Maybe y'all don't know Van Davis. You should.

He's just a professional prosecutor, a Republican DA in Blount and St. Clair counties for 18 years who was appointed acting attorney general to take on the thankless task of prosecuting former speaker of the house Mike Hubbard.

Just a guy who stood his ground against Alabama's most corrupt and corrupting influences, who never really got credit he deserved.

Davis got the opposite. Hubbard's defense came at him, and so did businesses mixed up in Hubbard's crimes. His family was threatened and his integrity challenged - for the first time in his career. The state's most powerful interests and officers warned him life would be simpler if he just let the thing go.

If he just let Hubbard go.

It had to be tempting. He was fighting cancer at the time - as he is now - but he didn't carry on about it.

Davis underwent forty-some-odd cancer treatments as he and members of the AG's special prosecutions unit proved Hubbard committed a dozen felonies.

It was hard for the whole team, he said Wednesday. Because prosecuting powerful people is hard even when you're hale and healthy.

"There are not many people who can stand up to that scrutiny and criticism," he said of his team. "It felt like we were out there by ourselves."

Boy, were they.

He thought it was over when the judge sentenced Hubbard to four years in prison. It wasn't. There was the appeal - which continues. And there is the aftermath.

And that -- in the form of HB317 -- is expected to come up in the Alabama Senate today. It frightens that tough old prosecutor enough that he's working the phones, calling senators to beg them to stand firm.

Because if the bill passes - it's being pushed by Commerce Secretary Greg Canfield, fast-tracked by Senate boss Del Marsh, spurred by Gov. Kay Ivey and greased by members of the Ethics Commission - the Hubbards of the world won't be prosecuted again, Davis said.

Prosecutor Van Davis.

Maybe you don't care about Davis. Alabama should.

The bill has gone through various incarnations, but "it's still a bad bill," Davis said.

"I can't understand who they are trying to appease. It's a bad deal and it's bad for our state."

Davis - among others -- is concerned that it:

A) Sets up an exemption allowing principals - those businesses and groups that pay lobbyists - to bypass the ethics law if they work as "less-than-full-time" economic developers. Which means half the principals in the Hubbard case could claim part-time status and get away with it.

B) Effectively ends the revolving door ban for legislators who want to go into economic development work.

"They could work on legislation with a business today and step down tomorrow and have an employment contract with them," Davis said. "It flies in the face of everything we tried to do."

He's convinced the same powers that sought to protect Hubbard are behind the bill.

"They're trying to use clout and power to change the law and do what they want," he said. "Why do they need to change the law except to benefit their friends? Why do you make changes to laws that were just used by prosecutors to convict a high-ranking public official? It dumbfounds me."

It ought to dumbfound everybody.

Alabama's top politicians - Ivey, Marsh, AG Steve Marshall, members of the Legislature - have done backflips trying to explain away the bill as harmless. After Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton blasted the bill, Marsh said they'd add language to appease him. But the problem wording remains.

The full senate is expected to consider it as early as today. Davis said he would call senators to try to "stop it in its tracks."

Because it will make the fat cats who bought Hubbard even more powerful, and it will make prosecuting them harder.

"We've had enough problems with public corruption for them to actually think of weakening the law," Davis said. "We ought to strengthen it."

Maybe they don't know Van Davis. They should.

John Archibald's column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.

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