Candidate in Alabama
Is Returned to Ballot
By SHAILA DEWAN,
NYTimes on the Web, August 27, 2006
A woman who stands to become
Alabama’s first openly gay elected official is back on the November ballot after
the Democratic Party’s state committee on Saturday overturned a decision to
disqualify her.
The candidate, Patricia Todd, who won a runoff to become the Democratic nominee
for state legislator in a central Birmingham district, was disqualified Thursday
on the grounds that she had failed to file a campaign finance report with the
state party chairman, even though candidates have not done so since 1988.
The subcommittee that met Thursday disqualified her opponent in the primary,
Gaynell Hendricks, for the same reason. There is no Republican candidate
in the district, whose registered voters are majority black by a slim margin.
Ms. Todd is white; Ms. Hendricks, whose mother-in-law brought the challenge, is
black.
The subcommittee that disqualified the candidates was controlled by Joe Reed, a
powerful black Democrat, who had urged voters to support Ms. Hendricks and
warned that if they did not, the district could be redrawn to be majority white.
But the disqualification was met with disapproval. The party’s chairman,
Joseph Turnham, said he was disappointed, and an editorial in The Birmingham
News asked if the party had a “death wish.”
|
