Matt Chancey's Radio Ad
This guy wants to be on Alabama's Public Service Commission, and he thinks he can get there by running an anti-environmental campaign. I hope he's wrong. I heard this radio ad earlier in the week, in which Matt Chancey says Alabama's energy policy "is being driven by bureaucrats who care more about spotted owls and treefrogs than people." Is that a fact? I wonder how many of his constituents are aware that there are no spotted owls within a couple of thousand miles of Alabama, and I'd sure like to know which Alabama treefrog species has ever hindered any kind of development or industry. His website implies the Alabama sturgeon is not a distinct species and therefore unworthy of protection. He knows his base, and boy, is he playing to them, calling folks like me "radical environmentalists" (apparently you can't be a regular environmentalist anymore) and "elite liberal extremists." We are the ones to blame for high fuel costs, he says. At least he and his wife aren't going for the women's vote.
Matt's opponent in the PSC race is Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, former chair of the Alabama Republican Party. I first met Twinkle when I was her graduate teaching assistant in a Principles of Ecology course at Auburn in the late 1980s. You don't forget a name like that--she assured me it was on her birth certificate--and when I bumped into her at a Republican event in Birmingham a few years ago, I reintroduced myself (I was there helping my friend Pat Byington man a booth for Republicans for Environmental Protection). Twinkle has gone on record saying unkind things about environmentalists, too, of course, but if you are thinking of voting Republican, given your choice between Chancey and Cavanaugh, I hope you'll consider going with the one who's at least taken a course in ecology and hopefully can still appreciate a treefrog or two.
July 2011 Alabama Indigo Snake Reintroduction Update
12 years ago
8 comments:
Hey Mark!
Thanks for your post. We've been tracking this rhetoric at Conservation Alabama. Very unfortunately and untrue.
We have our press release about it and a Mobile Press-Register story on our website:
www.conservationalabama.org
Take care!
Adam
Hey Adam—
Good to hear from you. I’ll bookmark Conservation Alabama for future reference (wait--I'll link to it in the sidebar, too). Haven’t been keeping up with things there, but I can see you guys are doing good work.
I deleted comment #2 because it was mine (virtually identical to #3) and I was trying to fix a bad typo. I've learned it's impossible to cover your tracks when messing with the comments here. Just didn't want anybody thinking I was deleting comments I don't approve of.
Well, it's not about the environment, but....
Alabama voters should be made aware that Matt Chancey opposes women's suffrage on religious grounds. Matt Chancey and his wife Jennie believe that it is a sin (or at the very least, is highly inadvisable) for women to vote, hold political office, attend college, or work outside the home. These views are expounded upon at great length on Jennie Chancey's website,Ladies Against Feminism.
Apparently, in the Chancey household's ideal world, fathers would vote for the household, and all daughters would live at home "serving their fathers" until the time of their arranged courtship and marriage, at which time they would pass from their father's ownership into their husband's possession, thus assuring that they would never have the chance to vote; theoretically, any adult sons living at home would be similarly disenfranchised.
Certainly women COULD vote under such a system if they were the heads of their own household, but the only time that this would happen would be when a woman was widowed, and then only until such time as she remarried or moved in with an adult male relative; in Chancey's world, to ensure that widows remarried promptly, they might even be encouraged to avail themselves of Christian matchmaking/arranged-marriage services, such as this one, run by Jennie Chancey's parents. (Jenny Chancey's father is the Reverend Ovid Need; he is a prolific writer, for some samples of his work and his rather amazing views concerning Jews, Catholics, and women, go here and here and here.)
Matt Chancey is also on very intimate terms with Doug Phillips, the president and founder of VisionForum Ministries, a major homeschooling curriculum company. Phillips also teaches that God doesn't allow women to vote or hold office. Doug Phillips is described by Matt Chancey as being his dear friend and mentor, while Phillips in turn praises as his own intellectual hero one of the most virulent racists of the 19th century, Robert L. Dabney, and has authored a book, Robert Louis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks.
...and Matt is not above a bit of internet sleight of hand, either, when it will aid his political ends, as shown by this article, from the Washington Post.
Head-of-household voting, arranged courtship and marriages, bride-prices.... that's NOT the American way -- in fact, it's SO unAmerican that most folks would never dream that ANYONE in this day and age (other than fundamentalist Islamics) could hold such views, much less an educated man who is running for political office in the United States of America!
But, Matt Chancey and those close to him DO appear to hold such views, and the voters of Alabama need to know about it.
I was somewhat aware of this, but wow. This just gets scarier and scarier...
Yes, and doggone annoying too. So spread the word, the 15th is only a few days away....
From the Dothan Eagle:
PSC Candidate’s Wife Says She Chose ‘Homemaker’ Job
“Jennie Chancey supports her husband’s bid for public office, but from a biblical and historical perspective, she doesn’t think she necessarily has the right to vote for him…………..”
Hi. I enjoyed your blog. It is very original and fun.
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