candidates flee an incumbent who kept winning? The answer lies in the geography of Dow’s victories — specifically, in the seven Mobile City Council districts and four municipal elections.
Council Districts 1 through 3 contain downtown and the neighborhoods immediately around it. Districts 4 through 7 curve like a crescent around them, stretching to the southern, western and northwestern city limits.
- 1989: Dow beat Outlaw 18,647 to 17,338 in the first round but was forced into a runoff by former City Commissioner Lambert Mims. In the runoff, Dow carried Districts 1-3 by 9,364 to 5,709 and Districts 4-7 by 20,571 to 17,259. Nearly 69 percent of his total support came from the outer districts.
- 1993: Against City Council President Charles Chapman, realtor Paul Thompson and critic Rod Kennedy, Dow took Districts 1-3 by 13,348 to 3,231 — almost 81 percent. In Districts 4-7 he won narrowly, 15,365 to 14,935. The outer districts now supplied just 53.5 percent of his vote.
- 1997: Dow crushed Thompson and two others in Districts 1-3, 10,248 to 1,788 — more than 85 percent. He carried Districts 4-7 by 11,513 to 8,715. The outer districts’ share of his vote fell below 53 percent.
- 2001: Against City Councilwoman Bess Rich, Dow won Districts 1-3 by 12,489 to 2,887. In Districts 4-7, he essentially tied: 13,784 to 13,752. The outer districts’ share of his support hit an all-time low of 52.5 percent.
The trend is unmistakable. Dow’s grip on the inner districts tightened election after election while his standing in the outer crescent eroded to a dead heat. A precinct-level look at 2001 sharpens the point: support for Dow generally declined in direct proportion to distance from downtown.
What that meant for a county race
Subtract the midtown portion of Council District 5, and the numbers suggest Dow’s hypothetical support inside County Commission District 2 sat at 50 percent or lower. That is the arithmetic behind the allergy. Nodine linked Buffkin to the city’s “most liberal mayor ever” at every opportunity. Buffkin, frustrated, insisted his campaign was about “jobs, jobs, jobs,” not Mike Dow. Backers of third-place finisher Austin Rainwaters cited exactly this perceived tie in urging their man to endorse Nodine, which he did.
Or is ‘Dow’ shorthand for something older?
The deeper question is whether the mayor’s name had simply become a stand-in for a broader disaffection. For voters in the western reaches of the district, the grievance may trace back further than 1989 — back to the day when Mayor Arthur Outlaw and the City Council pushed through construction of the downtown riverfront convention center over blistering criticism. That building today bears Outlaw’s name.
Those voters rejected Outlaw in 1989. In a sense they have been voting against him ever since — except for the ones who moved farther west, or across the bay to the Eastern Shore.
The Mobile County Young Republicans, meanwhile, brought the two runoff candidates together for a public debate at For Pete’s Sake on Springhill Avenue near Municipal Park, giving voters a chance to hear the argument directly rather than through the filter of who was standing next to whom.