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Principal, TransAdvise, 2013-present

Senior Editor, Industry Analysis, Commercial Carrier Journal, 2011-2013

Executive Director, Trucking Research/Analysis, Randall-Reilly, 2011-2013

Editorial Director, Commercial Carrier Journal, 1998-2011

Editorial Director, Fleet/Dealer/Aftermarket, Randall-Reilly, 2009-2011

Editor, McGraw-Hill Aviation Week Group, 1990-1998

Congressional Editor, Aviation Daily, 1987-1997

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Reason for Seeking Public Office:

Alabama's 6th Congressional District is one of the reddest in the nation. According to leading political analyst Charlie Cook's Partisan Voting Index only four Congressional Districts nationwide are more reliably Republican.

So why should a Democrat even run?

A Democratic candidacy gives voters a real choice and ensures that moderate and progressive policy options at least have the opportunity to be on the table during the 2014 election.

Only once since 1998 has a Democrat run in the 6th district, and that's simply not how the American political system is supposed to work. Alabama may be a red state, but the state legislature -- with federal government approval -- has engineered congressional districts to corral as many Democrats as possible into the 7th district while making surrounding districts -- especially the 6th -- far more Republican than they otherwise would be.

Because Democrats perceive that they cannot win in the 6th district, they don't run, and Democrats tune out. It took ethics allegations surrounding retiring Rep. Spencer Bachus to draw Democratic opposition in 2012.

Alabama's gerrymandering has, in effect, disenfranchised anyone in the district who is not a Republican and ensured that progressive policy options are ignored. Instead, the debate falls somewhere between the very conservative and the reactionary.

Redistricting has carefully sliced out Democratic-leaning communities and neighborhoods in Jefferson, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery counties for the 7th district in ways that strongly benefit Republicans in the 6th, 4th and 2nd districts.

Ironically, modern-day gerrymandering in Alabama resulted from efforts to implement the Voting Rights Act. In the early 1990s, a well-meaning but misguided effort by the U.S. Justice Department ensured that African-Americans had the opportunity for representation in Southern states where there had been systematic electoral discrimination in the past.

This effort did, indeed, succeed in creating a majority African-American Congressional District in Alabama, the 7th District. Indeed, following the 2012 redistricting, the 7th District is 64% African-American. That might sound like a progressive development, but the broader consequences have been perverse.
While African-Americans -- a reliable Democratic voting bloc -- are guaranteed to win the 7th district they have virtually no influence in Alabama's other Congressional districts. This is true especially in the four Congressional districts that border the 7th district. Republicans in those districts have even less incentive to temper their right-wing positions or consider issues important to African-Americans in particular or Democrats in general than they would had the districts been drawn more naturally to keep entire counties within Congressional districts as much as possible, for example. Gerrymandering has disenfranchised Democrats in several Alabama districts as well as Republicans living in the 7th district.
The Supreme Court's decision last year in a Voting Rights Act case brought, coincidentally, by the 6th District's Shelby County, Ala., may ultimately unravel the legal justification for gerrymandering. And yet, don't expect Alabama's Republican-controlled legislature to rush out and change the current district boundaries. Conceding a single district to Democrats in return for ensuring Republican's certain dominance of up to four others is a very good deal for the GOP.