Political candidates address Republican club

BY JOHN BRICE

THE LAFAYETTE SUN

CHAMBERS COUNTY— Local officials and members of the Chambers County Republican Club gathered for their April meeting in the Chambers County Development Authority conference room at the Lanett Municipal Airport on Thursday, April 23. With the Republican primary election scheduled for next month this meeting was focused on providing a forum for candidates on the ballot to share their stories and vision for the future. 

First to address the club was the U.S. Congress Member Barry Moore for Alabama’s first congressional district who is currently running for the U.S. Senate to take over the seat currently held by Senator Tommy Tuberville.

“If you look at my liberty score in Washington, D.C., Tommy Tuberville has announced that he is running for governor,” he said. “We went to Washington at the same time. His liberty score is a 95, mine is a 96. We are the two top conservatives in this delegation from Alabama. As you look at who you are going to vote for, I just got the Susan B. Anthony endorsement today from that pro-life organization. If you look two weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation endorsement, they gave me a 100. There are only 12 U.S. House members out of 400 and 35 that got a perfect score.” 

Gerald Dial is running for Alabama State Senate in District 13 and spoke next regarding his concerns over taxpayer money being shifted away from rural counties towards urban areas. 

“The big cities and big counties are going to gang up on the rural counties to try to redistribute money,” he said. “In Clay County that would mean 12 deputies would be laid off. We can’t afford that. We have got to have somebody at the table who will take their shoe off and beat on the table and form a coalition of other rural counties like Clay, Cleburne, Randolph and Chambers. Coalesce around making sure money is not redistributed, we can’t live without it. If you are a county commissioner you know that. I am concerned about that.”

Oline Price is the wife of current State Senator for District 12 Randy Price, who is running for reelection, and spoke on his behalf since he had a prior engagement and was unable to attend himself. 

“Chambers County is and always will be very important to Randy,” she said. “He has worked closely with people in this county on so many things that he was elected for in 2018. The response that he has received in this campaign has just been overwhelming. From the leadership in the community to the elected officials to the people in the churches and the educators. It is just unbelievable, the business community especially. It is heartwarming to sit there and hear him come home at night and say ‘guess who I talked to today and what they had to say.’ That just feels good. It is very encouraging to a candidate.”