Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ron Spark publicly challenged Rep. Artur Davis Monday to level with the people of Alabama and to come clean on his position on all gaming issues facing the state.

Referencing a story in this weekend’s Mobile Press-Register in a press release, the Sparks campaign said Davis refused to state a position on several gaming issues, including casino gaming, sports betting, card games, slot machines, roulette and other games.

Sparks favors them all, and has said so from the beginning of his campaign for governor of Alabama.

“Why is Artur Davis afraid to take a stand on gaming issues, one of the most important issues facing this state?” Agricultural Commissioner Ron Sparks said. “He is hiding, cowering in the corner, while I have been perfectly clear in my support on each and every gaming issue. If the people of Alabama want it, they should be allowed to vote on it. I am leading on this issue, not running from it like Artur Davis.

“Alabama needs a governor who takes a stand and who commits the full force of his office to get this done for the people of Alabama. Sitting on a fence or hiding your views from voters like Artur isn’t leadership; it’s political cowardice. If you want gaming in Alabama, there is only one candidate committed to doing it, and that’s me,” Sparks said in the statement.

The Press-Register asked all gubernatorial candidates to answer eight positions on various forms of gaming. Artur only gave positions on three of them, answering “not sure” five times.

“That’s a worse percentage than his Congressional voting record this year,” Sparks said.

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In a sign of Rep. Artur Davis’ shifting priorities, according to the Associated Press, the Birmingham Democrat will be back in Alabama — not at the U.S. Capitol — for tonight’s State of the Union speech by his former Harvard Law School classmate, President Barack Obama.

Glynn Wilson

Rep. Artur Davis

Davis, now running for governor, has returned to the campaign trail, said Addie Whisenant, a spokeswoman in his congressional office. She referred other questions to campaign spokesman Alex Goepfert, who said that the congressman has been clear for some time “that he would be spending more days in Alabama as the campaign progressed.” Davis plans to watch the speech at home in Birmingham, Goepfert said.

Davis’ campaign web site shows that he was in Shelby County for a candidate forum this morning, but does not list any other events today.

Davis is running against state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks in June’s Democratic primary. Late this afternoon, Sparks issued a statement saying that “apparently, Artur Davis forgets he was hired to do a job in Washington, not in Alabama.”

“The people of his district, and the people of Alabama, expect those they hire to show up to work, vote and represent their interests,” Sparks said. “He should either show up for work or quit. Instead, his constituents are being cheated by the self-interest of Artur. When I’m Governor, I will work day and night creating jobs for working families and always put their interests ahead of my own.”

In related news, former political reporter Taylor Bright is joining Sparks’ Campaign for Governor as communications director, according to the press release.

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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 Fort Payne Democrat who is running for governor of Alabama against Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis, came out swinging on Monday two days after Davis voted against President Barack Obama’s national public health care plan in the U.S. House.

“It has been said that evil flourishes when good men fail to act. One of the greatest evils of our lifetime is no doubt that in one of the most prosperous nations in the world, over 48 million men, women, and children do not have access to the world’s greatest health-care system,” Sparks said in a press release.

Despite countless attempts over nearly a century, no chamber of Congress has ever before passed comprehensive health reform, he said. This weekend, the United States Congress, “stood firm against lies, misrepresentations, self serving political rhetoric, and the back-scratching and scare tactics of special-interest money to pass a health-care bill that once and for all will provide equal access to health-care for all Americans.”

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If Activists Don’t Engage, We May Not Have Health Care by Christmas

Somebody needs to head to Washington and read the riot act to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid left open the possibility on Tuesday that work on a health-care overhaul bill could drift into next year, as the House of Representatives pushed to take it up later this week, according to Reuters.

Here’s today’s AP version of the story…

Reid Indicates Timetable for Health Care May Slip

To insure national public health-care becomes a reality, a necessity not only for the U.S. health care system but critical for the national economy, the left needs to get off its arse, again…

Not that it will do much good to push the Alabama Congressional delegation. They are obviously more interested in campaign contributions and figure the voters are too uninformed reading al.com to notice.

Our Congressman in Birmingham, who wants to be governor, says he will vote against his good friend President Barack Obama’s plan. What a state…

Artur Davis to Vote Against Health Care Bill

Davis Supports Ineffective, Unfair Experiment for Children

Democratic candidate for governor Ron Sparks again voiced his firm opposition to charter schools in Alabama today, while his primary opponent, Artur Davis, continues to be emphatic in his support for this “ineffective and unfair” initiative, according to a press release from the Sparks campaign.

In August, speaking to a candidate forum hosted by the Christian Coalition of Alabama, and again last week, at a forum hosted by the NAACP, Davis stated that he is firmly in support of a charter school initiative.

Unfortunately for the school children of Alabama, charter schools are far from being innovative or visionary. The record shows that charter schools are not working. They prevent Alabama children from having equal access to education and perhaps violate federal law regarding discrimination.

Sparks says his vision for education is all about equal access, while Congressman Davis and charter schools fail that test.

“Whether you live in Wilcox County or in Mountain Brook, I want every child in Alabama to have the same quality of education,” Sparks said. “That’s not happening today.”

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Will the Republicans really fight Obama’s Supreme Court pick?

Or in the end, will they just play games to raise money and throw red meat to the base?

Most of the real experts say Sotomayor will most likely be confirmed. But there will always be wrinkles, or rumors of wrinkles…

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge, according to AP.

The talking heads are all a Twitter about this, but is it a lot of hot air about nothing?

Meanwhile, the rumor mill is alive and spewing down Montgomery way with this tidbit.

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Folsom Wants to Solve Difficult Economic Problems

by Glynn Wilson

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Feb. 6 — Congressman Artur Davis is trying to make history in the Deep South state of Alabama by trying to follow on the coattails of his Harvard cohort Barack Obama, who made history by being elected as the first African-American president of the United States, a country that has wrestled with the issue of race since its founding.

Glynn Wilson

Jim Folsom Jr. talks about Alabama’s economic problems with the Downtown Democratic Club

And nowhere in the country does race play a more prominent role in political life than Alabama, the state famous from the highway in Selma to the jails of Birmingham as the battleground state for Civil Rights.

It must have seemed like interesting political theater for Davis to hold his official announcement for governor first in downtown Birmingham, on the same appointed hour a figure from Alabama’s Old Guard was to address the Downtown Democratic Club.

But there is a problem with this picture. Jim Folsom Jr., the state’s Lt. Governor who served as governor for part of one appointed term in the early 1990s, comes from a long tradition of populists, who fought hard on the race issue all the way back to the 1930s, when poll taxes were used to keep blacks and poor whites from voting. His father, “Big Jim” Folsom, did more for the little man than any governor of Alabama in the 20th century, symbolized by his famous “farm to market” roads.

Folsom is now orchestrating a highway bill of his own through the state legislature, at a time when President Obama is pushing a stimulus package with billions of dollars for roads and bridges and other infrastructure.

Davis is a young Congressman, 41, with an excellent resume for a poor, fatherless son of Montgomery. He has distinguished himself as a student at Harvard and Harvard Law School, as a prosecutor and a Congressman, who publicly led the House Judiciary Committee investigation into the Bush Justice Department’s political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

Since Obama’s election, however, Davis has decided to abandon his duties on the important House Judiciary Committee as a Congressman to run for governor, leaving many of his constituents — and potential voters for a Senate run in the future — wondering why he is leaving them high and dry.

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