B. B. Comer - Gubernatorial Campaign

Gubernatorial Campaign

The disfranchisement of blacks by the 1901 constitution and suffrage amendment had reduced the Republican Party as an active force in the state. For more than 60 years, until federal civil rights legislation was passed to enforce constitutional rights of African Americans in the mid-1960s, Alabama would essentially be a one-party state, with elections won in the Democratic primaries.

The 1906 gubernatorial campaign in the Democratic primary…was considered notable as the party "dropped the word ‘Conservative’ from its formal name, demonstrating that it was comfortable with a more progressive platform." Both of the party’s gubernatorial candidates were progressive on almost every topic. As Lieutenant Governor Russell M. Cunningham of Birmingham did not support railroad reform on rates, he gained support from the industry.

Comer was criticized because of his known opposition to child labor laws; he said families should be the ones to decide about their children. But he was "a better campaigner and orator than Cunningham, and his verbal attacks on the railroads so aroused Alabama audiences that he won the primary with 61 percent of the vote." Comer, representing the planter elite and rising businessmen, easily defeated Asa E. Stratton of the Republican Party and J.N. Abbott of the Socialist Party of America in the November 1906 election. Comer’s plan to enact reform of the railroads, as well as in other areas such as education, appeared a strong possibility as progressive Democrats favoring reform constituted a majority in the newly elected, Democratic-dominated state legislature. Despite the urbanization that was taking place in the state, rural interests resisted redistricting and dominated the state legislature until the 1970s, when a federal court ordered redistricting to reflect demographic changes.