The GOP candidates who turned out Tuesday for a pre-election Q&A forum in Cullman made sure to let the crowd know who wasn’t there: Current Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (who’s seeking reelection), as well as challengers Stacy George and Dean Young.

All of the absent GOP candidates had sent their regrets ahead of the event, citing prior scheduling commitments. But for the six who did show up Tuesday, Cullman’s VFW Post 2214 was the place to be, a venue crowded to the walls with locals eager to hear from the large field of gubernatorial contenders ahead of the May 24 primary election.

Hosted by the Republican Women of Cullman County, the lengthy get-together took the form of a forum question-and-answer session, with each candidate getting the chance to field substantive questions that rarely make their way into TV commercial sounds bites. Even without the absent candidate trio, it was a busy night: GOP candidates Lindy Blanchard, Lew Burdette, Tim James, Donald Trent Jones, Dean Odle, and Dave Thomas all were on hand Tuesday to make their platform pitch to Cullman voters.

Like most of his fellow candidates, James agreed that Alabama’s governor should push the legislature to adopt a school choice bill, saying he’d pressure lawmakers from the governor’s “bully pulpit” to listen to community-level interests statewide — rather than special interests (James cited the Alabama Education Association specifically) whose lobbying dollars help consolidate bloc opposition to such measures.

James also said the state’s ostensibly conservative leaders have not been conservative with taxpayer dollars. “This $1.5 billion surplus ought to have been given back to the people of Alabama,” he said, referencing the legislature’s recent return of this year’s record state revenues either to the education budget ($1.3 billion) or to this year’s General Fund. James also echoed his fellow candidates by supporting a legislative tax overhaul that’s steered from the governor’s seat: “We really have not had a serious review; overall review, of our overall tax system [in a long time], and it’s long overdue,” he said.

Opelika-area pastor and GOP candidate Dean Odle blasted Gov. Ivey’s lockdown leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic: “She shut down the state over COVID, insulted the unvaccinated, and got praised by [Democratic President] Biden for it,” he said. Most of Alabama’s ostensibly conservative lawmakers, he added, have demonstrated a remarkable propensity to behave like their Democratic opposition when it comes to government expansion, spending, and a reluctance to relinquish state control back to communities over business freedoms and school choice.

“I can think of about five state legislators who are ‘truly conservative,’” he quipped, noting that the legislature failed to back Alabama citizens’ constitutionally-protected civil liberties through the pandemic by not going far enough to criminalize vaccine passport measures or employment contingency related to a person’s vaccination status.

Agreeing with most of his GOP competition that the state’s tax structure needs a thorough overhaul, Odle added that his competitors have not addressed how Alabama would replace lost revenue in the wake of a statewide repeal on grocery or income taxes.

“My opponents talk about lowering taxes, but they do not talk about how to pay for everything,” he said. Odle’s revenue replacement plan would lean on bucking current federal regulations that limit the tapping of the state’s untouched reserve of mineral resources, even if it means a legal fight invoking the Nullification doctrine to assert Alabama’s autonomy. “I would stand on the Tenth Amendment…and basically say [to the federal government], we’re going to drill,’” he said.

Sporting a “Make America Great Again” hat to signal her alignment with former President Donald Trump, Blanchard called for a revision of Alabama’s state taxing scheme, and invoked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a leadership model for limiting socially progressive curriculum inclusions in public education.

Blanchard called for a legislative end to Common Core, vowed to call a special legislative session addressing her proposed repeal of Gov. Kay Ivey’s “Rebuild Alabama” statewide gas tax increase, and said that she would push to eradicate the state’s grocery tax as well as occupational licensing taxes for self-employed business owners.

GOP challenger and municipal mayor Dave Thomas noted that most of Tuesday’s featured candidates are “mostly on the same page” with similar conservative approaches to fiscal policy, state’s rights, and educational autonomy. But he said his experience as the current mayor of Springville affords him an additional measure of insight into the lawmaking process.

“As governor, I would be out front advocating; pushing and encouraging the legislature to adopt real, honest school choice,” he said. “Being a free market economist, I believe in competition: I believe the education dollar should follow the student.” Thomas also said eliminating the state grocery tax is the “first plank” of his platform, followed closely by doing away with the state income tax. Incentivizing, rather than opposing, agricultural expansions into the growth of cannabis and bamboo, he said, could help the state recover revenues lost from scrapping its current tax pillars.

A former Books-A-Million executive and the current president of Alabama youth housing nonprofit King’s Home, Lew Burdette agreed with his competitors’ broad conservative strokes on everything from banning Common Core to repealing the gas tax. But he pledged to call on the legislature to enact campaign reforms that would curb large donations from political action committees. “‘We’re the fourth most politically corrupt state in America….follow the money,” he said, calling for a $10,000 cap on state campaign contributions.

“I don’t owe any political favors,” he added, suggesting special interest money remains a perennial problem in Alabama politics. “Nobody’s got influence over me.” Along with Odle, Blanchard, and James, Burdette also criticized Gov. Ivey and the current legislature for taking what all described as half-measures for small-business tax relief during this year’s session.

Ivey’s recently-signed business privilege tax law cuts the minimum business privilege tax from $100 to $50 beginning next year, and exempts small businesses altogether from the tax starting in 2024. But Burdette said the tax, along with Ivey’s gas tax and other requirements like occupational licensing, shouldn’t serve as policy cudgels for state government to wield in the first place. “How insulting is that to small businesses, to have a ‘privilege tax,’” he said. “We need a complete, really, overhaul of our tax system in Alabama so it’s fair for all Alabamians…and yes, we need less government.”

Out of all the candidates who spoke Tuesday, Odle also envisioned perhaps the most autonomous state education policy proposal for Alabama communities. “Not only will I get rid of Common Core, but what I want to introduce — and mean business about this, folks — is a complete school voucher program,” he said. “… If we get the state out of it and the parents into it, we will find great success….The only [school] boards we would need are boards of elected parents whose kids are in the school system.”

The Republican primary election will be held on May 24, with the GOP gubernatorial candidate winner facing the Democratic primary victor later this year in the Nov. 9 general election.