Best Press Release of the Alabama Governor’s Race So Far

This statement from the Davis campaign in response to the article by Joe L. Reed in the AEA Journal is about as good as it gets.  Other campaigns should take notes on rebutting histrionics with substance.

Artur Davis: Joe Reed is Wrong on Race and Leadership, Again

Congressman Artur Davis issued the following statement today regarding Dr. Joe Reed’s efforts to inject race into the debate over health care reform.  In an opinion column submitted to the Alabama School Journal, Reed attacks Davis on racial grounds for not embracing one version of health care reform.  Reed writes, “His Congressional district is blacker than any Congressional district in the state and poorer than any Congressional district in the state, yet he was the only black congressman in the nation to oppose Obama’s health care plan. Every other member in the Congressional Black Caucus voted for it.”  Reed also writes, “you cannot curse Bubba and Cooter, Big Man, and June Bug in the daytime and beg them at night.”

“Joe Reed and I have a policy-based difference over whether HR 3962 is the best way to mend our country’s inequitable and costly healthcare system. Unlike Dr. Reed, I believe we can do better than an approach that could cause numerous Alabama employers to reduce their payroll or walk away from offering coverage to their employees.

We have a much more profound difference over race and leadership. Reed believes that a public official’s race matters more than his capacity for independent judgment. He believes that a black American who holds elected office must follow a certain path or be inauthentic.  Dr. Reed also believes in a shameless double standard: when his candidate for Governor, Ron Sparks, denounced the House health care bill in August and refused to say whether he would even enforce a public option as Governor as recently as October, Reed’s response was not outrage but silence.

On all of this, Joe Reed is wrong. Just as he was wrong to fight to overturn the results of a legislative race in 2006 because the winner was white, and in Reed’s opinion, the wrong color for her district; just as he was wrong to stand on the floor of the Democratic convention in Denver to oppose Barack Obama even though the race was over and Hilary Clinton had graciously conceded. Just as he was wrong to urge black Alabamians to reject Barack Obama during the 2008 primary on the flimsy ground that they should appreciate America was not ready for a black President.

I said on the night I won my congressional seat in 2002 that I would not determine my viewpoints and obligations based on race.  I also vigorously reject the insinuation that there is a uniquely “black” way of understanding an issue, and I strongly suspect that most Alabamians will as well.

Joe Reed’s forty-two year career of public service contains much good.  But his injection of race into a serious debate over public policy should offend black and white Alabamians alike, and I hope Ron Sparks will join me in denouncing such a divisive approach.”

UPDATE:

** Chuck Dean of the Birmingham News, Markeshia Ricks of the Montgomery Advertiser, and the Associated Press all touched on this as well.

** My friend, Jennifer Foster also offers her opinion.

** Mooncat at Left in Alabama offers us a side-by-side comparison in classiness.

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