WASHINGTON, D.C. — An attempt to silence Alabama gubernatorial candidate Bill Johnson has been launched by his own county’s Republican Party, and a non-profit group in the nation’s capitol is calling for an investigation, according to a press release issued late Monday night.

Glynn Wilson

Former ADECA director Bill Johnson during Bob Riley’s 2006 race for governor in the campaign office in Montgomery.

Johnson, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010, is banned from speaking at GOP events in Alabama for blowing the whistle on current Republican Alabama Governor Bob Riley.

The RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com campaign calls for full Department of Justice and Congressional investigations into the conflicts of interest raised by Bill Johnson.

“This is not the first time that Bob Riley has been tied to corruption,” said Restore Justice spokesperson and attorney Kevin Zeese. “His name keeps popping up for his involvement with Jack Abramoff, bags of cash payoffs from Indian casino interests, unethical political patronage, manipulation of his 2002 election, and the targeting of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.”

Last year, Johnson became aware of possible conflicts of interest on the part of the Governor involving the giving of favorable contracts to close relatives and accepting money from Indian tribes involved with gambling while opposing gambling efforts by other parties. As a cabinet member, Johnson was required under Alabama law to report any perceived or actual conflicts of interest.

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by Glynn Wilson

After Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis tried to make friends with the man who might be his Republican opponent if he were to win the Democratic Party primary next June, praising Bradley Byrne for his proposed ethics plan, Davis’s primary opponent Ron Sparks immediately called him a hypocrite.

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Artur Davis to bemoan what he called ‘the unlimited power of a few special interests’ to dominate Alabama politics by writing big checks, while, according to ConsumerWatchdog.org, Artur Davis received $364,000 from health-care special interest groups and then voted against President Obama’s health-care bill, despite the overwhelming support for Obama and health-care reform in his district,” Sparks said in a press release.

According to a blogger at al.com, Davis welcomed Byrne’s endorsement of several ethics proposals this week.

“While I am pleased that unlike Ron Sparks and the other Republicans in this race, Bradley Byrne has put forward an ethics proposal, I am mystified that he does not go further, to root out the real abuses that are breaking down trust in Alabama politics,” Davis reportedly said.

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by Glynn Wilson

Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks, the leading candidate in the Democratic Party’s race for governor of Alabama in 2010, blasted the state’s conservative Supreme Court on Saturday for playing politics with the gambling issue

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday to strike down a preliminary injunction that kept the Gov. Bob Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling from conducting another raid of White Hall Resort and Entertainment Center.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday indicates the urgency of the platform I’ve put forward, ” Sparks said in a press release. “This ruling puts at jeopardy an industry that brings hundreds of millions of dollars to both state and local governments in Alabama.”

The people of Alabama are currently financing the services of governments in surrounding states, Sparks said.

“The Supreme Court ruling does nothing but continue to play politics with one of the most urgent issues facing our state,” he said. “As governor, I will push for statewide regulation, local referendum to determine if gaming will be allowed, and taxation of gaming to provide funding for both education and Medicaid.”

The governor’s task force raided the White Hall gambling center in March and seized 105 gambling machines. The charitable organization that operates the facility, Cornerstone Community Outreach, argued that the machines were legal electronic bingo games and got a preliminary injunction against future raids.

The Supreme Court reversed the preliminary injunction, according to news reports. The court’s majority said Cornerstone did not have a reasonable likelihood of proving that the seized games constituted the game of bingo.

Critics of the court often refer to it as the “Exxon Eight,” since out of nine justices on the court, eight of them are conservative Republicans elected with the help of disgraced former Bush political aide Karl Rove. Their most famous ruling reduced a lower court’s ruling penalizing the oil giant Exxon Mobile for bilking the taxpayers of Alabama out of millions of dollars in oil and gas royalties from wells along the state’s coast in the Gulf of Mexico and Mobile Bay.

Thousands of classroom teachers and school support workers were publicly humiliated and insulted by the remarks made this week by former two-year college chancellor Bradley Byrne, according to Ron Sparks’ campaign for governor.

The Fort Payne Democrat, who faces Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis in the Democratic Party primary next June, said Byrne made no attempt to cloak his “contempt” for rank and file public education employees.

“Chancellor Byrne must feel a need to pick a fight with AEA to motivate the extreme right wing of his party who feels humdrum about his candidacy for governor,” Sparks says.

Byrne launched an unwarranted and unfounded attack on the Alabama Education Association, Sparks says in the release, saying advocates for public education, the most effective being AEA, have been “the single greatest impediment to quality education in this state” and that somehow standing up for school teachers “short changes” some of the hardest working folks among us.

“Perhaps Chancellor Byrne needs to reevaluate his definition of ‘short changed’ and ‘impediment,’” Sparks says.

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