Voters in Montgomery County’s Senate District 26 go to the polls on Tuesday to select their next state senator in a special general election. State Rep. Kirk Hatcher, D-Montgomery, faces former Montgomery City Councilman William Green, a Republican, for the seat vacated by Sen. David Burkette, D-Montgomery, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud.
Hatcher presently serves as state representative for House District 78 and is the director of head start in Montgomery County.
Hatcher is a former English educator, who taught for 17 years in schools in Montgomery, Miami, Florida, and Rye, New York. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and a graduate of Saint Jude High School and Resurrection Catholic Elementary School.
Hatcher has a Bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Morehouse College in Atlanta, as well as a master of divinity degree from Emory University’s School of Theology in Atlanta.
Prior to his arrival at Rye Country Day School, Rye, New York in fall 2012, Hatcher served on the faculties at Palmer Trinity School in Miami, Florida, and as an adjunct instructor and lecturer at the University of Miami. He also spent a couple of years serving on the English faculties in the Montgomery Public Schools beginning in January 2000.
Hatcher served as an intern in the Office of Admissions at Emory University from 1996 to 1998 and was later appointed to the position of associate dean of admission in the Office of Admissions at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He was later selected to serve as the senior program officer for ITC FaithWorks Foundation.
Once active on the visiting lecture circuit, Kirk has offered annual mini-lectures on the Theology of Gospel Music mostly during the fall/winter semesters at: Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts; Hamilton College, Clinton, New York; Wells College, Aurora, New York; Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California; Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia; Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania; The Dana Hall School, Wesley, Massachusetts, and The Asheville School, Asheville, North Carolina.
Between 1988 and 1992, Hatcher served as a member of the staff at Alabama State University as special legal assistant to the university general counselor and program coordinator for targeted educational advancement. In 1992, Hatcher graduated from Leadership Montgomery. Kirk served as the founding president of Success Roundtable: 2001 Inc. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.
Hatcher is an accomplished vocalist and pianist (having served as choral director/keyboard accompanist beginning at age nine in his home/family congregation, Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church). He is a licensed Baptist minister and once served a yearlong appointment as the guest interim senior minister at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Hatcher defeated former state Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, in the Democratic primary runoff.
William A. Green Jr. is a former U.S. Marine that served one year with the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion in Okinawa, Japan. He has a degree in accounting from Alabama State University in 1992. He has worked as a stockbroker in Atlanta. After leaving the investment banking industry, he continued his career in investment banking at SunTrust Bank in the mortgage-backed securities department, where he designed an award-winning computer system to process numerous securities cutting the amount of time to process mortgages from several days to a couple of hours.
Green went to work for Oracle Corporation as a business analyst in 1997. In 2000, William founded William Delaney Consulting specializing in Oracle Financials implementations and staff augmentations. William has implemented financial systems for Fortune 500 companies such as Delta, Motorola and CSX. William Delaney Consulting is currently expanding into business workflow automation to take advantage of the quickly changing business environment. William Delaney Consulting is a professionally certified partner of Decisions, a no-code business automation platform focusing on process automation and data handling and business rule execution.
Green served as a city councilman in District 5 in Montgomery, Alabama. Before serving as a city councilman, William founded the Montgomery County Minority GOP, where he led outreach efforts for the GOP in the minority community all over the state and at college campuses. He is also a member of the Montgomery County Republican Executive Committee. He is a regular guest on various radio stations speaking on behalf of the GOP and has spoken all over the state at events in support of traditional marriage.
William currently serves on the Alabama Public Television board, appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey and on the board of LEAD Academy charter school where he was one of the founding board members. LEAD Academy opened in the 2018 school year serving the grades K-5. LEAD will be expanding to K-12 over the next few years.
William lives in Montgomery with his wife Marla Green. He has two daughters. Green serves as an ordained minister at Fresh Anointing House of Worship.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.
Remember to vote at your designated polling place and to bring a valid photo ID with you to the polls. There is no same-day voter registration in Alabama so only voters who are currently registered to vote in the district may vote.
The winner of the election will serve for the remainder of Burkette’s term in the Senate and will face re-election in 2022. If Hatcher wins, Ivey will call a special election for the remainder of his term in the Alabama House of Representatives.
