Patrick Braxton was the only candidate to qualify for mayor of Newbern, Ala., during the last election cycle, but the incumbent he challenged still controls the town.Kyle Whitmire’s newsletter, “Alabamafication” examines the outsized influence of this very strange state, taking aim at corruption, cruelty, incompetence and hypocrisy while also seeking out those righteous folks making their state and country better places for all.Newbern, Ala., is not the proverbial one-redlight town.
Now control of Newbern town government is at the center of a lawsuit in federal court alleging blatant disfranchisement — a case that focuses, not on control of Congress or the delegates to the Electoral College, but over who gets their roads paved when there’s money for it and their ditches cleared after storms.
Ahead of qualifying to run, Braxton learned what sort of paperwork he’d have to fill out and the deadlines for filing with the town clerk. But when he approached the incumbent, Stokes, for the forms, he started to run into problems. According to Braxton, Stokes told him Newbern didn’t have elections.
Little did they know, the lame duck mayor, Stokes, and the incumbent council members had done something peculiar — they had held a special-called election without Braxton and the Braxton council knowing about it. Braxton wouldn’t meet with the Stokes council, as doing so would lend it legitimacy. The Stokes council declared Braxton AWOL and his office vacant. The Stokes council then re-named Stokes the interim mayor.