FOB'S LAST HURRAH?
LABASH, MATT
FOB’S LAST HURRAH? by Matt Labash IT IS NEVER PLEASANT WATCHING a grown man suffer the indignities of politicking. But we nevertheless gaze, transfixed, as Alabama governor Fob James works the...
...Since the beginning of his term, Fob has sent tort-reform packages to the legislature, only to see them routinely impaled by the Don Siegelman-controlled Senate...
...Two years ago, he took on the American Civil Liberties Union in defense of the Ten Commandments and Judge Roy Moore: He informed the heathen chiggers that if they planned on wrenching the Decalogue off Moore’s courtroom wall, they’d be doing so over the brittle cadavers of the National Guard, the state troopers, and the Alabama and Auburn football teams...
...I called Winton a fat monkey, and I was in errah,” he says, suppressing a grin...
...His couch patterns look not to have been changed since his stand in the schoolhouse door...
...Ungainly reporters tagging behind, Fob navigates the tightly quartered tables, rattling iced-tea tumblers and poking his doughy mien over patrons’ plates without so much as a hairnet between his rake-over and their fried okra...
...The runoff looks to be a squeaker...
...But we nevertheless gaze, transfixed, as Alabama governor Fob James works the buffet line at Niki’s seafood restaurant on the outskirts of Birmingham...
...As an honest Christian man, Blount finally admitted he was “baldheaded and portly...
...Blount calls Fob “desperate” and a “walking, talking hypocrite...
...Instead, they emphasize his tax pledge, his education gains, his unimpeachable record on crime, and his surprisingly good economic record...
...Ralph Reed acknowledges that it will be close, and even the pros aren’t laying wagers on the outcome...
...You got your work cut out for you, guv,’” says one ornery diner, not knowing the half of it...
...It is difficult to believe this spectral specimen once exemplified a whole strain of politician endemic to the region where Fob now scarfs down waffles at a table for one...
...While the Siegelman camp is feigning neutrality, Blount’s campaign, with a formidable ground game and active outreach to black voters, is undoubtedly wooing Democrats...
...Complicating matters is that Alabama Republicans have open primaries, allowing Democrats to make crossover mischief in the runoff...
...Even a blind hog finds an acorn,” retorts Blount...
...His room’s aquamarine paint job would match his hospital gown, were the latter not caked with ashes from his Garcia y Vega Gran Premio habit...
...signs are being defaced by interlopers who keep inserting “No” between “Needs” and “More...
...Establishment Republicans resent Fob’s inability to work with the legislature (which he punishes by calling special sessions...
...They were obstinate and gregarious and unpredictable and fierce, eliciting every known human response except boredom...
...Unable to persuade Fob to fund-raise last winter, Folmar now says the campaign will be flat broke by runoff time (though national GOP and evangelical money will be forthcoming if they win...
...The governor is using the DeKalb skirmish to make war on the last six decades of Supreme Court church/state rulings...
...And I will guaran-damn-tee yuh that the ratings for Hee Haw are ten times those for Masterpiece Theater...
...Like displays in a museum, the contents of Wallace’s house are perfectly preserved and nearly obsolete...
...And he took special pains to barnstorm for Reagan’s economic recovery plan...
...Fob calls the Blount campaign “crazy” and “cowardly...
...But he was the only Democratic governor who didn’t endorse Jimmy Carter...
...At a Blount press conference, they serve vegetable trays and quiche puffs...
...A lifelong Republican, he switched parties to run for governor in then yellow-dog country, succeeding George Wallace in 1979...
...One can hardly blame Fob—he’s had a busy term...
...I’m also not a monkey whose daddy has put $2.5 million in my campaign either...
...And he approaches rock-star status with the national Christian Right— Ralph Reed is his campaign manager...
...He’s so hard of hearing a computer is parked by his side so inquiries can be typed...
...Back at Niki’s in Birmingham, I am seated at the governor’s table as he hunches over his barbecue chicken platter...
...At a Fob press conference, they serve Lay’s potato chips and jelly donuts...
...Fob and Blount are both devoutly religious conservatives (essential in a state where even the Democrats have a “director of faith outreach”), yet they offer a total contrast in styles...
