Awful, disgusting, dishonest and a bunch of other adjectives describe what the Alabama Education Association did to gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne during the Republican primary.

AEA funneled $750,000 through a hastily formed secretive organization called the Conservative Coalition for Alabama to pay for television ads that grossly distorted Byrne’s fine public service record as a legislator and as chancellor of the two-year college system.

The campaign to trash Byrne and destroy his credibility was the deciding factor in his loss to Dr. Robert Bentley, who was a long-shot for winning the nomination. A newly released report from the Internal Revenue Service supplied details of how the money traveled the byways of dirty politics undetected until after the primary.

 

Bentley was not a part of the deception but could have denounced it as being out of bounds.

Here’s an example of what the Conservative Coalition threw at Byrne:

An attack ad claimed that Byrne took a 500 percent pay raise as a state official, but it didn’t explain that he went from the pay of a part-time legislator to full-time chancellor as a Riley appointee.

Byrne, of course, had gone after AEA strongman Paul Hubbert and what he said was the teacher union’s corrupting influence on state government.

The ads were protected by First Amendment freedom of speech, and there should be no attempt to silence strident voices. But the Constitution makes each of us accountable when we exercise that freedom, and that should include bringing organizations such as the Conservative Coalition out of the shadows during the heat of battle instead of waiting until the body count starts

A second point not discussed but well known - Democrats voted as Republicans for Bently on the bsis that Sparks, the Democratic candidate, coule beat Bentley.