Category Archives: politics

As we mentioned earlier this morning, we figured that you’d want to know what we were going to do with all of your questions that were submitted. NOTE: Thanks for submitting them to us by the way.

UPDATE: Hear their answers to your questions NOW on our Election ’07 site!

All of the candidates have been invited by mail, email or via hand delivered letters to participate in our online forum series as part of our Election 2007 coverage. The candidates have been asked to allow us to record their answers to those questions you submitted to our site. The answers will be posted during the week of September 10 – 14 allowing you to hear in their own words. The candidates will not know the answers that the others have given, keeping them focused on the issues. We will post one answer a day, with the last day posting both the last question and a question that has been asked specifically of them.

At this time, we have received commitments from two candidates. If you have not confirmed, or if you have any questions, please contact our managing editor, André Natta, either by phone or email as listed on our contact page.

Earlier this week, Patrick Cooper commented on our coverage of William Bell and Carole Smitherman having MySpace pages. He mentioned his own website, which was the first site up on the web among the candidates. He also pointed out his existence on Facebook for the last month.

Mr. Cooper does in fact have a Facebook group, named for the mayoral campaign and administered by the campaign’s volunteer coordinator. It currently has 73 members. Here is a link to the group. NOTE: You must have a Facebook profile in order to view the group page.

We have provided links to existing web pages/sites for the candidates after the jump:

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We’ve been informed since our post earlier this morning about Councilor Bell’s MySpace profile that City Council president Carole Smitherman has also created a MySpace profile for her campaign. Here’s a link to it. These are some of the things that we’d like to provide for you in our Election ’07 section which we will preview at tomorrow’s night’s launch party at The Bottletree; click here to learn more about it and here to view the door prizes.

And if you’re still inclined to, our questions for the candidates submission form is still available by clicking here. The form is still set up for the six candidates that we assumed would be in the race at that time. If your specific question is directed to Raymond Brooks, Barry Taylor or Willie Hendrix, please just make sure that you type their name into the appropriate text box before the beginning of your question.

We hope to meet with the candidates in the next week, posting their responses to your questions beginning September 10. We will keep you informed with that and other developments as we are able.

NOTE: Hear their answers to your questions on our Election ’07 site!

One of the issues that has come up during this year’s mayoral campaign in Birmingham (at least among us out here on the web) is the candidates’ web presence. There are very few extensive websites, though one candidate has now expanded his campaign into the world of MySpace.

Following the lead of national presidential candidates, William Bell has become the first person running for Birmingham’s mayor’s office to create a MySpace profile. His actual site is still not up and running; however, as of the time of this posting, the current City Councilor for District 5 already had 54 “friends” who had accepted his invitation to join his page on the popular social networking site. Time will tell if others will follow suit and use other Web 2.0 technologies as the race continues on.

NOTE: Hear their answers to your questions on our Election ’07 site!

Many people in the city feel as though the former Jefferson County commission president already has the mayor’s office on the third floor of city hall in downtown Birmingham locked up. Doc’s Political Parlor made this post on August 22 that gave the idea that many believed it was only a matter of waiting for the votes to be tallied on October 9.

Now it appears that the federal government, the Securities and Exchanges Commission in particular, may be looking to put an end to it all. The Birmingham News reports that Mr. Langford’s financial records have been subpoenaed. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens next in this story.

Photo credit: Bob Farley/f8photo

NOTE: Visit our Election ’07 site for more information on the candidates

We are attempting to provide some coverage of this evening’s forum on homelessness mentioned in our previous post.

We will update this post as needed.

The following candidates were present at the beginning of the debate:

Valerie Abbott
William Bell
Willie Hendrix
Bernard Kincaid
Barry Taylor

UPDATE: Please click READ MORE to see a summarization of the comments and questions from this evening’s forum.

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