Last month during a budget hearing before the Alabama Legislature began the 2021 regular session, State Reps. Rich Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa) and Arnold Mooney (R-Indian Springs) called on Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn to reveal more details about Gov. Kay Ivey’s plan to lease three new mega-prison facilities.
At the time, just days before she signed two of the three 30-year lease agreements, Dunn had said the Ivey administration was working with legislative leadership to provide details, adding that the confidentiality of negotiations justified the current lack of transparency.
During an appearance on Mobile radio’s FM Talk 106.5 on Friday, Wingo discussed his frustrations with that lack of transparency. He said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the Ivey administration’s method but noted the general fund would be the “backstop” on guaranteeing the lease payments.
State Rep. Arnold Mooney’s (R-Indian Springs) campaign for the U.S. Senate has received an endorsement from 10 of his colleagues in the state legislature with less than two weeks to go before the primary election.
The endorsers include many of the most conservative members in the Alabama statehouse, like State Rep. Mike Holmes from the Montgomery area and State Rep. Tommy Hanes from Northeast Alabama.
The state-level endorsements fall in line with the prominent national conservatives who have endorsed Mooney previously. Conservative Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), along with conservative television host Mark Levin, and Alabama’s own Rep. Mo Brooks (AL-05) are among those who have thrown their support behind Mooney.
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Alabama Lieutenant Governor Will Ainsworth’s 21st Century Workforce Commission released its findings on Monday.
The topline recommendation from the report is the creation of a cabinet-level coordinating agency to be called the Governor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development.
The report also calls for increased investment in areas highlighted by many of the state’s pre-existing workforce development initiatives; technical education, STEM classes for K-12 students, coordination between government and industry, and bringing people back into the workforce through retraining.
“We developed this report as an action plan and a call to arms, and not something that should be tossed on a shelf to gather dust,” Ainsworth said in a release from his office.
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Think back for a moment to what our country was like in 1973.
The average American income was $12,900 a year. A gallon of gas cost 40 cents. The top grossing movie of the year was “The Exorcist,” and “All In The Family” commanded the highest television ratings. “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” by Tony Orlando and Dawn was the year’s highest charting song.
And 1973 was also the year that the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the abomination known as the Roe v. Wade ruling.
Authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, the ruling stated that an unborn child is not protected under our Constitution, and it magically conjured a new “right to privacy” that did not previously exist. (more…)
7. Former Alabama player and current State Representative Rich Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa) says sports gambling “scares” him “to death”
— Wingo, who is clear in his opposition to gambling being legitimized and warns of a “gradual eroding of our culture,” has allowed this debate to take place. That wouldn’t have been possible in the 70s or 80s.
— The former Alabama and Green Bay Packers player explained to Alabama Public Television how the FBI would show up every year at players’ meetings, explaining that, “the mob, for the lack of a better term – professional gamblers, would try to possibly infiltrate a team or an individual through compromise … so that they could eventually, either befriend or through leverage of threat, manipulate a game.”
6. “Fact-checkers” in the media have finally gotten around to calling out Senator Kamala Harris’ (D-California) ignorant smears on Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh (more…)
State Rep. Rich Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa), a former University of Alabama football star, is raising the stakes with his opposition to sports betting, telling host Don Dailey on Friday’s episode of Capitol Journal that gambling on athletics “scares” him “to death.”
Wingo also played five seasons for the Green Bay Packers and knows the dangers of mixing sports and gambling first-hand. He explained that the FBI would show up every year at their NFL team meetings to talk about sports gambling and how gamblers will try and get involved with players to influence the outcome of a game.
“[T]he mob, for the lack of a better term – professional gamblers, would try to possibly infiltrate a team or an individual through compromise … so that they could eventually, either befriend or through leverage of threat, manipulate a game,” Wingo explained.
