Twelve years in the past, Ms. Jones, whose household had struggled through the housing disaster, wrote a nasty examine for groceries. In Mr. Nathews’s hand was a printout detailing simply that. He wouldn’t say who had given it to him, however that they’d achieved so with a message: “That is who you’re supporting.”
“Effectively, hell, who hasn’t bounced a examine in Montevallo? We’re all poor round right here,” Mr. Nathews had joked. However Ms. Jones was humiliated. A couple of days later, an nameless Fb account started sharing the doc in town’s group pages, and a few residents referred to as for additional “background checks” on Ms. Jones. (Mr. Brown stated Mr. Nix’s marketing campaign had nothing to do with the doc or Fb account.)
The political contours of the race grew sharper. On a group Fb web page, one voter shared an article on “cultural Marxism,” encouraging customers to debate the way it may apply to Montevallo’s upcoming election. The Montevallo Progressive Alliance, a bunch of native activists, endorsed Ms. Jones, placing her on the hook for the group’s posts on issues like “reproductive justice” and “microaggressions.” that she insisted bore no relevance to her imaginative and prescient as mayor.
It was a imaginative and prescient that actually didn’t differ a lot from Mr. Nix’s. Their solutions in candidate boards on questions on infrastructure, security and financial progress had been largely the identical. However by that time, their perceived variations on nationwide points overshadowed every part else.
When Patrick Mayton, whose spouse, Tonia, was working for a spot on the Metropolis Council, noticed the publish warning of Montevallo’s future by pointing to the defund-the-police banner in Austin, he appeared exasperated.
“That is NOT Montevallo’s future!!!” he pleaded in response. “I recognize you and others on right here eager to be vigilant towards communism and police defunding, however I’m assured that we don’t must concern these eventualities.”
An encounter on the polls
What saved Greg Reece, Ms. Jones’s marketing campaign supervisor, going was the promise of seeing Ms. Jones’s grandmother, who got here of age in Jim Crow Alabama, stroll into the polling station and solid a poll for her granddaughter.
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