“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” – Matthew 12:25, popularized by Abraham Lincoln

A couple of weeks ago we talked about how Alabama is a state that has pushed all its poker chips in with one political party for the vast majority of its history – mostly Democratic but also Republican in the past 14 years.

Oftentimes this is detrimental. Political science research generally finds states where one party is not totally dominant over the other to have better results in the overall quality of life for their citizens.

For example, a 2021 scientific article by Gerald Gamm and Thad Kousser looked at party competition among the states for more than 100 years and found states with healthy party competition tend to spend more on education, transportation, health and sanitation. The public welfare in most of these states tended to improve in both the short term and long term.

A large part of the recent Republication domination is due to the national Democratic Party having a platform that is more liberal than the values of most Alabamians. Nevertheless, this was true for decades, and the Democratic Party still maintained its grip on power into this millennium.

As the Democratic Party’s influence in elections began to dwindle, a lengthy struggle for control within the party worsened its effectiveness.

The story of the party’s discord goes back farther than this column can cover. There are several glaring recent examples. In 2013, party chairman Mark Kennedy resigned to form the short-lived Alabama Democratic Majority, an organization akin to a rival Democratic Party.

The party was so deeply in debt at that time of Kennedy’s departure it was nearly evicted from its Montgomery headquarters.

A wing of the party supported by then-U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, the last Democrat to hold an office elected by the entire state, was able to oust chairwoman Nancy Worley and first vice chair Randy Kelley in 2019. Worley and Kelley were supported by longtime state political figure Joe Reed.

Reed leads the Alabama Democratic Conference – an organization affiliated with the Alabama Democratic Party with a focus on protecting and promoting interests of the state’s Black population – and is somewhat of a kingmaker in the Alabama Democratic Party.

Reed’s faction of the party retook control of the party in 2022 electing Kelley as chairman. Despite Reed’s and Kelley’s success in taking back the state party, they instantly got crossways with the Democratic National Committee as the national committee found some bylaws passed by the new regime were in violation of national party policies.

The hard feelings between Alabama and the national party leaders persist. Kelley and Reed took the unusual step of holding a press conference last month to criticize leadership of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaign for blocking many of the state party’s candidates from running to be delegates to August’s Democratic National Convention.

With the Alabama Democratic Party too busy fighting battles within its own ranks, it has been unable to mount any serious offensive against the Alabama Republican Party even though Republicans have not been an overwhelming force above reproach in recent times.

It was only in 2016 and 2017 when Republican leaders in all three branches of state government – Gov. Robert Bentley, Speaker of the House Mike Hubbard and Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore – were all removed or resigned from office in the span of less than a year.

Even two years ago, John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, admitted he used an identification card he created himself and not issued by the state of Alabama in order to cast a ballot and vote in an election.

The Alabama Democratic Party’s Facebook and Twitter accounts made no mention of Wahl when the story broke because the party posted nothing on social media between August 2022 and July 2023.

Reed is among the most politically savvy people in Alabama, and his ability to hold sway over the party and head off challenges from adversaries is impressive.

Nevertheless, his choices for chairperson of the Alabama Democratic Party have had little success in uniting the party’s factions and making inroads toward fielding a candidate with a remote chance of success in statewide elections.

Reed should step aside and see if new blood can bring the party to a place of unity. Without everyone pulling in the same direction, the party currently is unable to convince qualified candidates even to run for office. Maybe with a functional Democratic Party, Alabama can give this two-party system idea a chance. We would only be a couple of centuries behind other parts of the country.