Steve Flowers: We lost some good ones in 2021
As has been my custom for 18 years, I like for my yearend column to be a remembrance of Alabama political figures who have passed away during the year. We lost some good ones this year. We lost our oldest past governor, John Patterson in June. Governor Patterson passed away at age 99 at his ancestral home in rural Tallapoosa County surrounded by his family. Patterson was Governor from 1959-1963. He defeated George Wallace in the 1958 Governor’s Race, which featured a field of 14 candidates. He is the only man to beat George Wallace in a governor’s race. Patterson was Attorney General of Alabama prior to being elected Governor. He subsequently was appointed to the Court of Criminal Appeals by Wallace and was reelected numerous times and retired as a Judge of the Alabama Court of Appeals. He was a treasure trove of Alabama political history. He was Governor during a turbulent time in Alabama history. Former Alabama Attorney General Jimmy Evans died in February at 81. Evans was a native of Montgomery and was Montgomery County District Attorney prior to being elected Attorney General. Retired Alfa lobbyist Milton Parsons passed away in March at 91. Milton was renowned on Goat Hill as a straight arrow and straight shooter. He was an honest, trustworthy, Christian gentleman. He was Alfa’s chief lobbyist for 50 years. He was a devoted family man and devout Christian. Former Troy mayor, Jimmy Lunsford died in May at 78. He was mayor of Troy for 30 years. Economic development was his forte. He was a tremendous steward of the city’s finances. He left Troy in good shape financially. Former Mobile congressman Sonny Callahan passed away at 88 in late June. He was one of a long line of popular and effective congressmen from the first district. The list includes Frank Boykin, Jack Edwards, Jo Bonner, Bradley Byrne, and Sonny. Congressman Callahan served 10 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to his two decades in Congress, he served in the Alabama House of Representatives and then six years in the State Senate. He was successful in the trucking business in conjunction with his legislative and congressional career. State Representative Thad McClammy of Montgomery passed away at 79 in August. McClammy represented parts of Montgomery County for 27 years. I had the privilege to serve with Thad in the legislature. He was a real gentleman. His word was as good as gold. He had a tremendous turnout for his funeral. State Senator Kirk Hatcher did a fabulous job singing two favorite hymns. Former State Legislator and longtime Geneva County Probate Judge Harold Wise died in August at 96 years old. He lived an amazing and colorful life. He was a loved and respected Geneva County political figure. He was the uncle to Supreme Court Justice Kelli Wise. Kelli adored him. He was her mentor. She says he sparked her love of politics and her desire to have a career in public service. Retired Winston-Marion County Circuit Judge Bobby Aderholt passed away in September at 85. He was a 50-year public servant, as well as lay minister. People say he probably married or buried half the folks in and around Haleyville and that part of Northwest Alabama. There was a tremendous turnout for his funeral. He was revered. State Senator Greg Reed sang at his funeral. Judge Aderholt was the father of our senior congressman, Robert Aderholt who is completing his 25th year in Congress. Former State Senator Jim Preuitt of Talladega died in September at 86. He was also a State Representative and Probate Judge of Talladega County. He was a successful businessman and family man. We lost some good ones this year. Happy New Year! Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama Newspapers. Steve served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at www.steveflowers.us.
Alabama sees jump in COVID-19 test positivity
Health officials on Tuesday urged people to take precautions, such as wearing masks and getting booster shots, after the positivity rate for COVID-19 tests more than doubled over the last week. The Alabama Department of Public Health said in a news release that the state positivity rate for COVID-19 tests had more doubled over the past week to reach 22.1%. All but six counties are classified as having high levels of community transmission. “We are seeing outbreaks happening all over town. We are hearing about groups of people coming into our clinics to be tested, who were at the same party or went to the same after-school event, go to the same church or maybe attended the same social gathering,” Dr. Rendi Murphree, an epidemiologist with the Mobile County Public Health Department, said Tuesday. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Alabama tripled over the last two weeks to reach 1,747 new cases per day on December 26, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Bert Eichold, the health officer for Mobile County, said over 50% of recently sequenced samples from COVID-19 patients came back as the omicron. He said while early indications are that omicron causes milder illness, it is more contagious than earlier variants. He urged people to wear face masks, avoid large social gatherings, to get vaccinated and take booster shots if eligible. “I’m tired of COVID. Everybody is tired of COVID but get vaccinated. It works.” Eichold said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Attorneys reviewing judge’s order on prison staffing, care
Attorneys for inmates say they are reviewing a federal judge’s ruling that extended a deadline for Alabama to increase prison staffing but also ordered other changes to the care of inmates with mental illnesses. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson on Monday issued a massive 600-page opinion regarding corrective measures for mental health care in state prisons. Thompson in 2017 ruled that mental health care in state prisons was so “horrendously inadequate” that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. “We are reviewing this ruling now but are gratified by the time and care Judge Thompson has put into this issue,” Larry Hannan, a spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote in an email. Thompson chided the state for the lack of progress in addressing a shortage of correctional officers, an issue that he said was at the root of many of the problems. The federal judge extended a deadline from 2022 until 2025 for the state to adequately staff prisons but said the state should meet yearly benchmarks. According to the opinion, attorneys representing inmates had asked Thompson to enforce his original 2022 deadline. Thompson wrote he was adopting a “hybrid of the timelines proposed” by the two sides. He granted the state an extension but said yearly staffing benchmarks will be developed for the prison system to meet by the end of 2022, 2023, and 2024. “However, when the amount of work (much of which should have been done years ago) ADOC must put into achieving adequate correctional staffing is considered, July 2025 is just around the corner. Time is of the essence. Every week and month is dear. The court, therefore, agrees with the plaintiffs that it is necessary to impose certain intermediate benchmarks against which ADOC’s progress may be assessed,” Thompson wrote.
