In 1990, when I was nine years old, my mother volunteered for Don Siegelman's first gubernatorial campaign. Since I was old enough to be of some help, I was enlisted to do the little things around the campaign office: stapling signs, stuffing envelopes, etc. It was my first dose of political activism, and I was addicted from day one.
One day, late in the campaign, Mr. Siegelman himself held an event at headquarters for his donors and volunteers. My mom dressed me up in my Sunday best and took me along with her. I spent most of my time at the party eating broccoli from the vegetable tray and looking around, overwhelmed by the excitement in the room.
At the end of the event, the only people left in the room were my mother, a few of her friends, and Mr. Siegelman. He came over to me, shook my hand, and spent about 20 minutes talking to me about my life and my interests. We ate veggies, discussed my love of baseball and creative writing, and logged some real quality time.
Mr. Siegelman lost the election, but he won an admirer in me. I was a born-again Democrat, ready and willing to scrap for the cause.
So it is with a very heavy heart indeed that I read this article tonight. My political inspiration, someone who interrupted his busy campaign schedule to really engage a nine-year-old girl (and away from the cameras at that), is going up the river for seven years. Sigh.
Now, I'm not here to address the issues of Karl Rove's involvement in the case, the show-trial nature of the whole thing, or any of those issues; others have addressed these topics in more detail. This is just one more sad, sordid corruption story in the eyes of the masses, and there's a Democratic governor at the center of it. There's an object lesson here, regardless of outside influence: Democratic politicians had durn well better keep their noses clean (Mr. Jefferson, I'm looking at you), and our leadership owes us the courtesy of making sure that our side's ethics are 100% beyond reproach.
Tonight I mourn the incarceration of one of my biggest political inspirations. Thank you, Mr. Siegelman, for taking the time to care about me. I'm sorry it had to end this way.