By the last week of March 2008, with the April 4 qualifying deadline days away, the shape of Mobile County’s courthouse ballot had become clear. The candidates were, overwhelmingly, people who already worked there.
The license commissioner’s race
Lori Roberts Angelo, 45, announced she would run as a Democrat for license commissioner. She had spent seven years as chief clerk in the revenue commission office, serving as the liaison who resolved problems for the public. She was the daughter of Freda Roberts, the longtime Mobile County revenue commissioner who had retired four years earlier.
Born and raised in Mobile County, Angelo attended Theodore High School, continued at Southwest State Technical College and took training for tax officials at the Auburn University Center for Governmental Services. Drawing on her revenue experience and a stint in marketing at a Houston computer company, she proposed enhancing existing services and adding new ones — self-service terminals at malls and other high-traffic locations, increased staffing, and a possible satellite office in fast-growing Saraland.
She joined a crowded field. Michelle Mayberry, a manager with the state revenue department, had already announced as a Republican. Kim Hastie, the longtime secretary to County Commissioner Mike Dean, was preparing a Republican bid, according to party sources. An employee of the license commissioner’s office was reportedly seeking the Democratic nomination as well.
The office was open because Democratic License Commissioner Carol Norris was retiring after 20 years.
The revenue commissioner’s race
Renee Williams, 46, who had worked in the Mobile County Revenue Commission office for more than 20 years, announced a Democratic campaign for revenue commissioner. She was certified in both real and personal property appraisal, had experience in assessing and collecting, and had managed the Citronelle tax office. She planned to qualify the following week and take a leave of absence to campaign.
“I will make the office more effective for the citizens of Mobile County,” she said. “We will deliver better service and better accuracy.” A Houston native, she had lived in Mobile for more than 25 years and served as vice president of the Old Dauphin Way Association.
The incumbent, Marilyn Wood, had been elected as a Democrat in 2004 and was seeking re-election as a Republican after switching parties. A potential GOP primary opponent, the party’s 2004 nominee who had narrowly lost the general election, said he was strongly considering another run but remained undecided.
One more possible commission race
Matt Tew, 43, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for sheriff in 2006, said he was still weighing a challenge to Republican County Commissioner Stephen Nodine in District 2.
Many people had approached him about running, he said, and he was seriously considering it — but a lot of other things would have to fall into place first, financial backing chief among them. He worked at Chevron in Pascagoula and had served 10 years as a reserve officer with the Mobile County Sheriff’s Department. He and his wife had two daughters, students at Mary G. Montgomery High School and Faith Academy. He said he would pray on the decision over the weekend and decide before the deadline.
What the field revealed
The pattern across these races was consistent: the candidates were career civil servants running for the offices they had spent decades inside. Chief clerks, appraisers, tag office managers and commission secretaries were competing to become the elected head of operations they already understood in detail.
That is the nature of Alabama’s constitutional county offices. They are technical, administrative jobs — assessing property, collecting taxes, issuing tags — filled by partisan election. The people best qualified to run them are almost always the people already working in them, which produces campaigns fought less over policy than over service, accuracy and wait times.
What made 2008 different was the party sorting happening underneath. A Democratic incumbent switching to the Republican ticket, Democratic staffers running to hold offices their party had held for generations, and Republicans emerging with real prospects countywide — the courthouse was changing hands, one office at a time.