The re-election of President George W. Bush and U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby has brought the future composition of the federal courthouse in Mobile into sharper focus — and set off the quiet, decorous scramble that always accompanies a lifetime appointment.
U.S. District Judge Randy Butler is set to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement, in the spring, creating a vacancy on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. Because the judgeship is a presidential appointment requiring Senate confirmation, and because home-state senators traditionally guide the selection, Shelby’s role in recommending a nominee will be decisive.
The names in circulation
Among the Mobile lawyers most often mentioned as frontrunners are:
- Jim Rebarchak, 49, of the Miller Hamilton firm.
- Jeffery J. Hartley, 40, of Helmsing, Leach, Herlong, Newman and Rouse.
- Alan Christian of the Johnstone Adams law firm.
Also mentioned are State Civil Appeals Court Judge Craig Pittman and Baldwin County Attorney Sam Crosby. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sonja Bivins and current U.S. Attorney David York are considered possibilities as well.
York’s elevation would set off a second round of appointments, since it would leave the U.S. Attorney’s office vacant. Mobile attorney Walter Honeycutt would be a logical successor. Honeycutt, like York before him, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican against Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson.
The U.S. Marshal’s post is expected to stay in the hands of Bill Taylor, the former police chief in the Clarke County town of Jackson, who also worked in the state Attorney General’s office under Jeff Sessions before Sessions went to the Senate.
An odd corner of the county election
One of the season’s political curiosities turned up in the race for the Mobile County juvenile judgeship between Republican incumbent Judge Pam Millsaps and Democratic nominee Jeff Glidewell.
Frank Millsaps, the judge’s husband, had served in 2000 as campaign manager for longtime juvenile Circuit Judge John Butler — who, in retirement, emerged as Glidewell’s most prominent supporter.
Millsaps said he had worked with Butler in 1997 to launch a court-appointed special advocates program at the Strickland Youth Center, and that when Butler switched parties and became a Republican, Butler asked him to manage the 2000 re-election campaign.
Comings and goings
John Little, 32, is resigning as director of legislative affairs for Sen. Sessions to become chief of staff to newly elected U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla. The son of Mobile attorney Joe Little, he has worked for Sessions for seven years.
Former state legislator Chris Pringle has been appointed as one of the city of Mobile’s representatives on the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission, the body that coordinates planning across Mobile, Baldwin and Escambia counties.
Taken together, the moves illustrate a pattern familiar in a one-party-ascendant era: a single judicial vacancy sets a chain of appointments in motion, and the lawyers who fill them will shape the federal courthouse in Mobile long after the politicians who chose them have left office.