Harry Reid, former Senate majority leader, dies at 82
Harry Reid, the former U.S. Senate majority leader and Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, has died. He was 82. Reid died Tuesday “peacefully” and surrounded by friends at home in suburban Henderson, “following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer,” according to family members and a statement from Landra Reid, his wife of 62 years. “Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend,” she said. “We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially grateful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him,” Landra Reid said. Funeral arrangements will be announced in the coming days, she said. Harry Mason Reid, a combative former boxer-turned-lawyer, was widely acknowledged as one of toughest dealmakers in Congress, a conservative Democrat in an increasingly polarized chamber who vexed lawmakers of both parties with a brusque manner and this motto: “I would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight.” Over a 34-year career in Washington, Reid thrived on behind-the-scenes wrangling and kept the Senate controlled by his party through two presidents — Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama — a crippling recession and the Republican takeover of the House after the 2010 elections. President Joe Biden said that during the two decades they served together in Congress, and the eight years they worked together when Biden was vice president, Reid met the marker for what he believed was the most important measure of a person — their actions and their words. “If Harry said he would do something, he did it. If he gave you his word, you could bank on it. That’s how he got things done for the good of the country for decades,” Biden said in a statement. Reid retired in 2016 after an accident left him blind in one eye and revealed in May 2018 that he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was undergoing treatment. Less than two weeks ago, officials and one of his sons, Rory Reid, marked the renaming of the busy Las Vegas airport as Harry Reid International Airport. Rory Reid is a former Clark County Commission chairman and Democratic Nevada gubernatorial candidate. Neither Harry nor Landra Reid attended the December 14 ceremony held at the facility that had been known since 1948 as McCarran International Airport, after a former U.S. senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran. Reid was known in Washington for his abrupt style, typified by his habit of unceremoniously hanging up the phone without saying goodbye. “Even when I was president, he would hang up on me,” Obama said in a 2019 tribute video to Reid. Reid was frequently underestimated, most recently in the 2010 elections when he looked like the underdog to tea party favorite Sharron Angle. Ambitious Democrats, assuming his defeat, began angling for his leadership post. But Reid defeated Angle, 50% to 45%, and returned to the pinnacle of his power. For Reid, it was legacy time. “I don’t have people saying ‘he’s the greatest speaker,’ ‘he’s handsome,’ ‘he’s a man about town,’” Reid told The New York Times in December that year. “But I don’t really care. I feel very comfortable with my place in history.” Born in Searchlight, Nevada, to an alcoholic father who killed himself at 58 and a mother who served as a laundress in a bordello, Reid grew up in a small cabin without indoor plumbing and swam with other children at a pool at a local brothel. He hitchhiked to Basic High School in Henderson, Nevada, 40 miles (64 kilometers) from home, where he met the wife he would marry in 1959, Landra Gould. At Utah State University, the couple became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The future senator put himself through George Washington University law school by working nights as a U.S. Capitol police officer. At age 28, Reid was elected to the Nevada Assembly and at age 30 became the youngest lieutenant governor in Nevada history as Gov. Mike O’Callaghan’s running mate in 1970. Elected to the U.S. House in 1982, Reid served in Congress longer than anyone else in Nevada history. He narrowly avoided defeat in a 1998 Senate race when he held off Republican John Ensign, then a House member, by 428 votes in a recount that stretched into January. After his election as Senate majority leader in 2007, he was credited with putting Nevada on the political map by pushing to move the state’s caucuses to February, at the start of presidential nominating season. That forced each national party to pour resources into a state that, while home to the country’s fastest growth over the past two decades, still only had six votes in the Electoral College. Reid’s extensive network of campaign workers and volunteers twice helped deliver the state for Obama. Obama in 2016 lauded Reid for his work in the Senate, declaring, “I could not have accomplished what I accomplished without him being at my side.” The most influential politician in Nevada for more than a decade, Reid steered hundreds of millions of dollars to the state and was credited with almost single-handedly blocking construction of a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas. He often went out of his way to defend social programs that make easy political targets, calling Social Security “one of the great government programs in history.″ Reid championed suicide prevention, often telling the story of his father, a hard-rock miner who took his own life. He stirred controversy in 2010 when he said in a speech on the floor of the Nevada legislature it was time to end legal prostitution in the state. Reid’s political moderation meant he was never politically secure in his home state or entirely trusted in the increasingly polarized Senate. Democrats grumbled about his votes for a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion and the Iraq war resolution in 2002, something Reid later said it was his
