Good morning! Here’s your Daily News for Thursday, July 12, 2018.
1. This Ag Commish race.
- The race for Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries has gotten mighty personal.
- Earlier this week, Sen. Gerald Dial released an ad accusing opponent Rick Pate of abusing his ex-wife.
- Now, Pate is responding – and so is the ex-wife, who calls the accusation “an untruth, a lie and a distortion of the facts.”
- That is in a new ad of their own, which you can view HERE. I kind of think they should have gone with the first draft that got leaked on Facebook.
- Alabama Daily News’ Will Whatley has the full story, which you can read HERE.
2. Ivey moves to stop sheriffs from pocketing jail food money.
- One of the biggest stories of the year has been the revelation that some Alabama sheriffs have been allowed to personally pocket money meant to feed prison inmates.
- In March, AL.com reporter Connor Sheets uncovered that Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin took in more than $750,00 from the jail food fund and subsequently bought a beach house.
- All this is perfectly legal, and now we are finding out why.
- Yesterday Gov. Kay Ivey took action to stop the state comptroller from paying any jail food money to a personal sheriff account.
- That will halt the practice in many ways, but she wants the Legislature to change the law for good.
- Perhaps more significantly, Ivey’s office released a legal memo explaining the underlying cause of the Sheriff jail food fund issue.
- Turns out, back in 2000, then-Attorney General Bill Pryor attempted to stop the practice by issuing an opinion that jail food funds “should be retained in the sheriff’s office” and not with the sheriff personally.
- In 2008, Pryor’s successor Troy King reversed that opinion and allowed sheriffs to retain excess jail food money as “personal income.”
- ADN’s Caroline Beck has the full story HERE.
- Also read Kim Chandler’s report for the Associated Press HERE.
A message from Troy University
- When one of their own began his battle against Hodgkin’s disease, the members of TROY’s FarmHouse Fraternity chapter resolved that they would not rest until a cure was found for the blood-borne cancer.
- Learn more about their amazing work and how it helps make the TROY family so special HERE.
3. King sues to stop Marshall from spending money.
- Troy King really has a problem with the donations Steve Marshall has gotten from the Republican Attorneys General Association.
- He has filed an ethics complaint. He’s held a handful of press conferences and issued several statements. Now he’s suing to stop Marshall from spending the campaign money he received from RAGA.
- Marshall’s campaign calls it “ridiculous” and a sign of King’s “legal incompetency.” That story HERE.
- It’s a real lawsuit, though, and it will go before a real judge. That judge is Montgomery Circuit Judge James Anderson. In case you’re wondering how he feels about it, Anderson “liked” Josh Moon’s Facebook post saying Marshall broke the law and is a crook, etc. etc. (see below).
- Perhaps he didn’t know he had been assigned the case at the time. FWIW, social media has caused legal recusals in Montgomery before.
- Speaking of the Attorney General’s race, ADN columnists have some opinions about it.
- SKIP TUCKER puts on his galoshes and tramples through the mud, some of it uncomfortable. Read his latest “A (Mud)room with a View” HERE.
- MATTHEW STOKES also isn’t impressed with how this race has devolved. He comes right out and supports Marshall in his latest piece: Marshall’s quiet, diligent service needed in AG’s office.
4. Good News / Bad News
- GOOD NEWS: Mercedes just experienced its best six-month sales period in company history. And that was with a fire in Michigan slowing down the supply chain.
- Mercedes employs about 4,000 Alabamians directly and is responsible for thousands more jobs indirectly.
- BAD NEWS: That record was largely due to a 17 percent increase in sales to CHINA, with whom we are kind of in a trade war.
- China just put a 40 percent tariff on imported cars in retaliation for some of our tariffs. Mercedes issued a profit warning saying the tariffs will likely cause sales to decrease (specifically SUVs, which we make in Alabama).
- Let’s hope Mercedes doesn’t follow BMW’s lead. BMW says it will start building a lot of its SUVs in China instead of South Carolina to avoid the tariffs.
- Oh yeah, Hyundai’s Korean labor union is warning that tariffs could increase prices and cost jobs at the company’s Montgomery plant.
- These stories should make all of us nervous.
5. Headlines.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – UPDATED: Primary runoff ad rundown.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – BREAKING: Government reopens probe of Emmett Till slaying.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Ag Commissioner race gets personal.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Ivey moves to stop sheriffs pocketing jail food money.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Governor: Jail food funds can’t go to sheriff’s pockets.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Challenger files lawsuit against Attorney General.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Skip Tucker: A (Mud)room with a view.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – U.S. wholesale prices jump 3.4 percent.
ALABAMA DAILY NEWS – Matthew Stokes: Marshall’s quiet, diligent service needed in AG’s office.
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER – Bobby Bright campaigns in the Wiregrass.
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER – House 88 runoff pits newcomer against political veteran.
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER – After 9 months, Montgomery’s bad-landlord ordinance has had no impact, enforcement.
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER – Columnist Marc Thiessen: The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility.
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER – SPLC president Cohen responds to Washington Post columnist’s criticisms.
OPELIKA-AUBURN NEWS – Southern Union gets its first official president after 10 years.
OPELIKA-AUBURN NEWS – Hyundai Motor union warns auto tariffs could hurt US jobs.
DOTHAN EAGLE – Crime will always be with us.
TUSCALOOSA NEWS – Merrill: State races to drive runoff turnout.
GADSDEN TIMES – Jones likely to cross party lines to back Trump’s court pick.
ANNISTON STAR – Former JSU police chief files Title IX complaint of retaliation against university.
ANNISTON STAR – Arise holds listening session in Anniston.
ANNISTON STAR – Do the right thing, Sen. Jones.
YELLOWHAMMER NEWS – Dale Jackson: Walt Maddox should have to do better than calling Kay Ivey old and accusing her of having ‘limited energy’
LAGNIAPPE – Columnist Jeff Poor: Alabama’s new ‘Big Mules’.
AL.COM – Ivey takes small step on sheriff jail food funds but can’t end the practice on her own.
AL.COM – Nevada execution halted; drug company opposes midazolam use.
AL.COM – Judge rejects motion for mistrial in Balch & Bingham and Drummond bribery case.
AL.COM – King sues to stop Marshall spending $700,000 in AG contributions.
AL.COM – Blue Cross scholarships steer doctors to rural Alabama.
AL.COM – Trump at center of Martha Roby, Bobby Bright race.
AL.COM – Doug Jones among Democrats facing pressure from Supreme Court ad campaigns.
AL.COM – Alabama’s food stamp error rate among lowest in the nation.
AL.COM – Who are Alabama’s longest-serving state legislators?
AL.COM – Columnist Cameron Smith: Picking peaches and politicians.
AL.COM – Columnist John Archibald: Children die, and kill, and America will be judged.
AL.COM – Contributor Amanda Scott: Alabama should ban gay and trans ‘panic’ defenses.
WASHINGTON POST – ‘Rubbing salt in the wounds’: Trump won’t take yes for an answer at NATO.
WASHINGTON POST – Why nothing seems to be stopping Trump’s trade war.
WASHINGTON POST – Columnist Karen Tumulty: Where the real fight over abortion will take place.
NEW YORK TIMES – Columnist Bret Stephens: Just Confirm Kavanaugh
NEW YORK TIMES – The Quest to Get a Pardon in the Trump Era: ‘It’s Who You Know’
NEW YORK TIMES – We’re Tracking the Ways Trump Is Scaling Back Obamacare. Here Are 14.
NEW YORK TIMES – Contributor Michele Margolis: When Politicians Determine Your Religious Beliefs