Bentley's Big Fail

Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley.

   I was in the Governor's office this past week in the hour before the Special Session of the Legislature started.
Governor Bentley had called an 8:30 news conference to discuss his "call" for the special session, the list of legislation he wanted lawmakers to pass.
   The veteran statehouse reporters were there, relatively awake, despite the regular session's end at Midnight.
   Many of the reporter's questions came about something the governor did include in the call, and about something he did not.

Alabama has been getting national media attention
because of the Immigration Law. The reporter on
the right works for Bloomberg News.

   He wanted the legislators to change the changes they had made in the controversial and much maligned Immigration Law, blocking one part allowing school children to be asked questions about their parents' legal status...and blocking a requirement that the Dept. of Homeland Security publish the names of immigrants arrested under the law.
     The item Jefferson County had been hoping he would include in the call would helped the county get out from under bankruptcy. But he left it off the list. 
     And legislators rejected the immigration changes, forcing Bentley to sign the bill approved in the regular session, saying there wasn't an "appetite" in the legislature for his changes.
     Mainstream Alabama Republicans supported Bradley Byrne in the 2010 Primary with millions in campaign contributions.
     Cosmetic Surgeon Dermatologist/Representative Bentley largely self-funded his own campaign, and it appears there is still some blow-back against his unexpected, underfunded win of the GOP nomination and General Election. How that plays out in his  hopes for re-election---presuming he wants to serve a second term--- will bear watching.

      But who would have thought a Republican Governor with a super-majority Republican House and Senate would not be able to get his way?