Too Many Pettuses?

From a reader:

We have to vote him out! There were 4 Pettuses on the June ballot alone and there’s 5 or 6 in our local government. There’s just something wrong with that. We are not North Korea where one family controls the government. Men and women have fought and died to keep our country a democracy. Pettus tried to stifle your vote in 2015, he is using censorship on his political Facebook page (see Bob Van West’s page) and that’s illegal and he tried to blackmail the person running against him, and that’s a felony. Come on people there’s just something wrong here! We are better than this. Our town, our county is just better than this. I’m embarrassed that I’m just now waking up to what’s going on around here. I am a Republican but I will be voting for an Independent for the first time in my life come November. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or Democrat, we all need to be better represented. No straight tickets this time folks please. You got to go down and vote for the people on the ballot. I will be voting for Dolan because I’m impressed with his ideas and because I’m embarrassed we elected 4 years ago a man rated the least effective representative, #105 out of 105 (dead last) by Alabama businesses.

Does our reader have a point? We have no idea how the Pettuses in Lauderdale County government are related. We do know that it's not uncommon for certain family names in the Greenhill/Lexington area to be plentiful. It simply means that they came 200 years ago and they stayed (that's almost seven generations for the mathematically challenged). 

We did see where a county citizen agreed with Phillip Pettus on disenfranchising the citizens of Florence in the county school superintendent's race. She felt she had no say-so in Florence's superintendent, stating she paid city taxes. Does she?

First, the Florence superintendent is appointed, not elected. Second, county tax dollars are not given to Florence. Third, while state and federal tax dollars (to which this woman would have contributed) are given to all school districts in random ways, this woman might as well seek to vote in Mobile's school races as she had in Florence's.

We have noticed that Phillip Pettus was not as vocal on the subject during his second legislative session as he was his first. Hard lesson learned, perhaps?