By the summer of 2007 the presidential field had grown crowded enough that supporting a candidate required a certain amount of homework. Mobile-area political figures, asked where they stood, produced answers ranging from the studiously noncommittal to the enthusiastically specific.
The unavailable and the uncommitted
Jack Edwards, the former congressman whose name still carried real weight in Mobile, said simply that he had no involvement and did not know when he would turn his attention to the presidential race.
State Sen. Bradley Byrne offered a more interesting kind of demurral. He had been supporting John McCain, he said, but did not know whether he could continue to be so politically active in his present position. That position was chancellor-in-waiting of Alabama’s two-year college system, a post whose political neutrality was about to become a matter of some importance to him.
Charles Dodson, the former Mobile County circuit judge, was not supporting anyone and had not made up his mind. Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson thought it was too early to decide. Circuit Judge John Lockett said he was watching and learning, and confessed to being intrigued by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, adding the observation that the joy of the early stages is that you can still find someone you truly agree with, before the process forces you to settle for one of the three or four survivors.
A Mobile attorney, asked whom he liked, said it was far too early, and offered the mordant suggestion that one almost wished Lyndon LaRouche were still around.
The Democrats who had a candidate
Donald Briskman, a Mobile attorney, had not saddled up to a particular horse but thought the Democratic field outstanding. Gore was creating a lot of buzz. Bill Richardson might be the most qualified. Obama, he allowed, was a terrific communicator.
Carol Norris, the Mobile County license commissioner, was drawn to John Edwards for his intelligence, warmth and positions, and also to Sen. Joe Biden, whom she hoped might land in someone’s Cabinet. She felt a kinship with Biden, she said, because she too had a way of stating things that caused consternation, generally by speaking with what she cheerfully described as blunt force trauma.
The most detailed analysis came from Vivian Beckerle, the Democrats’ unsuccessful 2006 congressional nominee, who was fluctuating between Edwards and Clinton and floated a prediction: an Edwards-Clinton ticket. Edwards, she reasoned, was a son of the South steadily building momentum, and would be persuasive in Alabama in a way Clinton could not be in a conservative state. Clinton could pull feminists, the party’s more liberal wing and those who simply wanted to see more of Bill.
Her critique of the Clinton campaign was sharper than her praise. Clinton, she argued, may have peaked early by rushing to compete with Obama’s timing, violating an important rule: never let your opponent tell you when and what to do. Her high profile had placed her in the line of fire. Edwards, by contrast, was flying under the radar. If detractors would get past the story about his haircut and on to the substance, Beckerle thought, he would keep gaining.
The hawks
One bloc in the survey knew exactly what it wanted. Mobile attorney Braxton Counts reported that he, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Callahan and attorney Dan Cushing were supporting Congressman Duncan Hunter of California.
Their reasons were unambiguous. Hunter was a hawk. He opposed amnesty for illegal immigrants. He supported a border fence running from California to Texas.
Hunter never became a factor in the Republican race, withdrawing after minimal support in the early contests. But the enthusiasm of a former Mobile congressman and two prominent local attorneys for a candidate running explicitly on border enforcement is worth noting, because immigration was then splitting the Republican coalition and would help sink John McCain’s standing with conservatives before it eventually helped him win the nomination anyway.
The shape of the moment
Taken together, the responses map a political community in genuine suspense. The Democrats present were divided among Edwards, Clinton, Richardson and a Gore candidacy that never came. The Republicans were split between an immigration hardliner, a wounded McCain and a general sense of waiting.
Almost nobody named the two people who would actually win their parties’ nominations. In June 2007, that was not a failure of insight. It was simply an accurate reading of a race that had not happened yet.