Last week, the voters of Franklin County, Alabama, elected an independent to the post of County Superintendent of Education. He is Greg Hamilton, and he defeated Republican and Democratic opponents. This article explains how he did it. He had to overcome the straight-ticket device.
Franklin County is in northwest Alabama and has a population of 31,000.
Franklin County has two school districts. The city of Russellville has its own district. About 10,000 people live in the Russellville district, and 22,000 in the Franklin County district. Franklin County has 5 “high schools”, though three of them are K-12, and the other two are 7-12.
The big schools have 50-60 students per grade level, the smaller ones 20-30. The county is far enough from Florence (50 miles) that the Florence news media won’t provide any sort of in depth coverage. It has two local newspapers, and its own TV and radio stations.
While Trump easily carried the county (78% to 18%), Democratic legislative candidates received about 2/3 of the vote in 2014 (Republicans were elected because of stronger Republican support in the district).
While there were 2700 Republican straight-ticket votes, Trump received 9500 votes. So there were clearly a lot of Democrats and Independents who supported Trump. Without legislative races, and the top of the ballot a blowout, a rural district, and an office which most would recognize should not be partisan, provided the opportunity.
It may be more remarkable that a candidate from Frog Pond was elected, than an independent.
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Here in Leon County, we elected an Independent (No-Party Affiliate as they call it in Florida) to the School Superintendent position over the incumbent Democrat who was having a bunch of controversy; also there was a Republican in the race but he was kind of given the 3rd party treatment as well as another NPA. Also he’s the first NPA to be elected to a partisan position in the county.