FOB JAMES: A GOVERNOR WITH A MISSION

Caller number 10 to Fob James’ radio call-in show is upset. a huge cross that stood on state-owned property along a highway in Gulf Shores, Alabama, was taken down under a federal court order, and Caller 10 wants to know how to get permission to put it back up. Now, Fob James has a lawyer right here in the studio to advise on pesky issues like church-state conflict. But James doesn’t turn to his lawyer. He just leans into the mike and issues marching orders: “Get your cross, just like the one that was there, go on back there, and put it back up. I’ll tell ’em you’re on your way.” James can do that. Heck, he’s the Governor.

Heck, he’s Fob James. The Republican landslide that transformed the U.S. Congress last fall also ushered in a gaggle of ardent G.O.P. conservatives in state capitals around the country. But James, 60, is more a throwback than a young zealot. He has spent his first seven months in office loading up one discarded policy of the Old South after the other and lobbing them at Alabama’s moderates, minorities and, yes, at the federal judiciary. “We are going in the same direction as the rest of the country, but we are more extreme,” says Auburn University professor Wayne Flynt.

Certainly that describes James’ penal philosophy, unveiled in April, when Alabama became the nation’s first state to restore the prison chain gang, putatively as an “experiment.” Last week, judging the experiment successful, the James administration began strapping leg irons every day on 160 prisoners at the Limestone Correctional Facility so they could be sent to break rocks with sledgehammers.

Lest local civil-liberties lawyers tire of cruel-and-unusual punishment cases, however, James has also engaged them in the First Amendment arena. He has called for a law permitting school prayer (not a moment of silent prayer, but the vocal kind). Specifically, he embraced the cause of Judge Roy Moore, whom the American Civil Liberties Union has sued for praying over his Etowah County courtroom. James not only raised money for Moore’s defense; the Governor is suing the ACLU for suing Moore.

In fact, in true Alabama tradition, James is at war with the law. State and federal judges have, at one time or another, declared Alabama’s public schools, mental institutions and foster-care system constitutionally inadequate. Rather than giving in to judicial rulings he dislikes, James inveighs against “pygmy-headed, pea-brained so-called jurists,” harking back to the time when Governor George Wallace recommended “barbed-wire enemas” for federal judges. More substantively, James introduced a long-shot bill that would allow the legislature and the Governor to overturn rulings of the Alabama Supreme Court from which three or more judges dissent. Says Flynt: “He’s arguing philosophical points that have not been debated in 200 years.”

James is also upsetting another, more recent achievement. Alabama’s racial climate has improved steadily in recent years. But one of James’ first official acts this year was to cut sharply the number of minority voting registrars, an emotional issue in a state where many blacks remember the poll tax. Hard feelings were made worse when James initially named an all-white cabinet, only later adding one black–as tourism officer.

James is unapologetic, saying he just likes to do the right thing and “let the chips fall where they may.” His supporters tout James as the future of American politics, and are advising Republicans nationwide to take note. But others say James is an anomaly. He was elected by a razor-thin margin–about 11,000 votes out of almost 1.2 million cast–in large part due to the weakness of the scandal-plagued Democratic incumbent. It will be three more interesting years before the state’s voters decide whether the old days should be left behind.

–By Adam Cohen/Montgomery