...He then bent at the waist, slumped his torso, and dragged his arms like an ape to illustrate the Darwinian absurdity...
...Supreme Court begging relief in the school-prayer case...
...But while Siegelman socked away $3.5 million, the notoriously mulish James refused to raise money, or to salve the silk-stocking Republicans who’ve taken offense at his firebrand social conservatism, or even to declare his candidacy before the state chairman publicly denounced him...
...He looks down at his plate, swabs his chicken runoff with a biscuit, then looks up with contrition...
...Though Wallace is barely able to whisper on account of fatigue, I ask him if, when Fob goes, so goes forever the breed of southern governor who was part statesman, part jester, part pugilist...
...Wallace looks away from his ESPN2 toward a yellowed picture of himself with a puggish snarl, when he was a Golden Gloves champ pounding the sphenoidal sinus out of some unfortunate opponent...
...So now, in a June 30 runoff, he’ll face the business community’s candidate, Winton Blount III—Republican stalwart, construction/auto dealer magnate, millionaire, and son of “Red” Blount, Nixon’s postmaster general...
...By Alabama standards, this year’s campaign acrimony seems mild—which is a bit like saying by Louisiana standards, the candidates seem principled...
...I am delivered to Wallace’s Montgomery home by David Azbell, who is anxious to turn the Wallace endorsement into a press release on the principle that “if Gov...
...Stop by his office in Montgomery, as I did last December, and you’ll be treated to a 45-minute slide show on judicial usurpation and original intent...
...What I should have called him was a big monkey...
...More recently, Fob even offended some of his fundamentalist base, saying that a “moment of silence” bill wasn’t worth the “damn paper it’s printed on” and won’t “require sh— until you get relief from the U.S...
...Fob’s hijinks, along with his constitutional crusades, have seen him branded an embarrassment to the state by everybody from the Birmingham News to the New York Times’s Howell Raines...
...Fob staffers meanwhile produce tapes of Blount workers engaging in negative “push polls...
...Bedridden since 1996, the paralyzed Wallace has Parkinson’s, in addition to which his mattress vibrates automatically to stave off bedsores...
...But Fob’s not finished yet...
...Unregenerate segregationists or feisty liberals, these populists practiced politics not as poll-tested automatons, but as entertainers who incited and amused, delivering hell-for-leather philippics in perfectly turned phrases...
...Now, Blount says Fob lacks “vision” and is failing to lead...
...Winton Blount may be Masterpiece Theater, but Fob James is Hee Haw,” explains David Azbell, Fob’s deputy press secretary...
...Folmar, it should be noted, does not have a weak stomach...
...We file past his grip’n’grin scrapbooks, his Slim Whitman albums, and the oil painting of his late wife, Lurleen, tilted against a blank wall in an unused room...
...The incident in question took place in 1995, when Fob mocked evolution to the state board of education, telling them they “might ought to have a look at Genesis to get the whole story...
...I’m runnin’ fo’ guv’nah,” he interrupts, “and I sho’ would appreciate yo’ vote...
...But the most heinous obloquy came when Blount resurfaced one of Fob’s finest moments...
...Fob, a former barbell manufacturer, retorted, “If I dance like a monkey, then he must dance like a fat monkey...
...I’m a monkey that’s in good shape...
...In past years, if you were running for office, opponents would disclose your homosexuality, your wife’s alcoholism, and your daughter’s carnal misadventures...
...Even dear friends, like state senator Jabo Waggoner, say, “When he wants your opinion, he’ll give it to you...
...He draws up his chin, puts down his cigar, spits a Gran Premio globule on his gown, and nods in the affirmative...
...and they say their “Alabama Needs More Fob...
...Three years ago, James raised his national profile by reprising prison chain-gangs after a 30-year hiatus...
...Congress...
...The Senate Judiciary Committee is so trial-lawyer infested that during last session’s “deliberations” on Fob’s doomed tort-reform bill, a sign on the committee-room door read, “Quiet please, funeral in progress...
...Fob is a skilled campaigner, joshing and cajoling and avuncular, even when he humors Alabama alumni with the “Roll Tide” chant that is blasphemy to a former All-American halfback for Auburn...
