Thirteen months earlier, before Parker Griffith had even taken the oath of office, the rumblings began: he would not remain both a Democrat and a congressman for long. Something would have to give.
The smart money said his party label would go first. Riding the Obama wave in 2008 was one thing; standing for re-election in an off-year contest as a member of the party in power, in a north Alabama district that had by then developed a firmer opinion about hope and change, was another. In December 2009, Griffith did what the smart money expected. He became a Republican.
Asked to judge it, Alabama’s political class was, in the main, unsentimental.
Survival, said the Democrats
“This is just a survival decision,” said one Democratic strategist. Sen. Richard Shelby had been after him to switch, the strategist noted. The switch would keep Republican money off him. There was no strong Republican already in the field. His real vulnerability was a Democratic primary, and the switch eliminated it. His Blue Dog colleagues were retiring, removing his cover. “I believe it is just a straightforward personal decision,” the strategist said. “He doesn’t think long term.”
Reggie Copeland Jr., interim chairman of the Mobile County Democratic Executive Committee, put it more simply: “If he just got elected as a Democrat, why make the switch now?”
A longtime Mobile-area Democratic committee member turned the blame on his own leadership: “Where was state party chair Joe Turnham during this? Apparently asleep at the wheel.”
Ed Kahalley Sr., a Mobile Democrat of long standing, offered a maxim instead of an analysis: “Whenever an Alabama Democrat tries to be like an Alabama Republican, he or she loses. The record will prove this to be true almost 100 percent of the time.”
Suspicion among the Republicans
The welcome from the other side was, in places, cool.
“Just two years ago in the Alabama Senate he fought bitterly with the Republican senators and the governor,” said Jerry Lathan of the state Republican executive committee. “He was a loyal, energetic servant of Lowell Barron’s ruling majority. He voted for Nancy Pelosi’s regime just a year ago. So is he a real Republican? Unless he professes to have had some see-the-light moment like Paul on the road to Damascus, he is a political opportunist. So I predict the primary voters will decide the matter in June 2010.”
A south Alabama GOP official was blunter: “Anyone who knew Parker during his two years in the Legislature will tell you that he was a liberal Democrat. The people I have talked to today can’t believe that he actually switched parties.”
One Republican legislator managed six words: “He is no more a Republican than Nancy Pelosi.”
Others were more welcoming. State Rep. Mike Hubbard, chairman of the Alabama GOP, said the congressman’s time in Washington had clarified matters: “He had to make a choice — to stand with the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda or join us in fighting it. I believe Parker Griffith made the right choice.” A west Mobile Republican noted the practical rule for converts: “Party switchers are heavily watched and have to earn a primary nomination. Republicans will know if it is sincere or convenient.”
The Baldwin County read
A Baldwin County Republican saw a familiar pattern. “I remember he won by only three percent, and his Alabama Senate seat went to a Republican,” the party figure said. “I suspect Parker knew he was a goner if he remained in the Democratic party. Shades of Arlen Specter.”
A former Democratic state senator and Mobile County commissioner, Gary Tanner, was the rare voice for civility. “Dr. Griffith is a great man and a friend. Just because he is an R now doesn’t change my feelings toward him,” Tanner said, invoking former Congressman Sonny Callahan’s lament that politics “is not fun anymore.”
The larger forecast
Running beneath the individual verdicts was a prediction that would prove correct. “2010 will see Alabama become a solidly red state,” one former area Democratic leader said, forecasting the loss of a legislative chamber. He also predicted Griffith would lose his primary as voters took revenge for his former affiliation, and that Rep. Bobby Bright of Montgomery would be watching the fallout closely.
Griffith’s colleague Artur Davis, the Democratic front-runner for governor, found the switch “ironic,” noting that Griffith would now carry the banner of a party that had run one of the most savage negative campaigns in the country against him in 2008.
State Treasurer Kay Ivey, alone among Republican statewide candidates, criticized Griffith directly. “I can’t help but regard this Road to Damascus conversion as solely a ploy to cling to his seat in 2010,” she said. “Political self-preservation isn’t a virtue.”
Griffith lost the June primary to Mo Brooks. The forecast about the Legislature came true that November.