Former state Sen. Roger Bedford was laid to rest Sunday — a dreary, cold day befitting the sad occasion. Bedford meant a lot to the people of northwest Alabama, where he ministered for decades and spoke volumes for football legends and favored pastors.
While Bedford’s death was a blow to his many friends and family, it was his political end that meant something far more important to the state, and perhaps the nation: Local politics become less important than national talking points and party affiliations.
For nearly three decades, Bedford has been the gold standard in district political representation. When the people of his district sent him to the Senate each year, they had absolutely no doubt that Bedford would return with stacks and stacks of money for various projects around his hometown of Russellville, Franklin County and much of northwest Alabama.
The stories of Bedford’s dealings with his fellow MPs are legendary, as are the stories of the projects around his constituencies for which he managed to secure government funding. The Bedford district workers praised him for it, enjoying the perks of a senator who made sure the money came home.
I swear to you, these people wore t-shirts around them hailing Bedford as the King of Pork. I saw them. Hell, my dad had one. And man, they were proud of him.
Then in 2014, with nothing changing for Bedford, they voted for someone else.
With 70 votes, a local physician, Larry Stutz, was elected to represent the district.
Did he promise to do more for the area than Bedford? Haha. Please. It would literally be impossible to do more.
Did Stutts take advantage of the Bedford scandals? No. Bedford’s last real scandal had happened years before, and soon after, voters in the district overwhelmingly sent him back to Montgomery. (In fact, they printed T-shirts mocking the scandals, too.)
Well, Stutz was probably more well known, being a local doctor and all. Pfft. Pity me. To this day, I haven’t found a single voter who actually likes Stutts, and if there were a few during his 2014 candidacy, he probably drove them away with his self-serving antics when he took office.
The fact is that Larry Stutts beat Roger Bedford because Stutts is a Republican and Bedford was a Democrat.
Never mind the fact that when you get down to it, Bedford was more relatable to the voters of that district. Never mind that Bedford never changed – it’s not like he became ultra-liberal the day everyone suddenly decided that the Republicans were the new party of choice. Never mind the fact that his representation had literally changed the lives of the people living in this area and supported an entire generation of small business owners.
Overnight, the little R next to a candidate’s name meant more than all that.
There are those who will try to explain this by pointing to Bedford’s alleged misdeeds, such as the time he was accused of using taxpayer dollars to run a water line to his hunting cabin or the failed state prosecution for allegedly coercing a county commission. to buy property from his friend or the $1.5 million football facility for which he procured government financing.
But voters knew all that the last time they sent Bedford back to Montgomery. And all of that pales in comparison to the doctor who was elected in his place, who, in one of his first acts in office, attempted to repeal a law named for a woman who died under his care. Stutts then tried to repeal a law close to Bedford’s heart — a law that required doctors to tell women about dense breast tissue on mammograms. Bedford had supported the law after his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
This is what the people in Senate District 6 chose.
No worker in this area is better off with Stutts. Especially not public school employees and teachers, as Stutz is pushing a massive “school choice” bill that would siphon hundreds of millions from their schools in a region where teacher union membership has been a source of pride. Especially not the thousands of construction workers, road builders, heavy equipment operators or their families, all now represented by a man who has opposed every infrastructure bill. Especially not those who can barely afford health care, as he went from a compassionate public servant who prioritized fully funding Medicaid and expanding it to a self-serving elitist who opposed expansion and tried to kill legalization of medical marijuana.
That’s the problem with Alabama politics. We have worried too long about party definition and too little about the real work of serving the public.
Love him or hate him, Roger Bedford knew better than anyone how to serve the people in his area. And I suspect, even if they won’t admit it, that 10 years later the people in his area know it better than anyone.