...Lest anyone think Fob was disparaging corpulent primate scions generally, his wife Bobbie clarified the intended target, calling Blount “a big, fat sissy...
...In the same brief, he questioned the constitutionality of the court’s prayer decisions by comparing them to Darius the Mede throwing an intercessory Daniel into the lion’s den...
...Fob loves to hunt Canadian geese with his dog Elijah, a yellow lab that resides on a pillow in his office...
...There was the time Fob enraged editorial boards by encouraging teachers to give stu dents students a “pop on the fanny” like the one he earned for blowing up a toilet with a bullfrog firecracker...
...For that and many other reasons, Fob found himself in the middle of a contentious five-candidate primary...
...And to compound the ill will, Fob appointed Jere Beasley—the state’s best-known trial lawyer, who Republicans swear carries a pitchfork in his satchel—to the Auburn board of trustees...
...I ask Fob if he regrets the Blount/monkey crack...
...Over the last year, Fob has joined with the teachers of DeKalb County who are battling a federal district court injunction against school-sponsored prayer (he’s dubbed the district’s court-imposed prayer monitor “the secret police...
...After that Fobian prank to tweak Democratic senators who wouldn’t hear of any candidate but their own, Fob raised Republican ire again when he hired Beasley’s law partner as his executive secretary...
...As a fine Christian woman, Bobbie later apologized...
...Such extracurricular activities, of course, have made Fob aces with the Bubba vote...
...Shirley MacLaine has visions,” while he has a longstanding no-new-taxes pledge, which Blount rebuffs...
...But economic conservatives in the state feel these tangential endeavors have diverted Fob’s attention, not to mention reflected poorly on their New South refinement...
...But Fob isn’t worried...
...And maybe he shouldn’t be...
...Six months ago, it was believed that James would beat Democratic lieutenant governor Don Siegelman like the family pi?ata, coasting to reelection as other Republican incumbent governors are expected to do this November...
...He has said his office is “no place for sissies or weaklings,” and he proves it by drawing a Beretta 92F out of his desk drawer for show and tell, just in case an irate constituent overruns his lovely assistant, Ruby...
...Fob says “Ms...
...Blount staffers claim voters are being telephoned by “pollsters” who speak in Ebonics and hint that Blount writes bad checks...
...On June 2, he just missed the requisite majority, finishing first with 48 percent...
...Fob has pretty much read from the same hymnal, except in April, when he filed a defiant writ of mandamus with the U.S...
...Vowing not to serve more than one term, he returned as a Republican in 1995 and was looked upon as a messiah by the “Big Mules” of Alabama business, who hoped to cap jury awards in a state known as “Tort Hell...
...Blount, echoing the sentiments of many image-conscious Alabamians, opined that Alabama didn’t need a governor “dancing around the stage like a monkey...
...Matt Labash is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Talk to Blount, and there’s no time for levity, but he says he’ll make time to “hunt for industry...
...Fob, it seems, is not the keenest listener...
...James burps, and it’s a really good burp, we make sure he gets credit for being the best burper in the state of Alabama...
...I don’t know who Howard Raines is,” he shrugs...
...Both Reed and Folmar have encouraged Fob to drop the school-prayer talk from his ads, reckoning that Fob has more than solidified that base...
...Fob, in fact, has forged a career of being unpredictable and of alienating almost every constituency...
...There’s one old hand who thinks Fob James will win: George Wallace...
...But even America’s most heavily armed mayor has a bit of trouble keeping Fob on the reservation...
...Entertaining though it is, all this internecine spilling of blood and treasure is enough to give Montgomery mayor and Fob campaign chairman Emory Folmar an ulcer...
...He’s a hell of a dog—writes all my legislation,” Fob says...
...Nor does he seem terribly troubled that every major state paper has endorsed Blount, as has every other Republican candidate and several of his own exstaffers...
...It was hardly the first such Fob manifesto, but Folmar didn’t find out about it until he read it in the papers...
...Or the time he enraged editorial boards by suggesting state employees should emulate the “blinding efficiency” of the Waffle House, where he frequently dines...
...There are many to choose from...
...Blount types say Fob is a detriment to attracting industry, but Alabama leads the nation in start-up businesses and, like the rest of the country, is enjoying record-low unemployment...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 41
