By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
On Wednesday, October 10, Democratic candidate for US Senate, Ron Crumpton, admitted in a public statement that he has been having difficulties raising the money necessary to successfully challenge incumbent Republican Senator Richard Shelby.
Crumpton wrote, “Over the last 10 months, I have been running up and down the highways and byways of Alabama, standing up for the idea that the purpose of government is to empower the people, instead of increasing the power of a limited few over them, but that campaign could be coming to an abrupt end. Fundraising has not met the needs of the campaign. The seed money used to start the campaign is long since gone and our coffers are practically empty.”
Mr. Crumpton continued, “To be on the ballot, we are required to qualify with the State Democratic Party by November, 6. The fee to qualify for US Senate is $3,480. Currently, the campaign is unable to pay it. I am looking to all avenues to find the funds necessary, but I am having limited success.”
Crumpton (who is well known in Montgomery for his advocacy for marijuana legalization) concluded, “If I am unable to come up with the funds, this campaign will end on November, 6. It is that simple. The campaign will not end because of a lack of effort, passion or devotion, but due to a lack of funds.’
The Alabama Political Reporter spoke with Alabama Democratic Party Chairwoman, Nancy Worley. We asked if the Alabama Democratic Party had another candidate if Crumpton dropped out of the race. Worley said, “We have had some calls about it. We have had calls about how much the qualifying fee is and things like that. I do not know what degree of seriousness they have.”
APR asked Worley how much money it would take to run an effective campaign to oust Senator Shelby. Worley said, “Obviously somebody with a high degree of name recognition would not have to spend as much money as someone with no name recognition. I still think it would be an extremely costly race to run as Senator Richard Shelby has millions of dollars in his re-election account.”
Crumpton or whomever runs against Richard Shelby is going to have quite a challenge. Shelby was last re-elected in 2010. Then he beat Democratic challenger William Barnes by 968,181 votes (65.2 percent) to 515,619 (34.7 percent). According to Ballotpedia, Shelby’s campaign committee raised a total of $8,557,473 for that campaign, but only spent $2,647,169. In a highly competitive race, Shelby potentially could spend over $15 million this time around.
To this point no Republican has qualified to challenge Shelby in the March 1 GOP Primary andAPR is not aware of anyone who is even talking about planning to run as a challenger. If Shelby is re-elected to the Senate without any opponent it is not without precedent. In 2014 the other Republican Senator from Alabama, the popular Sen. Jeff Sessions, was unopposed in both the Republican Primary and the General Election.
No Democrat has won a statewide election for any office in Alabama since 2008. The last time the people of Alabama elected a Democrat to the US Senate was 1992 and that was Richard Shelby. The last time a challenger unseated an incumbent Senator in Alabama was 1986 and the challenger then was Richard Shelby.
Richard Shelby served in the US House of Representatives and the Alabama State legislature, before his 1986 election to the Senate. Shelby won his first election, to the Alabama legislature, in 1970.
