In the News
Cullman's Fields 1st black person in District 12 seat
January 30, 2008
The Birmingham News
KENT FAULK
News staff writer
CULLMAN - Democrat James C. Fields Jr. made Cullman County history Tuesday as the first black person to lay claim to the House District 12 seat when he handily won a special election to fill the vacant post in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Fields had 3,693 votes, or 59.3 percent, and Republican Wayne Willingham had 2,505 votes, or 40.3 percent, with 37 boxes of 38 boxes counted. The uncounted box includes provisional ballots which are usually counted only in contested outcomes.
Fields will be the first black person to represent the mostly white House district. Republicans had tried had to wrest control of the seat long held by Democrats.
The District 12 seat became vacant when Neal Morrison, a Democrat, resigned last year to become interim president of Bevill State Community College.
Storms that blew into Cullman about 8:45 p.m. knocked out power to the Cullman Civic Center where the votes were being counted. The count resumed about 10 p.m. and finished about 10:30 p.m.
"I'm feeling great," Fields said earlier when the early vote count indicated he had a strong lead. He could not be reached for comment when the vote count was completed.
The legislative session starts Feb. 5.
Fields won the Democratic nomination in November with nearly 63 percent of the vote in a three-person race - becoming the first black person to win a party nomination in that district. Willingham won the Republican nomination in a runoff in December with 55 percent of the vote.
Republicans have said they saw the District 12 race as an early step toward their goal of grabbing a majority in the state House and Senate with the 2010 election. In the House, Democrats hold 61 seats and Republicans 43, not counting the District 12 seat.
Both parties helped their nominees with fundraising and advertising during the campaigns and party leaders visited to help support them. Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican, came for an event for Willingham and Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom came to an event for Fields.
Fields, 54, of Colony, worked 28 years with the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, the last four as an unemployment fraud investigator. During former Gov. Don Siegelman's administration, he was assistant director of that agency in Montgomery. Fields also is a Methodist minister who pastors a church in Irondale.
Willingham, 44, was elected to the three-member Cullman County Commission in 2006. He was a two-term mayor of the town of West Point where he ran a country store for more than 16 years.
