Flashpoint

Bob Riley mopped the floor with Lucy Baxley.  I almost felt bad for Baxley as I watched her fumble through her notes for the correct most relevant response to each question.  Baxley came across as a very bad public speaker.  By this point in the campaign she should know her responses to the generic, run of the mill questions presented in the debate like the back of her hand.  She constantly read prepared responses, which both avoided direct responses to specific questions and made her look unprepared.  Time management was also an issue for Baxley.  She constantly went over her allotted time and had to be cut off.

To his credit, I never saw Riley read a prepared response.  Riley did evade two tough questions (immigration reform and ???) by rebutting a previous question.  In both instances he had good cause for being evasive because they represented weak points for him.

Baxley was very sparing in specifics, choosing instead to present broad platitudes and harp on a handful of controversies surrounding Riley.  All I learned about Baxley is that she wants to create a new layer of bureaucracy in the form of an inspector general.  Riley had a great response by essentially saying that the items that an inspector general would have responsibility for are (or will be?) open for public inspection, hence rendering the position of inspector general useless.

Baxley also tried to link Riley to President Bush and Vice President Cheney.  I’m sure her campaign advisors told her to do this as it seems to be a nationwide trend.  Those advisors are idiots.  Alabama is one of the reddest of red states and the Bush hating rhetoric isn’t going to win many votes here.

On two topics that Baxley could have really hammered Riley on - PAC to PAC transfers and annual property tax reappraisals - I thought she was pretty ineffective.  If anything Riley turned the table on her by suggesting that the legislature (under her ceremonial rule) had killed efforts for reform so that those two items could be campaign issues.  I don’t believe him, but he certainly planted the seed in the minds of viewers that Baxley could have put her own political ambitions ahead of the people of Alabama.

In the end Baxley offered no compelling reasons to vote for her.  She only proffered innuendo and allegations.  Riley appeared much more gubernatorial than Baxley and was able to convey a more substantive vision of what he plans to do if reelected.