Race for Senate president heats up

Greg Reed’s resignation from the Alabama Senate became official on Tuesday, and the race to replace him – already a week or so old – got a little messy, according to multiple senate Republican caucus members and sources familiar with Tuesday’s meeting. 

Gov. Kay Ivey officially announced on Tuesday that Reed would be taking over as a senior advisor for workforce transformation. He is expected to take the reins of the new Department of Workforce Development once it is officially created next year. 

Reed’s resignation obviously leaves a leadership gap at the top of the Senate, where he served as president pro tem – a powerful position that controls the flow of legislation both to committees and to the floor for votes and makes appointments to the various committees and to leadership positions. A vote to fill that position will be held on Dec. 3. 

The race to fill that role has boiled down to two candidates – Garlan Gudger, a two-term senator from Cullman, and Steve Livingston, a three-term senator from Scottsboro. 

But more importantly, according to two Republican lawmakers who spoke with APR, the race has boiled down to the new-blood GOP vs. the old school, establishment GOP. 

“Gudger brings that new energy, new approach to this – where everyone’s ideas get heard and you’re not shut out because you aren’t in the right group,” said one lawmaker, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about the race. “Livingston is a nice guy, but he’s been tied into that old group – sort of the establishment group, I guess you could say. I’d say that’s turned some people, especially the younger senators, turned them off a little, because they don’t believe they’ll be listened to.”

Going into Tuesday’s caucus meeting in Birmingham, Gudger appeared to have an edge in voting – a surprising turn of events for the coalition backing Livingston. According to two sources with knowledge of the events, it was Livingston’s backers who originally pushed the Tuesday vote by leaking the story of Reed’s planned resignation. The plan, according to the sources, was to force a quick vote because that would likely favor Livingston, the current Senate Majority Leader. 

But that plan failed to consider the respect Gudger has earned in a very short period of time, thanks to his straightforward, respectful, level approach to deal making in the Senate. 

“He’s one of very, very few people I’d say this about – if Garlan tells you something and gives you his word, he’s not coming off of it. You can count on it every time,” said a source. “That matters to people. He has treated people with respect, and that has earned him a lot of respect. That’s why people lined up behind him.”

The planned vote to replace Reed was scrapped about midway through Tuesday’s meeting. While the meeting never turned hostile, multiple sources said the decision to scrap the vote did rub some senators the wrong way. 

“The people who pushed to vote today all of a sudden didn’t want to vote when they saw Livingston was going to lose,” said one Senate Republican. “I thought that was pretty sh*tty and I certainly wasn’t the only one.”

Senate Republicans will now have two weeks to make deals and push their favorite candidate.