By Dan Finkelstein
Congressional Quarterly

Electoral votes: 9

Delegates: 63

Co-Chairmen: Joe Reed

Hotel: University City Hilton and Towers (818) 506-2500

1996 Election:
Dole – 50%
Clinton – 43%
Perot – 6%

After years of watching their grip on their longtime conservative Southern stronghold slip away to the Republicans, Alabama Democrats stemmed the tide in 1998 with then-Lt. Gov. Donald Siegelman's victory over Republican Gov. Fob James Jr.

But the 63 Alabama delegates to the Democratic National Convention know they face a formidable task in trying to carry their state in this year's presidential election - even though their candidate, Vice President Al Gore, is from neighboring Tennessee.

Alabama has become about as consistent for Republican presidential candidates as it used to be for the other party in the days of the Democratic "Solid South." Alabama voted against Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, giving substantial 7 percentage-point margins to the Republican nominees in both contests. And only one Democrat - Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976 - has carried Alabama for president since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

The Democrats going from Alabama to Los Angeles, though, are standing behind their party's standard-bearer, Vice President Al Gore.

The delegation has met the national Democratic Party's call for diversity. Half of its members are black, a bow to the importance to the Democratic voting base of an African-American constituency that makes up about a quarter of state's population.

Another largely Democratic constituency will be well represented in the Alabama delegation: According to state officials, 27 of the 63 delegates are educators or retired teachers.

Linking both of these groups is delegation Chairman Joe Reed. The associate executive secretary for the Alabama Education Association and a former Montgomery city councilman, Reed made history in 1968 as one of Alabama's first black delegates to a Democratic National Convention. An influential power-broker in the state party, Reed has attended every convention since then.

The delegate who has arguably received the most press prior to the convention is David W. White, a 41-year-old Birmingham resident, who will be the first gay Alabama delegate to a national party convention. White is a state coordinator of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama.

"I want to let the Alabama Democratic Party know they get a lot of support from the gay and lesbian community," White said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Gay activists have increased their visibility in Alabama since the beating death of a gay man, Billy Jack Gaither, in February 1999. They have lobbied the state legislature for protections and staged protests.

ALABAMA NOTABLES: Gov. Donald Siegelman, the honorary delegation chairman; Joe Reed, associate executive secretary for the Alabama Education Association and the Alabama delegation chairman; state Sen. Roger Bedford, the unsuccessful 1996 Democratic U.S. Senate nominee against Republican Jeff Sessions, and Bedford's wife, Maudie; Ginger Avery, executive director of the Alabama Trial Lawyers Association; Fred Gray, a civil rights attorney who, as a young lawyer, represented Rosa Parks in the case that spurred the 1955-56 boycott by blacks of Montgomery's city buses.