County View

By Jeff Poor

Here we are 28 days from the election and although most of the local races are pretty cut-and-dried, there’s still hope in a post-BayFest Mobile we’ll have a little fervor leading up to Nov. 7.

Other than hearing it from my favorite Uncle Henry show callers, this campaign season has been fairly tame. Locally, there are a couple of senate races and the juvenile judge race that really seems to be closely contested. This could be the first election cycle in quite sometime where no one has leveled charges of negative push polling. Is it really election season without at least one of those stories on the front page of the local paper?

I am quite sure come Halloween, we’ll see the gloves come off when desperation sets in, that’s two Lagniappe issue from now. Time will tell if there will be any insight into any mudslinging that could be looming on the horizon in this space a month from now.

Herrington and the juvenile judge race

The Mobile County Juvenile Judge race has been the most hotly contested county race and Republican nominee Edmond Naman has made some surprising strides with his late entry in the race.

“We were expecting this,” said the Democratic nominee Chip Herrington. “He had a lot to do in a short period.”

Herrington, a former Vigor High School teacher and Ole Miss alumnus, worked for the local district attorney’s office for three years before going into his own private practice in 1993.

Herrington, careful not to criticize the current presiding juvenile judge, Pam Millsaps, says he wants to change the Strickland Youth Center into a hub to coordinate partnerships with other organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, churches and the Youth Violence Prevention Program at the University of South Alabama and to bring back the Wilderness Program (sometimes improperly referred to as boot camp according to Herrington) at Camp Martin.

Herrington began his quest for the juvenile judge position back in December, an eight-month head start over his opponent. Herrrington touts his definitive advantage of judicial endorsements and his support from the attorneys around Mobile.

This particular race has had a very bizarre path to where we are now. Mobile attorney Jeff Glidewell had to jump through hoops earlier this year to face Millsaps for the Republican nomination. Millsaps went on to handily defeat Glidewell in June, but was later disqualified for filing her campaign finance report late. The Alabama State Republican Executive Committee then selected Naman to run against Herrington in August. Millsaps has joined forces with Naman and has been out actively campaigning for him.

Neither Herrington nor Naman is willing to attack the other and both maintain they are going to run a clean campaign, choosing their words carefully. Refreshing.

Budget and home-rule

At last week’s bi-weekly county commission meeting, the Mobile County Commission approved its $162 million budget with accolades from Juan Chastang, Mike Dean and Stephen Nodine during the meeting.

The budget was filled with all the goodies that post-hurricane prosperity could possibly bring – a balanced budget, historic tax-cuts, more deputies for the sheriff’s department and various capital improvements throughout the county. But, mentioned in all the dialogue about the budget were the words “limited self-governance,” a part of the budget that is likely to the aggravate Saraland veterinarian Dr. Ben George, an outspoken critic of limited self-governance or home-rule as it is popularly called.

It isn’t exactly clear how the county commission plans on utilizing its newly found powers approved back in June, but all three commissioners have publicly said they would try to ensure the public is properly informed.

Can the racetracks co-exist?

The Bishop State calamity, creepy Florida congressmen and a fairly pathetic Alabama football season (does anyone care about the undefeated Auburn Tigers in Mobile?) have overshadowed former Mobile Mayor Mike Dow’s dreams of big league auto racing in Mobile.

Last week, the group headed by Dow, Gulf Coast Entertainment, LLC, announced the two final sites had been narrowed down between the Saraland/Prichard site and a site in Baldwin County off of I-10 that early reports didn’t give much of a chance to initially, eliminating the Foley Beach Expressway spot from contention.

One can only hope that Mobilians haven’t been duped into thinking that NASCAR Nextel Cup Racing is even a remote possibility for this track, but as stockcar racing grows in popularity, there is the potential that a second major league series could co-exist with NASCAR and find a home in Mobile.

So this begs the question – does this jeopardize the future of the Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola and the Mobile International Speedway in Irvington? These two tracks have coexisted by not running races on the same night – Pensacola on Friday and Mobile on Saturday for a long time. Five Flags Speedway is also the home of the historical Snowball Derby; a race traditionally run after Thanksgiving and known for its large purse. Can these two tracks coexist with this mammoth auto-racing complex in the area?

Skepticism seems to reign rampant among citizenry, but it isn’t without just cause looking back at some of the heartbreaks over the last quarter century in Mobile.

Contact Jeff Poor at jeffreypoor@yahoo.com.

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