Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks came to Mobile over the weekend with a promise and a hint. The promise: he will be on a statewide ballot in 2010. The hint: it very likely will not be for governor.
Speaking Saturday to roughly 60 to 70 members and guests of the Mobile Area Democratic Association at the Tiny Diny, the term-limited commissioner said he would run for either governor or lieutenant governor and would settle the question within about 10 days. But in an answer to a question after his half-hour address, he framed the calculation in terms that pointed toward the lower office.
The Davis Question
U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Birmingham, who was moving toward a run for governor, loomed over the room. Sparks was complimentary and blunt at the same time.
“Artur would make a fine governor,” Sparks said. “But Artur cannot get more votes in Alabama than Obama.” The president had lost Alabama to Republican nominee John McCain the previous November. Sparks argued that a Davis nomination would clear the way for a Republican — he named Bradley Byrne, Kay Ivey and Tim James as the likely beneficiaries.
“Yes, he will be very strong in the Democratic primary, but what about November?” Sparks said. “That’s reality.”
It was a familiar posture. A year earlier, Sparks had been straining to challenge U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, only to stand down when state Sen. Vivian Figures of Mobile entered the race. He said then, as he said Saturday, that he did not want a divisive primary that would leave the party weaker in the fall.
A Democrat Who Wins Republican Counties
Sparks carried 62 of Alabama’s 67 counties in his last race, including Winston County, the legendary Republican stronghold known as the “free state.” He said he essentially tied in two of the five he did not carry outright. He also said he is regularly urged to switch parties on the theory that his path would be easier as a Republican.
“I’ll never shy from being a Democrat,” he told the luncheon. “You should stick with the one that brought you to the dance and you should dance with her.”
Agriculture, Trade and a Jab at Sessions
Much of the address was a defense of farming as an economic engine. Alabama agriculture is a $3 billion industry that raises a billion chickens a year, Sparks said, and supports 467,000 jobs — about 27 percent of the workforce — producing $5.5 billion in earnings and $40 billion in economic activity.
“Farmers deserve more credit than we give them,” he said. “I never want the time to come where people are putting food on our tables the way they are putting gas in our cars.” He said nine people were behind bars for agricultural fraud, six more were headed to jail and as many as 25 more could follow.
He returned repeatedly to Cuba, a subject with direct meaning at the Port of Mobile, roughly 600 miles and two days’ sailing from Havana. Sixty percent of the poultry Cuba receives comes from Alabama, he said, and 90 percent of its wood. He called the trade embargo outdated and said it should be lifted, then aimed a sharp aside at Sessions, who had voted against him on the issue.
“Nobody voted down the line with Bush like Jeff Sessions,” Sparks said, adding that the senator had opposed a Gulf Coast assistance package that would have helped Mobile. “One day though we’ve got to move him out of the way.”
PACT, Jobs and Alternative Fuels
Sparks touched on the state’s prepaid college tuition program, PACT, whose value had been battered by the collapsing stock market. “I think that contract said ‘are guaranteed,’” he said. “It doesn’t say, ‘maybe if the stock market stays good.’”
On the recession: “Rural Alabama is getting hit as hard as it’s ever been hit before. Companies are going out of business one after another.” He blamed the Central American Free Trade Agreement for hollowing out places like Fort Payne, where sock mill employment had fallen from 8,000 jobs to 1,500.
His prescription leaned heavily on alternative fuels. Two-thirds of Alabama is forest, he noted, and the state also has switchgrass and poultry litter. Alabama burns about 2.5 billion gallons of fuel a year; producing even 10 percent of that in state, he said, “we can rebuild rural Alabama with alternative fuels.” What the state lacks, he argued, are the financial incentives Tennessee and Florida offer.
Schools, Health and Gambling
Sparks said he had worked to pull sugared soft drinks out of school cafeterias and to put Alabama produce on lunch trays — satsumas from Satsuma, sweet potatoes from Cullman, peaches from Chilton County, apples from Crow Mountain. He argued for teaching every student a trade or skill: “We are not all doctors and lawyers and we’re not supposed to be.”
On gambling, an issue that would define his eventual campaign, he said politicians demagogue the subject. “We’ve got gambling,” he said. “The problem is we don’t tax it.” He called for a professional gaming commission rather than leaving enforcement to local sheriffs, said he did not want to expand gambling statewide, and said he had taken no campaign money from Mississippi gaming interests.