Opposition to an onshore liquefied natural gas terminal in south Mobile County ran nearly unanimous among the candidates seeking seats on the Mobile County Commission, according to a candidate survey released in mid-May 2004 by the grassroots group Better Growth Mobile.
Five candidates told the organization flatly and without qualification that they opposed the proposed plant at Hollingers Island. At the time, two energy companies — ExxonMobil and Cheniere Energy — had each floated plans for onshore LNG receiving terminals in Mobile County, and the prospect of a cryogenic gas facility sitting on the western shore of Mobile Bay had become one of the defining local issues of the 2004 campaign season.
What the candidates said
In District 2, Mobile City Councilman Stephen Nodine, then seeking the Republican nomination, and Milton Morrow, the lone Democrat in the race, both said they opposed an onshore terminal outright. Asked whether they would use the power of the office to block such a plant, each answered yes.
Austin Rainwaters, the third Republican in the District 2 field, left himself the narrowest of openings while landing in essentially the same place. Safety questions had to be settled before any facility went into Mobile Bay, he wrote, and he did not expect them to be resolved to his satisfaction. He raised the effect a terminal would have on other users of the bay, and he noted that while he did not believe terrorism was a present risk, security adjustments would be difficult to make after a plant was already built. “Much more study needs to be done,” he wrote, “but I don’t expect anything can be done to change my mind from the position I have now.”
Rainwaters, Nodine and Morrow each said they would prefer an offshore facility if the safety questions could be answered adequately.
In District 3, incumbent Commissioner Mike Dean and his two challengers, Mike Burdine and Howard Waters, all opposed an onshore terminal, citing safety and environmental concerns. Each said he would prefer an offshore site after appropriate study.
James George, the Republican preparing to challenge Commissioner Sam Jones for the District 3 seat in November, echoed his rivals in opposing an onshore terminal while reserving judgment on an offshore one. George offered one idea no other candidate raised: if an onshore LNG proposal ever gained traction while he held office, he would push for a public referendum on the question, and he would ask that Baldwin County residents be allowed to vote in it as well — an acknowledgment that a terminal in Mobile Bay would be a two-county matter.
The candidates who did not answer
Commissioner Sam Jones, the Democratic incumbent, and District 2 Republican contender Ralph Buffkin did not respond to the survey, an organizer with the group said.
Commissioner Freeman Jockisch, the Republican incumbent from District 2, did respond, saying he would defer to the District 3 commissioner and to constituents, supporting or opposing the project according to their wishes. If the commissioner and the residents appeared to be at odds, Jockisch said, he would side with the residents.
Events had already overtaken that answer. Jockisch was convicted in federal court that same week in connection with the fraudulent handling of his campaign money. He suspended his re-election campaign and asked to be removed from the ballot — a request complicated by the fact that some absentee ballots bearing his name had already gone out. Election officials moved to honor the request and sought an attorney general’s opinion on how to handle the outstanding absentee ballots. Voters who had received a ballot with Jockisch’s name on it, local election officials said, might be sent an amended ballot mirroring the one that would appear at the polls on June 1.
The group behind the survey
Better Growth Mobile, Inc. described itself as a grassroots coalition of more than 800 residents and businesses from Mobile and Baldwin counties, organized around a single primary mission: to drive any proposed liquefied natural gas terminal out of Mobile Bay and at least 30 miles offshore.
The coalition’s framing — that the fight was not over whether the Gulf Coast should import natural gas, but over where the receiving terminal should sit — proved to be the frame the candidates adopted almost to a man. Nearly every respondent said the same thing in slightly different words: not here, not on the shoreline, and not without far more study than had been done.
For readers looking back, the survey captures a moment when a national energy build-out collided with local politics on the Alabama coast. Onshore LNG never took root at Hollingers Island. Offshore gasification projects in the Gulf drew their own scrutiny in the years that followed, and the domestic shale boom later upended the economics that had made import terminals attractive in the first place.