Thread by @fawfulfan

THREAD:

1/ The Alabama Democratic Party is in crisis.

It's been in crisis for years, but no one has noticed. But now it's spilling over and it's likely to affect the national politics in 2020 next year.

2/ To understand this crisis, you need to be familiar with two central figures in Alabama politics: Nancy Worley and Joe Reed.

We'll start with Worley, the former Alabama Secretary of State and the current chair of the Alabama State Democratic Executive Committee.

3/ Worley is a colorful figure, to say the least. She once mailed a letter to state party officials and donors containing a detailed story about how she got stuck on the toilet.

And that, amazingly, is probably the most pleasant thing I have to say about her.

4/ Worley is also fantastically corrupt.

She has failed to comply with ethics disclosure laws. She also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2006 after forcing state election officials to help her campaign for re-election — and then she just skipped out on paying the fine.

5/ Above all, Worley is stupendously incompetent at her job, as AL.com has detailed.

On her watch, Dems have terrible recruitment, no fundraising, sit on the funds they have, and even the party's Twitter account barely ever tweets. al.com/news/2018/08/a…

6/ Alabama Democrats, of course, did manage the astonishing feat of electing a Democratic senator in 2017.

But that's no thanks to Worley. Jones was reliant on his own campaign and outside groups like the NAACP, which had to pull all the weight to get Black voters to the polls.

7/ Worley is so bad, in fact, that Doug Jones has actively campaigned to have her replaced as SDEC chair. But in 2018, the SDEC re-elected her 101 to 89.

Why is that?

Because of Joe Reed, the chair of the Alabama Democratic Conference and Vice Chair of Minority Affairs.

8/ Reed, who has controlled the party in some form since 1979, has been especially powerful as the result of a 1991 federal consent decree that had a very good intention: to prevent racial imbalance on a committee that leads a party that is almost entirely African-American.

9/ The basic idea is: the SDEC's minority members get to appoint at-large seats until the racial balance of the SDEC is the same as that of the Democratic electorate in the last presidential election.

But Reed has hijacked this process and stacked these seats with his cronies.

10/ In this way, Reed basically controls the vote of the SDEC, and Worley is his choice because she whatever he wants.

This arrangement, by the way, is hated by many, many Black Dem lawmakers and activists. It's machine politics that only pretends to give them representation.

11/ As I said, this has been going on for years. But no one outside Alabama has cared much because, hey, it's Alabama. Dems don't get elected there anyway.

But Dems now have a senator in Alabama to re-elect. So people started paying attention. And here's where things get crazy.

12/ So after Worley was re-elected, activists filed complaints with the DNC about how that election was conducted. The DNC investigated and found voting irregularities, and in February ordered the SDEC to void the result and hold a new leadership election. montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/201…

13/ Worley adamantly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the DNC, and proclaimed that their decision was racist and an attempt to silence the voices of Black committee members.

(Worley is white, by the way. Little detail I almost left out.)

14/ Anyway, DNC chair Tom Perez set a deadline to hold a new election and write new bylaws, including a reform that lets all minority groups participate in the process and not just those that Reed wants.

Worley blew it off.

Perez gave her a second deadline. She blew it off too.

15/ Finally, in August, Perez got sick of it. He stripped Worley and her lieutenant Randy Kelley of credentials, cut off national funding for the Alabama Democratic Party, and is threatening to deny Alabama delegates at the Democratic National Convention. montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/201…

16/ A couple weeks later, the members of the SDEC who didn't support Worley met on their own, passed a new set of bylaws and scheduled a new leadership election for Nov 2.

The DNC recognizes this upcoming election as legitimate. Worley does not. al.com/news/2019/10/d…

17/ All of this brings us to yesterday, when Worley filed a lawsuit in Montgomery County Circuit Court to block the new DNC-approved leadership election.

The hearing in that case is taking place right now: al.com/news/2019/10/a…

18/ So this is where we are now: Alabama's Democratic Party is defunct, silencing most of its members, sitting on cash and not funding key elections. Its chair has been declared illegitimate and there are basically two competing state committees each claiming to be the real one.

19/ The consequences could be far reaching.

First, obviously, Doug Jones is incredibly vulnerable even with a functioning state party. But second, Alabama could lose its seat at the presidential convention, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of mostly Black primary voters.

20/ For the good of the party, and for voters in her state, Worley and Reed really need to step aside, allow the reforms, and let a new generation of party leaders take over.

But it looks like they won't leave until they're dragged out kicking and screaming.

END