This is an opinion column.
If you’re interested in Alabama’s two-party system, there’s good news: After years of neglect, the Alabama Democratic Party has learned to use its Twitter account again.
The bad news is that the Alabama Democratic Party has learned to use its Twitter account again.
And after years of silly, embarrassing internal conflict, Democrats in Alabama have given up their squabbling among themselves long enough to argue with me.
Last Friday, I publicly reminded Alabama’s other party that that was the deadline to certify candidates for the November ballot, which they had not yet done, despite having had more than enough time to do so.
The Alabama Republican Party also dawdled, but had already submitted its documents the day before.
This was odd, as the Democratic National Committee had made significant efforts to give Alabama and other states more time to file their certifications.
But no, the state party waited until the last day and then insisted on Twitter that this had been the plan from the beginning and that all parties in the party had agreed on it.
“The paperwork was filed and all entities involved agreed that the paperwork would be filed on this date,” the state party official said via his Twitter/X account. “There is no nefarious or negative reason. All parties, i.e. Vice President Harris, the DNC and the AL Democrats, agreed.”
Case closed. All is well. Nothing to see here, folks.
This tweet appeared at 10:40 a.m. Friday morning, minutes after the party submitted the first version of its certification forms to the Alabama Secretary of State.
Yes, I said first version because the state party, which supposedly had everything under control, was in agreement with all parties, etc., had to go back to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office later that afternoon and refile the whole thing.
The fact that anyone was in a government office late Friday afternoon to accept the amended registration speaks more for the Alabama Secretary of State than for the Alabama Democratic Party.
The differences between the original application and the amended application are subtle and largely stylistic.
First, the revised forms place Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Randy Kelley’s name below the names of the certified electors, rather than placing him on a cover sheet above the electors.
Second, the party had the state stamp each of its pages “received” (just as the Republican Party had done the day before), not just the first page.
Third and finally, the amended forms included two additional names on a list of candidates to be added to the Alabama general election ballot that had been removed from the list when first filed.
These candidates? Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
That’s right, a party that claims its candidates are “on the same side” has removed the party’s top two candidates from its candidate pages this fall.
To be fair, Harris and Walz were listed elsewhere in the first document as the party’s candidates, and I don’t think Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen would have dared to make an issue of it. But all of this shows that when the party insisted it had its affairs in hand, it did not have its affairs in hand.
Moreover, the Republicans did not make this mistake.
It’s worth remembering why Alabama’s filing deadline was last Friday in the first place.
Alabama was one of two states that had statutory filing deadlines after the Democratic convention in Chicago. The other was Ohio. Both states’ legislatures later moved their deadlines to accommodate Democrats, as they had done for the national parties in previous years, but the DNC didn’t want to take any chances.
This time, the DNC has decided to hold a “virtual roll call” in the first week of August, just to be safe and to give everyone time to fight back against the Republican machinations.
Let’s expand on this point: The DNC spent resources to conduct a virtual roll call—making the nationally televised roll call and actual convention anything but symbolic—to give Alabama and Ohio time to file their papers.
How did the Alabama Democratic Party use these extra two and a half weeks?
Mostly fights with the DNC.
The same Alabama Democratic Party that today claims that everyone is on the same page had announced in a press release just a week earlier that it would send two competing delegations to the Democratic National Convention.
The chairman of the meaningless state party accused the DNC of racism and threatened to sue the national party if he did not get his way.
“It is the same party in Alabama that DNC officials had warned authorities to keep an eye on,” according to DNC documents obtained by Barnett Wright of the Birmingham Times.
“The delegation process in Alabama has been controlled by a number of malicious actors who have made it very clear that they will not work with us,” the delegation overview states. “We should continue to pay very, very close attention to this state before and during the convention in Chicago.”
But remember: This party is “on the same side” as those with whom it is publicly at odds.
The good news is that the paperwork has been submitted and the forms accepted. Alabama will have two sets of candidates to choose from in the fall. It is a long way from having a functioning second party – a party that inspires confidence in its candidates rather than provokes conflict, a party that cares more about its external rivals than its internal ones.
But a party on paper that was submitted – and resubmitted – at the last moment.
