AL-6 Congressional primary: DeMarco and Palmer go to runoff, Beason third

Published 10:37 pm Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Front-runner Paul DeMarco rose above the fray in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the U.S. House Sixth District seat, and will face conservative think-tank founder Gary Palmer in a runoff in six weeks.

DeMarco, a member of the Alabama House from Homewood, was the clear winner; he led Palmer by roughly 12 percentage points as of 10:30 p.m.

Palmer, who created the influential Alabama Policy Institute, pulled away from a pack pf four contenders for the second spot in the runoff. He had been in a tight battle in the returns with State Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale, businessman Will Brooke of Birmingham and physician Chad Mathis of Indian Springs Village. Those four swapped places for much of the night as returns trickled in, but Palmer and Beason started to separate from the others at about 9:15, and the Palmer moved past Beason in the late going.

Palmer collected 20 percent of the votes with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Beason was third with 15 percent, but less than 200 votes ahead of Mathis. Brooke was fifth with 14 percent. Pelham businessman Tom Vignuelle was a distant sixth, and Birmingham attorney Robert Shattuck seventh and last.

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Early in the campaign, the top six candidates struggled to differentiate themselves over policies and conservative doctrine. DeMarco and Beason — the only candidates in the race to have run for office, much less won an election — emphasized their records in the state legislature, while the rest ran as political outsiders.

DeMarco amassed a substantial campaign war chest early on, while Mathis enjoyed an influx of political action committee money, most from groups with ties to the medical field.

Beason struggled to raise money — he’s often expressed a strong distaste for the fund-raising part of the campaign process — and ran mainly on name recognition alone from his very public battles as a conservative firebrand in Montgomery. He also enjoyed strong grass-roots support from the Tea Party wing of the GOP.

DeMarco and Palmer will now face off in a runoff for the Republican nomination on July 15. The winner will be a heavy favorite over Democratic candidate Avery Vise in the general election, with the winner replacing retiring 11-term Rep. Spencer Bachus.

Beason, who stepped down from his state Senate seat to run for Congress, will be out of elected office for the first time in 12 years. He served two terms in the Alabama House before defeating Jack Biddle for the Senate seat in 2006.