Gary Dan Williams Accused of Ethics/Campaign Violation

Under Alabama law, candidates for office cannot use media at their taxpayer funded work place to campaign. This includes anything from posters on bulletin boards to using official e-mail accounts to utilizing official websites. Anyone doing so would have committed a campaign ethics violation. 

This week, two readers have contacted us concerning what they believe is a violation of ethics or campaign law by Gary Dan Williams, candidate for Lauderdale County school superintendent. Both feel that Williams' news release on the Allen Thornton School site is thinly veiled campaign advertising:

While Mr. Williams did not overtly state that he had been responsible for these accomplishments, he does say that these changes came about in the past two years since he has been over the school. So, is this campaigning? 

Since we believe this has been turned over to Secretary of State John Merrill, we will leave it to him to decide if Williams committed a violation. We're fairly sure that no answer will be forthcoming before the election. Even if Merrill's office decides the advertising is not cricket, the Williams campaign will probably receive a warning and and not an actual "violation" requiring payment of a fine. 

No matter the outcome, this blurb on a taxpayer website does smack of campaigning. Did we say smack; we meant reeks of it. Welcome to Alabama where politicians put the down in dirty.