Running for Mayor of Birmingham (Part 2 - Larry Langford)
Part 2 in a multi-part series on the candidates running for the mayor of Birmingham (AL).
Larry Langford is the former mayor of Fairfield, AL and current Jefferson (AL) County commissioner. Larry is famous for bringing an amusement part which at the time was called VisionLand to Bessemer, AL. It was deemed a failure, but was purchased and has seen recent success and is now known as Alabama Adventure. If I recall correctly, a lot of local governments spent a lot of $ on the project. Larry is employed by Birmingham Budweiser.
Larry has recently been investigated by the SEC. A recent article in the Birmingham News questioned a large loan that he had repaid by a friend, Al LaPierre. Larry claims that he spent something along the lines of $60k on dental bills, thus the B’ham News cartoon.
A few quotes from the mayoral debate:
- “Birmingham needs a crazy man to run this city.”
- “You can hire a million cops. It’s not going to stop me from killing you.”
- “Give the teachers the right to knock your kids out.”
- “Last I checked she hadn’t killed anybody,” Langford said of the police chief. We don’t need police “to do what we should do ourselves.”
- “In Alabama we’ve been stuck on stupid so long we can’t get from point A to B.”
Larry has a one page website: www.langfordformayor.com. It features an ad in which he claims a “one-point plan” to fight crime in Birmingham. And that one point is to put criminals behind bars.