Letter to Gov. Kay Ivey: Proposed Debates for the 2018 Gubernatorial Election
July 24, 2018Democratic gubernatorial candidate Walt Maddox invites Gov. Kay Ivey to debate, Ivey remains noncommittal
July 24, 2018EDITORIAL: Ivey taking state’s voters for granted
Republican Gov. Kay Ivey would be smart to avoid a debate with Tuscaloosa mayor and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Walt Maddox. But that doesn’t mean she should.
Speaking at the Alabama Press Association convention at Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach on Saturday, Maddox said Ivey doesn’t owe him a debate in the governor’s race, but that she does owe the voters one. He said instead of discussing ideas and plans to move the state forward, Ivey’s campaign is likely to rely on “intense negative advertising” that will attempt to cast him as a liberal who “has morning coffee with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.”
Maddox is right. Ivey has already started the negative campaigning. Her campaign has pushed out a Facebook ad telling voters that Maddox voted for Hillary Clinton. But she has refused to stand and explain in detail why she thought it was right to vote for Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate last December, even though she said she believed the women who accused him of improper behavior toward them years ago.
Maddox stood before a room full of journalists Saturday, revealing his ethics plan to address what he described as “one of the most corrupt periods in the history of this state.” Ivey refused to come to the event, even though she didn’t have to appear at the same time as Maddox. Instead, Friday, she sat down with a reporter from a Montgomery television station and repeatedly avoided the question of whether she will debate Maddox.
When asked a second time during the interview if she would debate her opponent, Ivey, flustered, slapped her knees, shook her head and said, “Time is, we just got to, yeah, I mean, we’re going to do what’s most pressing right now and that’s creating jobs and dealing with the air show and putting folks back to work.”
There’s no doubt that in this reddest of states, where support for President Donald Trump remains unsurprisingly high, Ivey is the odds-on favorite to win the election. A career politician, she ascended to the office of governor after her predecessor resigned in shame. Having name recognition and an R next to her name gives her a head start and the inside track, despite the fact that the state GOP has been rocked time and again with scandal.
