Bobby Bright

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Bobby Bright

Bobby Neal Bright, Sr. (born July 7, 1952 in Midland City , Dale County , Alabama ) is an American politician . He was a member of the US House of Representatives for the Democratic Party from 2009 to 2011 , where he represented the 2nd congressional constituency of the state of Alabama. He previously served as the Independent Mayor of Montgomery , Alabama's capital , for ten years . Bright is now a Republican and failed in 2018 when trying to be a candidate for his previous congressional mandate in their party primary.

Family, education and work

Bright is the thirteenth of 14 children born to cotton sharecropper John Bright and his wife Rosa Bell Bright. He grew up in humble circumstances with no running water in Ozark and helped picking cotton from childhood . His father died in a traffic accident while Bobby Bright was attending college, so he took on a variety of odd craft and service jobs to support the family. Bright graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor's degree in political science in 1975 and received a master's degree in criminal justice from Troy University in 1977 ; later he worked as a prison guard. In 1982 he graduated from the private Christian Faulkner University in Montgomery with a law degree and went on to work as a freelance lawyer.

He has three children with his wife, Lynn Clardy, a Democratic county judge. Together they own the recreational island Jackson Lake Island in the Alabama River , which was the location for the 2003 film Big Fish by Tim Burton and whose backdrop of an enchanted village has been preserved.

Political career

In the election for Mayor of Montgomery Bright defeated - surprisingly for most observers - the long-time incumbent Emory Folmar . In 2003 and 2007 he was re-elected by a large majority against Scott Simmons. As mayor, Bright campaigned for the revitalization of the city through tourism and business promotion, especially on the banks of the Alabama River ; In the downtown area he initiated a revitalization through construction measures. He supported Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama , which started operations in 2005 .

In the 2008 election to the House of Representatives , Bright managed to narrowly prevail against his Republican competitor Jay Love and to conquer the constituency, which had been in Republican hands since 1965, for the Democrats. Bright himself was a long time non-party; only on the occasion of his candidacy did he become a member of the Democratic Party, after he had been courted by both parties. Bright was a member of the Blue Dog Coalition , a moderately conservative group within the Democratic Party, and voted against many of his party's major bills, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment program and Obamacare health care reform , but overall he stayed 73 percent of the vote Party line. His legislative initiatives dealt with local economic development and fiscal policy restrictions, but none of them were accepted. He lost his seat in the 2010 election with 48.9 percent to 51.1 percent of the vote to Republican Martha Roby .

In 2014, Bright was considering running as a Republican for a seat in the Alabama Senate that did not re-run. In February 2018, he announced that he would be running again for his previous Congressional mandate in the 2018 election, this time as a Republican, in whose primary he was running for the nomination. He justified his decision by stating that Roby was not a member of either the veterans or agriculture committees and thus did not effectively represent two important groups of voters in the congressional electoral district, which includes the metropolitan area of ​​Montgomery and the rural southeast of the state (see Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base ). The federal party supported Roby and accused Bright of his support for the former spokeswoman for the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi , who was considered an enemy of the Conservative . Bright moved against Roby in the primary election, in which he lost 33 to 67 percent of the vote on July 17, 2018. President Trump had spoken out in favor of Roby.

Bright is a deacon of the Baptist and rejects abortion as from ( pro-life ) as restrictions on the possession of firearms ; after a wave of burglaries he called on the citizens of Montgomery to arm themselves. He is against tax increases.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f John A. Tures: Bobby Neal Bright Sr. In: Encyclopedia of Alabama , October 5, 2016.
  2. ^ A b c Katherine Skiba: Congressman Bobby Bright: A Maverick Democrat in Republican Country. In: US News , March 3, 2009.
  3. ^ Howard Koplowitz: Bobby Bright seeks old House seat - as a Republican. In: AL.com , February 8, 2018.
  4. ↑ Scott Bland: Roby wins Alabama primary runoff. In: Politico , July 17, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Bright, Bobby
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bright, Bobby Neal (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Midland City , Alabama