Kay Ivey, Walt Maddox win primaries for Alabama governor's race

Gov. Kay Ivey and Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox scored victories in the Republican and Democratic primaries for the 2018 Alabama governor’s race Tuesday.

Both managed to avoid runoffs even though they faced multiple opponents.

On the Republican side, Ivey led with 56 percent of the vote with 99 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle followed in second with 25 percent of the vote, and evangelist Scott Dawson from Hoover was in third with 13 percent.

Among the Democrats, Maddox was winning by a similar margin with 55 percent of the vote, followed by former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sue Bell Cobb with 29 percent and former state Rep. James Fields was in third with 8 percent.

Ivey and Maddox now will square off against each other in the Nov. 6 general election.

Ivey refused to debate her challengers in the Republican primary and during her campaign highlighted the state’s record low unemployment rate, a tax cut she signed into law and the new jobs coming to the state.

 “Y’all, we did it,” Ivey told supporters at her victory party in Montgomery, according to the Associated Press. “We’ve been saying it for months, but now the results make it all clear. Alabama is working again. … Instead of staying stuck in the past, we moved forward and steadied the ship.”

Maddox, Tuscaloosa’s mayor since 2005, vowed to fight for passage of a lottery and was met with loud cheers from the crowd at his election night gathering in Tuscaloosa. He also stressed fighting the opioid crisis, protecting schools, fighting environmental injustices, expanding Medicaid and reforming the prison system.

“Today our schools, healthcare, infrastructure, mental health, and corrections are all in crisis and no end in sight,” Maddox said. “Making matters worse, corruption has seen the downfall of a governor, House speaker and chief justice. All we can hear from (the governor) is the sound of silence. But for the past several months, while we proposed real solutions for real problems, our opponent has countered with mountain oysters and Confederate monuments.”

Scott Dawson concession

Dawson, who lives in the Greystone Glen subdivision in Hoover and had two children graduate from Spain Park High School, conceded the race shortly before 10 p.m. Tuesday night as he spoke to a crowd at The Barn at Shady Lane event venue near the Robert Trent Jones golf course at Oxmoor Valley.

The leader of the Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association said he knew from the day he entered the campaign for governor it would be a journey of faith.

“We gave it our best shot, and tonight, we’ll place our head upon the pillow and say we left nothing off the field,” Dawson told his supporters. “We gave it everything we had.”

In an interview afterward, he said he never really wanted to become a politician. He was just being obedient to what God called him to do. “Hopefully, I challenged and inspired others. If that’s the case, I’m fine with that,” he said.

In his address to the crowd, Dawson encouraged others there to run for public office. “I want to challenge every one of you. I want us to have godly men and women start serving on boards of education. I want them to be serving on county commissions. I want them to be serving as mayors, and yes, I want them to be leading our state.”

Dawson also threw his support behind Ivey in the general election.

“You never heard one Republican, with all the issues we had to discuss and the disagreements we walked through, you never heard one Republican say Alabama would be better off with a Democrat as governor of the state of Alabama,” he said. “I applaud the race that’s gone on. I know our governor is going to win this without a runoff, and I’m asking everyone now — We need Alabama to keep our conservative values. We need to make sure we have a leader that’s going to keep taking us in this direction, and hopefully, prayerfully, we’ll all be around the table discussing the future of Alabama because, just like you, I believe the best days of Alabama are ahead of us, and we need a leader that’s conservative and will take us in that direction.”

More specifically, Dawson said it’s time to repeal and replace common core with common sense inside of Alabama’s classrooms so that teachers can teach the fundamentals and get kids ready to be leaders in life instead of just to take a test.

He also said it’s time to have leaders “that will not just speak about being pro-life, but they will start acting about being pro-life and we will defund Planned Parenthood — get them out of our state and provide family planning another way.”

Dawson called 'a breath of fresh air'

Radio personality Rick Burgess, who was heavily involved in Dawson’s campaign, also was at Dawson’s election night watch party and said he thought Dawson had lost his mind when he first told him he was going to run for governor.

But Dawson was “a breath of fresh air to those of us who are so sick and tired of everything happening in Montgomery.”

Burgess said he doesn’t like to get involved in politics and there have only been two or three times when he has endorsed a candidate publicly and only twice where he was willing to vouch for a candidate with zero reservations about their character or integrity.

The American democratic process is a wonderful system where the people speak and you have to submit to what the people want, Burgess said.

The Dawson campaign worked very hard on a shoestring budget, he said. “We knew that we were the underdog and it was an uphill climb,” he said. “We certainly weren’t going to be beholden to anyone because no one would give us any money. We knew we didn’t have to worry about special interests because they wanted nothing to do with us.”

Even though Dawson didn’t get a political victory, he and his wife, Tarra, were obedient to God’s call, Burgess said. “If God calls a follower of Christ to do something, you just do it, and you let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “The victory is they did what their Lord and Saviour told them to do.”

Tom Bradford, a Mountain Brook resident who serves on the board of directors for the Scott Dawson Evangelistic Association, said Dawson is one of the sharpest and hardest working people he knows.

“He has impeccable character and integrity. He’s a good motivator, and I think that’s what we need in a governor — somebody who can convince Democrats and Republicans to work together.He’s disappointed Dawson didn’t win but not surprised, he said. “All the polls and political experts said this was the way it was going to turn out.”

Ivey and Maddox supporters in Hoover

Ivey won all but five counties in north Alabama (which went to Battle). She had her supporters in Hoover, too.

Robert Orcutt, who lives in an apartment complex off Lorna Road, said he voted for Ivey because of the good job she has done so far since taking over for Robert Bentley and because of her strong support from the National Rifle Association.

Mitch Littleton, another resident off Lorna Road who voted at the Hoover Recreation Center, said he liked how Ivey promised she would fight for states’ rights and wouldn’t be strong-armed by the federal government into doing things. “She’s going to put Alabama first,” he said.

Polly Walton of the Riverhaven condos said she thought Ivey might be taking credit for some of the things set in motion by the Bentley administration, but she gave her the nod anyway. She thought Ivey has the best chance of winning in November, she said. “I think it’s going to be a hard race with the Tuscaloosa mayor,” Walton predicted. “I think it’s better to go with who’s there than with a progressive.”

Maddox also had supporters in Hoover.

Miranda Moreno and her fiancé, Scott Echols, said they lived in Tuscaloosa for a long time before moving to Hoover a couple of years ago. They liked how Maddox handled the tornado crisis in Tuscaloosa and help the city rebuild from it.

Melissa Webb of Riverchase said she had heard about the good things Maddox did in Tuscaloosa. Also, “he’s young and he’ll probably bring some fresh ideas to Alabama,” she said.

Tommy Battle

Battle swung through Hoover Tuesday afternoon to take his father, a Hoover resident, to the Hoover Recreation Center to vote. While there, he said he has visited all 67 of Alabama’s counties during his campaign and met a lot of great people throughout the state.

He has just tried to get them to vote for him and work with him to make the state better, he said.

“That’s what our whole campaign has been about — how to make this state a better place, how to improve education, how to build roads, how to add jobs, how to make sure our state is the best it can be,” Battle said. “It’s been a great journey.”

He was hoping to make it into a runoff with Ivey, but “if I don’t make it into a runoff, I’ll go back to being mayor of a great city,” he said. “It’s a win-win for me. I’ve got a good job.”

Hank Black with BirminghamWatch contributed to this article from Tuscaloosa. This article also was updated several times Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning with additional information, photos and a video.