By June Mathews
TRUSSVILLE — Local civic and business leaders gathered at Bryant Bank in Trussville on Wednesday for a meet-and-greet with Gary Palmer, Republican candidate for Alabama’s 6th Congressional District. The Hackleburg native seeks to fill the seat currently held by Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills.
“This has been a campaign that a lot of people have said they’ve never seen one like it before,” Palmer said. “We’re so accustomed to everybody being so mean and negative and just beating each other up, making it personal. But I made a commitment right at the very beginning that we were going to run a campaign we could be proud of and that the Lord would bless.”
Palmer, however, said the campaign almost never happened. After regularly traveling to and doing business in the nation’s capital for more than two decades, he’d seen the worst the city has to offer, and running for office held little appeal.
From left are Sen. District 17-elect Shay Shelnutt, Jefferson County Commissioner Joe Knight, Gary Palmer, House District 44 Rep. Danny Garrett, Trussville City Councilman Alan Taylor and Clay Mayor Charles Webster.
photo courtesy of Phil Sims
As he expressed it: “The shiny wore off on Washington a long time ago.”
But when Bachus decided not to seek another term, Palmer was encouraged by friends and colleagues to run, and he initially thought he would. But after a particularly grueling round of meetings with Congressional leaders in October 2013, he decided against it.
“I thought, ‘I do not want to be in that dark place,’” he said. “But at the same time, I thought it was something I was supposed to do. I was having a Jonah moment, but I wasn’t waiting for somebody to throw me off the boat; I was getting off.”
Palmer figured his wife Ann, who had never wanted him to run, would be thrilled with his decision. So when he sat down at the kitchen table to break the news, he fully expected relief and smiles. Instead, she used some of his own words to change his mind.
“For years, I’ve heard you say that what’s wrong with the country is you can’t get good people to run,” she told him, “and I’ve even heard you comparing it to having to go to war. How can you expect someone else to go if you won’t?”
So the race began. After a hectic primary season that included six opponents and a mid-summer runoff against State Sen. Paul DeMarco, Palmer suspects the general election in the overwhelmingly Republican 6th Congressional District will go his way. After that, the solutions-oriented co-founder of the Alabama Policy Institute plans to hit the ground running.
Faced with tough issues ranging from decreasing dependence on foreign oil to the growing threat of the Ebola virus, his Congressional road won’t be easy. But Palmer is optimistic.
“I think we have an opportunity to get our country back on the right track,” he said. “But you’ve got to be willing to make some hard choices.”
And cooperation, he said, is key.
“We need to work together,” he said. “We cannot keep being a bunch of divided little interests. We’ve got to come together if we want this country to survive.”
Palmer’s Democratic opponent in the Nov. 4 general election is Birmingham-Southern College history professor Mark Lester.
