Will the real Kay Ivey please speak up? The wide divide between Ivey’s official and campaign messages
Politicians everywhere would kill for Governor Kay Ivey‘s approval ratings. She is amongst the most popular governors in the nation. Just last month, a poll showed Ivey as the third highest ranked governor, with a 67% approval rating. With numbers like that, at this point all she has to do is not screw up royally to keep both her seat and her popularity in tact. Which begs the question: why, oh why, can’t her office stop fumbling the football on easy asks? Several months ago Alabama Today detailed the painstaking efforts it took to get the names of the governor’s appointees since taking office. If you’re curious they can be found here. What we do with the data once we get it is simple — we post the list. Heck, we don’t even give commentary. We just provide the public with information we believe they should have. We’ve posted gubernatorial appointments since our site began years ago. Governors everywhere release their appointees, usually celebrating their diversity and experience. It’s a no-brainer or at least it should be. Here’s how it should work, just as it did when Bentley was governor: A media outlet (in this case Alabama Today) emails the governor’s communication staff and says, “Hey, can we have your appointments?” then the same day or a day or two later they respond with the list. Bam. Media outlet posts list. It’s that simple. Ivey’s campaign has centered its messaging around her bringing accountability and transparency back to Montgomery. She went so far to take what the Anniston Star called a TRANSPARENCY PLEDGE when she first took office in 2017. It was pretty simple, let’s see here: “The Ivey administration will be open, it will be transparent, and it will be honest.” Well that seems pretty direct. So why did a list that Governor Robert Bentley’s office produced overnight take 61 days for Ivey’s office to produce? And why, oh why after finally producing them and telling us that they have a new process so that they can turn them around quicker, are we here again now 4 weeks and 4 days from the time I most recently requested them? Not only do I not have a list after emailing the Press Secretary Daniel Sparkman (4x times) and Communications Director Josh Pendergrass (3x) then looping in the Chief of Staff Steve Pelham on the third and fourth follow up emails, we’re getting crickets. That’s right, not even so much as an acknowledgement email. So when the Governor promised transparency and accountability was it only to media outlets she and her staff like? Is that one’s who don’t run commentary on how hard it is to get simple information? Or was it my asking about her Bentley hold-overs that earned me the silent treatment? Or am I simply making excuses for the fact the Governor herself doesn’t want the public to see who she’s appointed to boards and commissions? Has she been making appointments that are controversial and she doesn’t want that to come out two weeks before an election? It’s important to remember Ivey kept professional communications consultants on through her transition and initial months in office citing the need for their expertise. Those same consultants are now her campaign team, along with a highly (if not over) qualified communications director, Debbee Hancock who’s experience make both the staff in the governors office look like amateurs. That brings us to the final possibility, the governor’s official office simply doesn’t have the competency levels needed to understand that they’re not hurting me personally by not giving our publication information, but that they’re hurting the governor herself? They represent Governor Ivey. They are her voice. No one is getting up on Election Day to vote for Daniel Sparkman or Josh Pendergrass, but people going to the polls will note when a candidate doesn’t fulfill their promises and/or hides information from them and that’s exactly what Ivey is doing at this moment by refusing to disclose her appointments (and her elusive schedule). Ivey has two teams and currently two diametrically opposed positions on transparency and accountability. Let’s hope the strong voice in the governors ear is the one that gives the people what she has promised and the Ivey administration will be open, it will be transparent, and it will be honest moving forward. Maybe even as soon as today since we checked back with them on appointments this afternoon; we’ll keep you posted. More to come on this topic before the election.
