Political Observations - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 15:56 - 0 Comments

A Positive Gubernatorial Campaign Would Be Good For Alabama

The gubernatorial nominees from both the Democratic and Republican parties have promised to run positive campaigns, free of attack ads, in the general election. The people of Alabama deserve that sort of a campaign. Fortunately, both nominees made the pledge and for that Robert Bentley and Ron Sparks should be commended. I agree with Ron that Alabama deserves a clean campaign run on the issues because the state is facing so many problems, including the Gulf oil spill crisis and very high unemployment. All Alabamians also should agree and I believe most do.

The primary winners ran clean campaigns and that obviously paid off for them. Now we should all look forward to a campaign in the fall with real issues being debated. If I had to single out the main issues the two nominees should address, those would be: the creation of good paying jobs; improving public education at every level; and providing adequate health care to all Alabama citizens. Each candidate will have to explain to the voters that if no additional revenues are to be provided, exactly which state programs will be cut and within those programs exactly where the specific cuts will be made. Nobody who really understands the operations of state government and our system of public education can truthfully say that there are sufficient revenues coming in to fund existing programs without massive cuts. It will be interesting to see how this issue is handled this fall by the candidates as they approach the November 2nd Election Day.