By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Most people are buying their Thanksgiving groceries and have begun decorating for Christmas. For Alabama’s political class, this is the time of the year to be busy fund raising, before fund raising has to be suspended when the State legislature goes back into session on January 15th. This is also the time of year to be recruiting local persons of influence preparing for a hectic spring campaigning season leading up to the June Party Primaries.
The Rainy Day Patriots are one of Alabama’s larger Tea Party type groups and are very influential in Tea Party politics in Alabama so on Tuesday night Republican candidates came to their November meeting in the Homewood Library for their campaign kick-off forum seeking the support of their membership.
Tim Sprayberry, who is running for state Alabama Senate District 13 in east Alabama, said that the Tea Party movement is turning the page back to old politics when community gatherings and meetings were how politicians ran for office.
Tim Spraybery said that in 2006 his primary opponent, incumbent Alabama state Senator Gerald Dial (R) from Lineville, was defeated in the Democratic Primary as the longtime Democratic Party incumbent state Senator. Sprayberry said that the the Republican establishment welcomed him in to the Republican Party and put him back in the State Senate.
Sprayberry said that he supports term limits. “I believe his (Dial’s) first 12 years should have been his last 12 years (in the Alabama State Senate).” Spraybery said that he was in the first grade when Dial was first elected to the Alabama Senate. “In the last 42 years. There is not a regulation or a tax that he has not touched.” “The world has changed a lot since 1972.”
Sprayberry claimed that Dial, who was the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Redistricting and Reapportionment even cut his own county in half during redistricting since during the last election six voting precients cut out of the District had voted against him.
Sprayberry said that he became involved with the Republican Party when he was in college. There was no Republican County in Cleburne County then so he helped build it. Sprayberry said that he remembers getting up before dawn to deliver Christian coalition voter guides to local churches to grow the party.
Sprayberry is a long time member of the Cleburne County Republican Party executive committee. He is presently the Cleburne County Republican Party Chairman and a current member of the Alabama Republican Executive Committee. He was formerly the Third District Chairman and had a seat on the Alabama Republican Party Steering Committee. “I am the Republican in this race,” Sprayberry told the assembled Rainy Day Patriots.
Sprayberry and Dial will face off in the Republican Primary in June 2014. Other candidates can enter the race as late as April.