Editorial: Behind the scenes – Challenges and changes inside the governor’s press operations
Think about Anthony Scaramucci, Jay Carney, Sean Spicer, Dana Perino, Josh Earnest or even Sarah Huckabee Sanders… if you don’t think a rock solid or fumbling mess of a press shop can help or hurt an elected official — you’re wrong. After all, political communications isn’t a job for the faint of heart. The hours are long. The stress is high and the demands, internally and externally, can be taxing. Anyone can do it but few can do it well. It’s a skill set that most experts agree can’t be taught. Yes, you can teach someone to write a press release announcing a new manufacturing plant, or giving mundane jobs statistics — some, though clearly not all, can even reply to simple media inquiries with facts, figures and relevant quotes — but shaping the direction of an official message, is far more nuanced and complicated. Perhaps that’s why when Governor Kay Ivey transitioned to governor she brought in a team of political experts to supplement her internal team. Things don’t always transition well Despite what one would hope is the best efforts of Ivey’s team, sometimes things simply haven’t seemed to staff and management at Alabama Today, to transition well. At times Ivey’s office has been unable fulfill simple requests in a timely manner including some that Bentley’s team accomplished with seemingly little effort. On Thursday, Jan. 4, 2018 Alabama Today first reached out Daniel Sparkman in the Governor’s office looking for a list of Ivey’s appointments since she took office, as well as a list of top agency heads she had replaced from the Bentley administration. On January 23, we finally received the latter list. We’re still waiting on the list of appointments. Under the Bentley administration, simliar requests with his longtime spokeswoman Jennifer Ardis were answered within 24hours, as evidenced below: Why the delay? Ivey’s press secretary says that the appointments office does not keep records the way that Bentley’s did. He insists no list of their more than 400+ appointments exists. That the answer to who she has appointed to date lies within a stack (though it’s not clear if that’s digital or printed) of appointment letters. Another request for those letters was met this week with a form to fill out. That request hasn’t been the only challenge encountered recently. As described in an earlier piece today, Alabama Today was briefly on an email list receiving the governor’s schedule and then we weren’t. No explanation available. Then we received conflicting information on the intended transparency levels of details in said email. Perhaps the novice of her team is why Ivey insisted on having outside help when she took over the governor’s office. Outside Help Sometimes in the politics, when you find yourself in crises situations — say when you take over the state following the resignation of the previous governor amid a growing scandal — you need to hire outside messaging help to supplement the efforts and abilities of your own team. Which is exactly what Ivey did last April. On April 10, 2017, the day Robert Bentley resigned and she became governor, Ivey hired Brent Buchanan‘s public relations firm, Direct Response LLC, on a two-month emergency contract. At the time, Buchanan said his role was to help Ivey with the transition from lieutenant governor to governor and to help Ivey communicate her message. According to the Decatur Dailey Buchanan said, “She’s been a friend since she’s been in the treasurer’s office, and I’ve been helping her since then, so it was just natural to help her in this increased capacity.” He went on to say, “She may not need me in six months.” In June 2017, she re-upped Buchanan’s contract for $6,500-a-month to help get her messages out, but ultimately ended his contract on July 31, 2017. Ivey formally announced she was running for Governor on September 7, 2017. On Aug. 22, 2017, her office notified Buchanan they had overpaid him, which his firm remitted back to the Governor’s office. Buchanan has since transitioned to working as the senior advisor to Ivey’s re-election campaign. Ivey contracted Buchanan’s firm, in Sept. 2017 according to the Sept. 1 – Sept. 30 campaign finance reports. He’s been working on the campaign ever since. So who does that leave in Ivey’s communications shop? Ivey’s communications and media team Josh Pendergrass | Communications Director A little over a week after Ivey took office, she appointed Josh Pendergrass, a lawyer and pastor, to be her Communications Director. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Lambuth University and a Juris Doctor degree from Thomas Goode Jones School of Law at Faulkner University. Prior to working with Ivey, he had been in private law practice since 2011 and had served as the Senior Pastor at Bethany Baptist Church in Crane Hill, Ala. since 2013. He has also worked on several legislative and statewide campaigns in both Alabama and Tennessee. Daniel Sparkman | Press Secretary – Promoted to replace original press secretary Eileen Jones who was reportedly fired. One of just a few Bentley staff holdovers in the executive office of the Governor. According to his LinkedIn profile: Daniel Sparkman began his professional career in Oct. 2003 as a Production Technician with WFSA 12. He then went on to learn many of the jobs in production and some in news, before he found the opportunity for advancement and moved to KHOG/KHBS in Fayetteville, Ark. as a Photojournalist in Dec. 2004. Sparkman worked there for seven months before taking a hiatus from television to work as a banker. He returned to the news in March 2006 where he stayed for nearly eight and a half years until he joined former Gov. Robert Bentley‘s team as the Digital Media Coordinator in June 2014. In July 2016, Bentley reappointed Sparkman to Deputy Press Secretary and Director of Digital Media, where he worked closely with the Communications Director to ensure all media inquiries receive appropriate and timely responses, and continued to be responsible for overseeing all digital aspects of the Governor’s Press Office. He was reappointed to the same
