{"id":612,"date":"2003-09-10T12:56:41","date_gmt":"2003-09-10T17:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/612.html"},"modified":"2003-09-10T12:56:41","modified_gmt":"2003-09-10T17:56:41","slug":"it-wasnt-even-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-wasnt-even-close\/","title":{"rendered":"It wasn’t even close"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to follow-up, Alabama voters went to the polls yesterday and overwhelmingly defeated<\/a> a measure to bring their tax structure into the 21st century. With all precincts reporting, 68% opposed the plan and 32% supported it.<\/p>\n

Gov. Bob Riley (R) knew things weren’t going to work out and conceded defeat for his plan 90 minutes after the polls closed.<\/p>\n

From this point on, I have to assume that Riley’s political career in Alabama is finished. <\/p>\n

The state GOP, as well as several high-profile national Republican leaders, rallied to defeat Riley’s measure, meaning it is highly unlikely he’ll be able to rally the necessary support of either when (if?) he runs for re-election in 2006.<\/p>\n

As one Alabama voter told the Birmingham News, “I don’t think he can recover from this. He hurt the Republican Party. I don’t think he should resign, but I think this will be his last term in office.”<\/p>\n

It’s early, but I’d guess Riley doesn’t even run when his term is up. Even if he did, Riley would likely face multiple GOP primary challengers who will hammer him on the tax issue.<\/p>\n

The state now has difficult choices. Alabama is facing a $675 million deficit and without additional tax revenue, Riley has indicated he’ll begin firing teachers, rationing medication, firing police officers, and limiting medical care to the elderly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to follow-up, Alabama voters went to the polls yesterday and overwhelmingly defeated a measure to bring their tax structure into the 21st century. With all precincts reporting, 68% opposed the plan and 32% supported it. Gov. Bob Riley (R) knew things weren’t going to work out and conceded defeat for his plan 90 minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}