As I see it, Cooper has the advantage as I think Langford’s supporters will split amongst the other candidates…. however, his supporters could kill some of his momentum if they are similar to the ones I have met/read.

Cooper may emerge as a good leader as he appears to be intelligent with good communication skills. Birmingham needs a massive investment into its infrastructure and if they were smart about it, they would aggressively create regulations and investment in greening Bham… then create plans that are “shovel ready” with an eye on emerging stimulus funds II. The important part is “aggressively”. A deeps south city attempting to go green can generate quite a bit of attention and momentum to bring in assistance.

You know my love-hate relationship with this place to some extent, so you know I have little hope for Birmingham achieving much as a “major city,” ever.

It is of a size, however, that it could possibly be turned into a livable little city, but I don’t see that happening considering history and development patterns. White-flight screwed Birmingham, and unlike Atlanta, the so-called bedroom suburbs are mostly municipalities of their own. They don’t vote or pay taxes in Birmingham, so they are separate and have no stake in it…

At the same time, all the press and TeeVee media attention focuses on Birmingham, people in Hoover say they are from Birmingham, and thus there is a schizoid personality endemic to the place. Add massive religious baggage, a famous racial strife, a police state bunker mentality — and exploiting monopoly corporations from the beginning — and you just want to move to Portland, or better yet, Humboldt County.

Even if you found a decent mayor the Birmingham News would leave alone, and you started a concerted, well-led effort right now, it would take 10 solid years to fix this place. You have to be in it for the long-haul. That might be worth it if there were enough of an economy here for what you do, if you could actually make a living here.

In any event, we’ll see if the story even gets interesting. Looks to me like the election is too hastily called to expect a real vetting process for the candidates, so the one’s with money and name recognition who have run before will dominate.

I am not as fond of William Bell, who is still connected in my mind to the Arrington machine.

Cooper will be tough to beat, but I have been rubbed wrong by quite a few of his supporters who were also very vocal Bham bashers. For some reason I associate him with being the Republican candidate, and I am concerned about the amount of money that he is able to raise. However, his commercial was interesting in that he talked of using city funds to hire the unemployed as part of his anti-crime bill (which strikes me as New Deal-ish.) If he would take it one step further and commit to putting this money into green jobs then I may change my opinion (assuming I actually believe him.)

Carole Smitherman has done a decent job of taking advantage of her time as mayor to clean up some of the most obvious problems left behind by Langford. What is not so clear are what her plans are for moving Bham forward.