Wingo sees this issue as a “gradual eroding of our culture” that would have never even been a debate when he played in the 1970’s and 1980’s. (more…)
Sports betting is legal in just a handful of states, but as of last week, Alabama’s eastern neighbor has joined that select club. Mississippi’s first lawful sports wagers took place Wednesday at the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi.
State Rep. Paul Lee (R-Dothan) is predicting that the state legislature will consider a bill during the 2019 legislative session calling for a referendum on sports betting, though he predicts passage is a long shot according to WTVY in Dothan.
Will Mississippi’s newly legalized sports betting hurt Alabama athletics? One state legislator has a dire warning for college football fans.
Representative Rich Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa) played five seasons for the Green Bay Packers and knows the dangers of mixing sports and gambling first-hand. Wingo told WBRC that the FBI would show up every year at team meetings to talk about sports gambling and how gamblers will try and get involved with players to affect the outcome of a game. (more…)
Powerball officials say three winning tickets were purchased for the $1.58 billion jackpot on Wednesday, two of them in Alabama’s neighboring states of Tennessee and Florida.
According to Reuters, this is the second consecutive Powerball jackpot that has been won — at least in part — by a Tennessee resident. The previous Tennessee winner took home $144 million last November.
The frenzy to win a piece of the latest record-setting jackpot resulted in $1.3 million worth of tickets being bought every single minute in the state of Texas this week. Alabama, however, is one of six states in the country that does not participate in the Powerball system.
“We’re driving to Georgia and Tennessee. We’re driving out of state and spending our money and we’d like to spend our money right here at home,” said Alabama Senator Jim McClendon (R-Springville), who is sponsoring a lottery bill for the upcoming sessions of the Alabama legislature. “I am sponsoring this because of constituent requests. Throughout my district, people have said why don’t we have a lottery in Alabama?”
McClendon says he believes the lottery would raise $300 million in additional revenue for the state on an annual basis, but his bill does not stipulate what the funds would be used for.
Gambling advocates in recent years have pushed an “education lottery,” which would earmark the revenue to go toward the state’s education budget. But Alabama’s systemic budgeting issues are mostly centered in the General Fund, where the largest line items are Medicaid and prisons.
RELATED: State representative issues dire warning: ‘Medicaid could be the downfall of Alabama’
Polling indicates a sharp decline in support for a lottery that is not earmarked for education, but a Washington Post report published in 2012 called into question whether so called education lotteries actually benefit public schools anyway. According to the report, legislators in many states have concocted ways to keep the additional funds from ever making it into classrooms. In Texas, for instance, lottery funds paid for about two weeks of schooling for public school students in 1996. By 2010 it was down to three days.
A gambling expansion of any kind will face fierce opposition from Alabama’s large swath of evangelical voters.
Dr. Joe Godfrey, executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program (ALCAP), an almost 80-year-old organization that describes itself as “Alabama’s moral compass,” last month expressed concerns that “illegal gambling is taking over this state” and reiterated his group’s opposition to an expansion of any kind.
This week, State Rep. Rich Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa) said he will work to block any lottery bill because “God won’t bless it.”
“I hope we’re seeking the word of God and for guidance,” he told ABC 33/40. “I find nowhere in the Bible does it talk about the lottery in a positive way… I am totally opposed to any kind of gaming, the lottery.”
Wingo specifically referenced Matthew 25, in which Jesus tells the “Parable of the Talents.” In the story, two servants who invest their master’s money wisely are blessed, while a third who buried his money in the sand was chastised for being “wicked and slothful.”
But there are signs that some longtime gambling opponents are considering softening their stance.
“Historically, I’ve opposed them,” said powerful state senator Jabo Waggoner (R- Vestavia Hills). But he says he is now considering throwing his support behind a bill that would bring the issue up for a vote again.
With little appetite among Republican lawmakers for additional tax increases, particularly after last year’s tense budget battles, gambling could continue to gain momentum as an alternative revenue stream that would prevent legislators from having to make additional cuts and reforms to state government.
