JeffCo commissioner David Carrington announces run for governor

Plenty of politicians in recent decades have run for governor in the state of Alabama promising to “clean up the mess in Montgomery.”

But Jefferson County Commissioner David Carrington, who announced today at Vulcan Park that he will seek the Republican nomination for governor in 2018, believes he can succeed where others have failed.

And the difference-maker, Carrington said, is his experience when — as commission president — he helped clean up the enormous legal and financial mess that the county faced in the early to mid-2000s.

“I’m the only one who’s actually cleaned up a mess,” he said immediately following his announcement. “We are the second-largest government in the state, and we cleaned up the mess."

Carrington, who is also a former Vestavia Hills city council member, announced his candidacy under blue, sunny skies on a plaza overlooking the Birmingham skyline in front of about about 150-200 supporters.

His supporters, Carrington said, “believe that we finally have the opportunity to become a state of the 21st century."

He received introductions and endorsements from two of his colleagues, County Commissioner Jimmy Stephens and County Commissioner Joe Knight.

Carrington said that he and the other commissioners elected in 2010 fixed the problems caused by their predecessors, despite having to make tough decisions about Cooper Green Hospital and the county nursing home.’

He also outlined his priorities if elected governor, including improving public schools, which he said are “the lifeblood of our state’s future.”

His goal is to take the schools in Alabama from the bottom 10 percent nationally to the top 20 percent in a decade.

And while economic development is “a key to unlocking more, better-paying jobs” in Alabama, it is not the only factor, said Carrington, who added that many high-school graduates in the state do not have “marketable skills” and that nearly 500,000 working-age Alabamians do not even have high-school degrees.

He said he would like to take incomes in Alabama from the bottom 10 percent nationally to the top 50 percent in a decade.

Carrington said that he can make state government run more efficiently and that he will recruit “proven decision-makers, not my friends, to serve in the cabinet.”

Those cabinet members will immediately be tasked with creating strategic plans for their departments, according to Carrington.

Stephens told attendees that he, Carrington and the other commissioners faced “staggering” financial, legal and political obstacles.

“To say we faced tough decisions is an understatement,” he said.

But under Carrington’s leadership, Stephens said, “We successfully navigated those obstacles, without regard to politics.”

Knight said that Carrington “is not afraid to take the lead in dealing with difficult circumstances.”

And in a swipe at former Governor Robert Bentley’s sex scandal, Knight said that voters “don’t have to worry about something like that" with Carrington.

There is not “a scintilla” of scandal in Carrington’s past, according to Knight.

To read a recent profile of Carrington in Vestavia Voice, click here.