Loading ...It was very unclear going into the meeting held yesterday what the purpose was and whether Joe Turnham and Jim Spearman were of one accord on the necessity of the gathering. There was very little clarity coming out of the meeting either…Joe Reed held a meeting and almos nothing productive happened.
Brad Warren, the local Democratic chairman in 2006 and one of those ousted by Turnham, disputed whether Turnham had the authority to disband the county party and called into question his motives.
Warren and other members and officers of the county Democratic Executive Committee who attended Saturday’s meeting wanted to discuss Turnham’s actions, but Reed said he would hear no comments regarding events of the past.
“I’m not here to fight that battle,” he said at the meeting, held at a union hall on Halls Mill Road. “What’s done is done.”
Many in the audience begged to differ, but Reed pressed on, asking for names of those who would like to be considered for an interim executive committee that would run Democratic affairs in the county until next year’s party elections.
Warren and others said they would simply submit a list of the party members who were serving before Turnham dissolved their committee.
Reed countered that the process had to be open to anybody who wanted to apply. Turnham, he said, would make the final decision on who would serve.
Milton Morrow, another member of the dissolved committee, said that Turnham’s move was a power grab, a way for him to install those who would do his bidding.
Turnham, who was not at the meeting, told the Press-Register that his dissolution of the committee had the full backing of the state party. Repeated complaints from elected officials and prominent party members in Mobile County led to the move, he said.
This most exasperating thing about this whole episode to me, as someone on the outside of the dysfunctional state party structure, is that when you disband one of the few functioning county parties, regardless of whether some “local elected officials” weren’t happy, you do nothing but accelerate the disillusionment with the State Democratic Executive Committee and the entire state party structure. If there was a problem in the county party, that should have been resolved within the county, with assistance in mediating by the state party. Instead, what you have is exactly what Brad Warren says, a powerplay by the state party to install “more acceptable” county committee members.
UPDATE: George Talbot at the Mobile Press-Register reports in the “Political Skinny” that Brad Warren may have crippled his own case by re-registering in Baldwin County (which he indicated was a means of protest), because anyone who is a registered voter in another county is not eligible to sit on the county committee.
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