Alabama

By Ian Lovett

As expected, Republicans dominated the major races in the reddest of states on Tuesday. Mitt Romney won the presidential race in Alabama, adding the state’s nine electoral votes to his total. All seven of the state’s Congressional incumbents — six Republicans and one Democrat — won new terms on Tuesday. None of them had faced strong re-election challenges.

And the last Democrat in statewide office in Alabama, Lucy Baxley, lost her race to remain president of the Public Service Commission.

In exit polls, most voters said the economy was the most important issue. But without a closely contested presidential race, perhaps the most significant decision voters in Alabama had to make was whether to strike racist language from the state’s Constitution. But voters rejected the measure.

The proposal, Amendment 4, would have removed provisions from the 1901 Alabama Constitution specifying that “separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race.” The amendment would also have eliminated language about poll taxes from the Constitution.

Of course, these revisions to the State Constitution would be purely symbolic. School segregation and poll taxes have been outlawed nationally for decades.

But many black legislators opposed the amendment, because it would have left in place a provision from 1956 that states that children in Alabama do not have a right to public education. Others complained that the ballot measure did not remove all of the racist language in the State Constitution.

Republican lawmakers who championed the amendment argued that it was symbolically important and would help Alabama attract new industry to the state.

Roy Moore, who was removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 for refusing to remove a two-ton granite Ten Commandments monument in the courthouse rotunda, was once again elected to the position.