On July 14, Alabama held a special election to fill the vacant State House seat, 6th district. The results: Republican Phil Williams 60.5%, Democrat Jenny Askins 39.6%.
This seat had been in Democratic hands ever since the redistricting of 2001. It is in Madison County, the county that includes Huntsville. Alabama elects all its state legislators in mid-term years, for 4-year terms. The Republican share of the vote in 2006 had been 35.5%; in 2002, 42.3%. The seat was empty this year because the incumbent had resigned in February after being convicted of fraud.
Alabama is one of four states in which the same party has held a plurality, or a majority, in both houses of the legislature since the 1880’s. The others are Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The new line-up in the Alabama House is now 59 Democrats, 44 Republicans, and two vacancies.
I think that Mississippi had a Republican Senate for part of 2007 and Louisiana’s house doesn’t have one party in the majority at the moment either
Thank you, Mr. Anon.
I amended the post slightly. According to VoteSmart, Louisiana’s House now has 52 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 2 independents, and one vacancy.
http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Reps/H_Reps_Demographics.asp
According to the Louisiana House’s website (linked above), the current breakdown is:
51 Democrats
50 Republicans
3 Independents
1 vacant
Rep. Michael Jackson was elected as a Democrat in 2007, but switched to Independent last year.
Also, it seems very likely that the August 2009 elections to fill the District 40 Louisiana House vacancy will increase the Democrats’ numbers to 52. The district is heavily African-American and eight of the ten candidates in the race are Democrats. The other two candidates are a “No Party” and an “Other.”
The Republicans briefly had a 27-25 majority in the Mississippi Senate.
If memory serves, this was brought about by a Republican win in a special election.
Makes sense. Each of these states simply have a lasting hatred for the Republican party that is based on Reconstruction.
In Mississippi, most of that old hatred for the Republican Party is gone. This is evidenced by the fact that the state has not voted Democratic for president since Carter in ’76 and has gone Republican in nine of the last 10 presidential elections. The GOP now has both U. S. senators and all of the statewide elected officials except the attorney general.
The black vote, of course, routinely goes 90%-plus Democratic, and that’s the big reason the Democrats have nominal control of the legislature. A candidate in a district with a sizable black population knows he would be kissing off a big chunk of the vote if he ran as a Republican.
Gov. Haley Barbour usually gets his way with the legislature, especially the Senate, where the Republican lieutenant governor appoints the committee chairmen.
I haven’t looked at the figures yet from 2008, but there are usually some 300,000 more voters in the presidential race than in the previous year’s governor’s election. I’m convinced that the big majority of those additional voters support the GOP presidential nominee.