The fact that two winners of the latest Powerball jackpot were from neighboring states will likely only increase public pressure in favor of bringing the lottery to Alabama, even though the chances of winning the latest round were an absurd 1 in 292 million.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Rich Wingo was a linebacker for the University of Alabama during one of the most famous plays in college football history, “The Goal Line Stand” in the 1978 national championship game against Penn State. Almost four decades later, he is preparing to make a very different stand, this time against the lottery in his current role as a state lawmaker.
In 1999, Alabamians voted down Gov. Don Siegelman’s proposed “education lottery” 54% to 46%. Since then, numerous statewide candidates — most of them Democrats — have run on a platform of letting the people vote again. In 2016, with Alabama’s budgeting woes continuing and the $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot sending lottery advocates into a craze, another push is beginning to emerge.
State Senator Jim McClendon (R-Springville) has filed a lottery bill for the 2016 legislative session, which is set to begin next month.
“I am sponsoring this because of constituent requests,” McClendon told ABC 33/40’s Lauren Walsh. “Throughout my district, people have said why don’t we have a lottery in Alabama? We’re driving to Georgia and Tennessee. We’re driving out of state and spending our money and we’d like to spend our money right here at home.”
McClendon says he believes the lottery would raise $300 million in additional revenue for the state on an annual basis, but his bill does not stipulate what the funds would be used for.
McClendon’s legislation, which would put the issue to a vote of the people, likely in November, has begun to pick up support, even from lawmakers who are not personally in favor of the lottery but are open to letting the statewide electorate vote.
State Rep. Wingo (R-Tuscaloosa) is not one of those lawmakers.
“I hope we’re seeking the word of God and for guidance,” Wingo told ABC 33/40. “I find nowhere in the Bible does it talk about the lottery in a positive way… I am totally opposed to any kind of gaming, the lottery. God won’t bless it.”
Wingo specifically referenced Matthew 25, in which Jesus tells the “Parable of the Talents.” In the story, two servants who invest their master’s money wisely are blessed, while a third who buried his money in the sand was chastised for being “wicked and slothful.”
The full parable can be read below.
Alabama’s 2016 Regular Legislative Sessions is set to begin next month.
The Parable of the Talents — Matthew 25:14-30 (Jesus speaking)
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’
24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’
26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Jamey Clements announced, on Friday, he is running for the Republican nomination for Alabama House District 62.
Clements said he will support policies that will improve the Alabama’s education system by making the state more autonomous in policy making. He also said he wants Alabama to be more business friendly in order to bring more long-term, stable jobs to the state and Tuscaloosa.
“I believe in small, limited government and will keep that mindset and advocate that position if elected,” Clements said. “I will continue to build on the conservative policies the Republican Party has brought to Montgomery since taking majorities in both houses in 2010.”
Clements does have some competition for the Republican nomination.
Yellowhammer News reported earlier that Alabama football legend Rich Wingo is also vying for the seat in the Alabama House of Representatives. Wingo was one of the linebackers in “The Goal Line Stand” game where Alabama beat Penn State in the 1978 National Championship.
Rep. John Merrill currently serves House District 62, but he is running for Secretary of State in 2014, instead of seeking re-election.
House District 62 covers parts of Southern and Eastern Tuscaloosa.
John Merrill, the current District 62 representative is running for Secretary of State in 2014 rather than seeking re-election to the state house.
After playing under Coach Bryant at Alabama, Wingo played seven seasons for the Green Bay Packers. He was the team’s Rookie of the Year and MVP in his first year in the NFL. He later coached at the University of Alabama before serving for twenty years as president of AIG-Baker Real Estate, a shopping center development company. He is now the chief operating officer of United Assurance Corporation and co-owner of Solid Rock Builders, a residential construction company.
An Alabama football legend running for public office in Tuscaloosa? That’s a lot to overcome for any would-be challengers.
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